The Helpful Professor

The Helpful Professor site offers a range of free Study Guides for both Sociology (115 guides) and Psychology (30 guides) aimed at American University students doing Introductory courses in these subjects (Sociology 101, for example). The level at which they’re pitched, however, wouldn’t be out of place on an A-level Sociology or Psychology course.

Each Guide is based around a key concept or theory (from Anomie to Worldview, Attachment Theory to Sublimation…) and generally follows a standard format of providing a short definition, examples and brief criticisms. A few of the Guides also have accompanying animated video clips and while I’m not sure how many there are, the one’s I’ve seen are generally short, interesting and informative.

As you may have noticed, I didn’t qualify “examples” because, for whatever reason, these tend towards the excessive. Does any Sociology student, for example, really need:

• 23 examples of Achieved Status?
• 9 Agents of Socialisation?
• 16 instances of Cancel Culture?
• 13 examples of Charisma?

Now, while I don’t know (I can guess) why the Guides should be packed with so many examples it seems to me they’re a bit of a distraction for students to be faced with so much information when a couple of examples would suffice. The fact something like Social Capital has a far more manageable 4 examples shows they could do it if they really wanted to…

And if you think the Psychology Guides are any different, they’re not. Attribution Theory has 10 examples, plus 5 “case study examples” thrown in for good measure.

This isn’t to say the Guides aren’t useful. It’s just that you may have to wade through an awful lot of stuff you really don’t really need. Which is basically to say the Guides could probably have done with a bit of judicious editing.

Having said that, this is where the Study Cards come into play. These mimic old-style paper-based revision cards and usually contain a couple of pieces of helpful revision information: a definition and an example (or two).

So, if you don’t understand a concept or theory, a Guide should put you straight, while if you just need a little memory-prompt then a Card may be just what you need.

And as an added bonus the Helpful Professor has an extensive section on Essay Writing Resources, most of which contain relatively simple, sensible and straightforward ideas about how to improve your ability to write extended pieces of work.

There’s also a whole YouTube Channel dedicated to essay writing resources and “growing your grades” that might be worth checking-out, although the videos basically replicate the written material so there’s not much point doubling-up.

Unless you really like pretty basic Talking Head stuff featuring a mildly-scary bloke.

In which case, there’s a lot here for you to love.