>> From: "Roderick D. Hetzel"
>> am trying to come up with a
>> paper assignment or other assignments that would reflect the student's
>> knowledge
>> in the content area as well as be personally meaningful.<
I worry a lot, when teaching abnormal psych., that having the students
attempt to apply abnormal psychology concepts to themselves can be
dangerous. They don't have the expertise, of course, and they're very
vulnerable.
So I often have them select a character from a book or movie (preferably
with an obvious diagnosis, such as Glenn Close's "Fatal Attraction"
character, who was a borderline, or Sigourney Weaver's agoraphobic/panic
disorder character in "Copycat"). They must come up with a diagnosis,
explain what the disorder is, what its characteristics are, and what
behavior the character exhibits to warrant this diagnosis. Then they must
come up with two suggested treatment plans, based on at least two different
models of psychopathology (most frequent choices are biological and
behavioral) and finally, estimate how successful treatment is likely to be,
based on observations like family support, past treatment successes or
failures, motivation, etc. If there are no clues to any of these, I allow
them to suggest things, as long as they document that they're "supplying the
information" since the book or movie didn't. Students seem to really get
into it. Only side effect was that a couple of students chose movies I
hadn't seen, so I rented the movies so I could judge for myself...
Beth Benoit
Daniel Webster College
College for Lifelong Learning
Portsmouth NH
