Marcia: I do this, although not in intro lately because I haven't been teaching intro lately.
As to the coverage issue, I think there are two replies to this concern. One point that has been made by other posters on TIPS concerns the function of the intro course. The intro course should not be a condensed version of the entire psych major. Some on TIPS see the course as a recruitment tool, to get the better students interested in becoming psych majors. Others point out that this may be the only course people take in psych, and, an important task is that students walk away with a core understanding of what is psychology (as opposed to what they are told about psychology in movies and magazines.) The second point about coverage is more practical. There is no way one can teach the entire contents of the typical intro psych textbook. There are many more chapters than weeks, and each chapter is often a condensed version of a content-area textbook. All of us must select out what we consider to be important material. The issues of those choices remain whether we use an intro textbook or not. Ken -------------------------------------------------------------------- On Sun, 27 Oct 2002 13:21:23 -0500 "McKinley, Marcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Ken Steele wrote: > If some > fairy [a good or bad fairy, depending on your druthers] were to > make your current intro psych textbook disappear, how much > impact would this have on your course? How difficult would it be > to continue with your course? I think of how many more > interesting books students could buy to read with the $75 they > saved from buying an intro textbook. > ________________ > > > Ken-- > Have you done this? With intro? Anyone? I'm very interested in the idea. I know >that several members of our Sociology dept have student read other books--not >textbooks-- for their Intro to Soc course. > > I use the narrative technique to teach many of my upper-level courses. For example, >in Adolescent, I rarely require a textbook (although I might make one optional). >Instead, I assign 6-10 narrative books (fiction for young adults or case studies). >For Adult Development, I make a text optional and require about 6 narrative books. > > The problems that I have encountered with this are: > - I end up feeling boxed in to lecturing during class time, instead of leading >discussions, doing demos, etc. > - Students sometimes complain that they don't have anywhere to go if they miss >notes for some reason -- either b/c they miss class or b/c they just didn't get >everything down. (I used to put my notes up on the web to get around this problem, >but that takes a lot of work too.) > - I wasn't sure that I was "covering" enough. This becomes a recurrent dilemma for >me, as I have many other goals for my students beyond learning certain facts (e.g., >critical thinking, etc), but I also don't want students to advance to other courses >without requisite knowledge to do well and learn from them. > > I have toyed with the idea of doing the same kind of thing in Intro, but the >"coverage" issue always dissuades me. I would love to hear from anyone else who has >done anything similar. > > Marcia > > Marcia J. McKinley > Mt St Mary's ---------------------- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dept. of Psychology Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
