Social Final eportfolio
PART I
Sociology refers to the study of social lives of people and
Sociology course has been a fascinating course which has provided a portfolio for analyzing and explaining the social lives of people and how they relate with the various institutions and the world at large. Its emphasis on careful gathering of information and facts about the social world has helped me to deeply understand the key social processes. At the beginning of the semester, I had set my goals that I intended to achieve come the end of the semester and an evaluation of whether the goals set were achieved is of great importance.
My major goal was to be able to acquire knowledge of how sociology is a discipline and thus giving me, the students a basic understanding of how the society works. Sociology has offered me a distinctive and an enlightening understanding of the social world in which human beings live and how it shapes their lives. I have learnt that sociology looks beyond normal and the taken-for –granted views of reality in order to provide a deeper, more illuminating and challenging understandings of social life. Another set goal was to ensure at the end of the semester, not only should I be able to use a sociological imagination in analyzing phenomena using tools from other courses, but also being able to use critical thinking ability to make contribution to the understanding of our society.
Through its particular analytical perspective, social theories and research methods, it was not difficult to achieve the course goals. The tools that sociology discipline provides helped in creating awareness and analysis of the various human relationships, cultures and institutions that profoundly shape both our human life and human history. Sociology class has trained me well to acquire the skills of thinking critically how humans interact within society and also more importantly asking questions. I now have the ability to carry out research work and come up with projects and being able to collect information and raw data with a purpose of analyzing and formulating and presenting the findings. The real life application of sociology is what makes it more interesting and objective.
In more general terms sociology has influenced my thinking, improved my evaluation and communication skills. It has helped me improve on my creativity and effectiveness abilities. These abilities are very important as they contribute towards nurturing various career professions I have acquired many basic academic skills like critical thinking skills, oral presentation skills, skills in data collection and analysis. However, in the analysis of data, I would like to improve on the use of various statistical softwares which will enable effective analysis of data.
PART II
I had a chance to look at my classmate’s portfolio. From his portfolio I did like the way he presented most notably:
- The content was a reflection of his learning process and was well organized on the page as it was easy to navigate from one piece of information to the other.
- He included some of the unpublished research papers that he wrote during the semester.
- His portfolio was up to date as it contained the most of the recent information about the activities that he carried out.
However to make the portfolio page more appealing, I would suggest that he makes use of a theme that fits his needs; a theme that displays the work making him proud. Also, the clarity and readability of the content is important to ensure that it is easy to read it hence a clearer font style and size should be used as well as using a color that could effectively enhance understanding of the message being passed across by content. The use of pictures is of equal importance as it is an important tool in communication. A picture explains a thousand words so long as it is used appropriately and in a manner that it connects with the content.
