I am a cognitive psychologist who is a generalist at a small school (that is, two full-timers in the psych dept) so when I took on teaching Neuropsychology I did not even pretend to be an expert on the subject. I use Kalat's Biological Psycholgy and I teach the first couple of weeks on some of the basics of the nervous system (roughly chapters 1-5 in that book). But after that, the students select topics to teach, alone or with a partner. I schedule them so that once a week a student teaches and the other class meeting of the week I teach, and I usually use that time to teach something related to their topic so that if they make errors I can "clean up" behind them. I find that they rarely make errors - the more common mistake is that they don't dig deeply enough into their topic. We talk about the difference between teaching and making a presentation. They are encouraged to be creative and to take their strengths into account. They are required to give me a lesson plan and an assignment for their classmates before they teach, and they are required to evaluate their classmates' learning. I strongly encourage them to meet with me a few times as they prepare and most of them do. We talk about Bloom's Taxonomy and about planning the lesson around their objectives. They are allowed to choose topics that may not even be mentioned in the text. Their lesson grade is 30% of the final grade (they also write some short papers and do other exercises). I let them teach more than once, and I count the highest grade they make. Many of them choose to teach two or three times, often because they want the experience and the practice, sometimes because they are determined to make an A. Note that this works because it's a small class - usually ranges from 6 to 12 upper-level students. This semester there are 11, and I have more than usual who are highly anxious about it and won't be teaching more than once. So we have opportunities to talk about stress management. Students in past classes have told me that after surviving teaching a 75 minute class in Neuropsychology, they were no longer afraid when facing things like 5 minute presentations in other classes or even their senior thesis oral defense.
To give credit where it is due, the way I set up the course is strongly influenced by the way that Charles Brewer taught Advanced General Psychology to seniors when I was an undergrad at Furman U. He met the class the first day and said "so, it's your course, what do you want to do?" and let the students design the course. The year I took it, we chose to teach each chapter ourselves, in dyads, each of us teaching twice. Nathalie Cote Belmont Abbey College ----- Original Message ----- From: "DeVolder Carol L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 10:09 AM Subject: [tips] RE: You YouTube?--question for Nathalie Cote Maybe I should have asked this backchannel, but I suspect others might be interested too. When you say that your students do a lot of the teaching, could you explain how that happens? I'm really interested in getting my students to be more involved in their own education. Others can chime in here, too. Thanks, Carol Carol L. DeVolder, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Chair, Department of Psychology St. Ambrose University 518 West Locust Street Davenport, Iowa 52803 Phone: 563-333-6482 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://web.sau.edu/psychology/psychfaculty/cdevolder.htm -----Original Message----- From: Nathalie Cote [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thu 3/8/2007 10:06 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] RE: You YouTube? Yes, I've used it. I wanted to show the ABC webcast summary of the recent Primetime episode on the replication of Milgram, and I had trouble playing it off the ABC site so I went to youtube and found it there. In my Neuropsych course, the students do a lot of the teaching, and several have found videos there to illustrate concepts such as synesthesia and hemispherectomy. As with anything on the Internet, you have to be careful in screening the material. I do wish I could find a copy of The Wave there in digital form, or Frontline's Prisoners of Silence. Nathalie Cote Belmont Abbey College -----Original Message----- From: Jim Guinee [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2007 5:29 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] You YouTube? Do any of you use YouTube in your classes? I do not, but had a student who sent me a video and suggested it would enhance a certain class topic. I've been hearing anecdotal reports about professors who are using video segments, but you know how invalid ancedotes are. Jim G --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang= english --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > --- > To make changes to your subscription go to: > http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english > > --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
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