The purpose of this e-mail is two-fold, perhaps three.
1st, thanks again to all those who responded to my request for help back
in late June on teaching Intro Psych for the first time. Now that the course is
just about over, I have to say that it has been nothing less than a wonderful and
most rewarding experience. It turned out to be a rather small class, ultimately less
than 40 students, which made for a much more dynamic atmosphere. It was an excellent
testing ground for me as I'm now preparing to teach two lecture sections of the same course
in the Fall, although with a significant increase in student enrollment figures. This brings me
to the second purpose.
Essentially, what advice might any of you have in dealing with classes with a population of about
300? The largest class I've taught was about 80 in Child Development last year. I've been told
twice by two different colleagues here that class management is a principal issue. Any suggestions or expert advice would be most welcome!
Thirdly, one idea I'm currently considering adopting for these fall courses came from the summer
course. While talking about some ideas or concepts, such as scripts for example, sometimes
an analogy from a scene in a movie or something similar would come to mind, and I'd use that to help convey the material to the class. Fortunately for the students, these examples were sometimes something they were familiar with. Again, with scripts for example, given that the typical textbook example is the restaurant, I described the scene from 'Pulp Fiction' where John Travolta's character is describing his experiences in Paris where he found that at their McDonald's restaurants one can order a beer with their meal, and a Big Mac is called Le Big Mac, etc. It just seemed like a good way to describe the concept of a schema, how we use it, and how it is not static but rather constantly changing and evolving as a function of our experiences.
So, now what I'm thinking of doing perhaps next is showing these actual clips in class just to make the point even more salient and of course, fun and entertaining, with the added benefit of giving the students a short rest from listening and writing. Some other potential film clips that I've been pondering are certain scenes from the movie 'The Fight Club'. I won't hold it against you if you haven't actually seen this movie! But, if for no other reason, you should see this movie, perhaps again if you missed it the first time, for an excellent demonstration of subthreshold visual images. (My wife saw it right away upon first seeing it, whereas I had to rewind it a few times, until the image became clearer to me). So, it would not only be a good example of subliminal stimuli, but also individual differences in thresholds and how thresholds can be established in experimental procedures. The images are flashed very quickly on the screen, each time in different locations, but with increasing duration, until finally at some point in the movie, the narrator explains how this is done, in cinematic postmodern fashion, without actually referring to those previous scenes.
Other ideas include showing a clip from a 'A Clockwork Orange' of Alex receiving his treatment to explain the classical conditioning principles underlying aversion therapy, and maybe Robert DeNiro in 'Analyze This' to show the difference between the therapist trying to explain psychodynamic principles to his patient and his patient's reaction which is not only funny, but typical of many people's attitudes toward Freud, whether or not they are familiar with psychoanalyis.
My main question to the group is whether or not any of you have done this or something similar, and any ideas or other suggestions you may have.
In addition, as a novice I'm wondering what practical concerns I should have, if any, regarding some of the language and/or visual content some of these film clips are going to inevitably contain. If I proceed I will probably want to dub down the various clips onto one master tape, which I can then index and cue for easy use in the classroom.
Thanks for listening!
Mike Lee
Mike Lee, MA, PhD Cand.
P435A Duff Roblin Building
(204) 474-6627 (office)
(204) 474-7575 (fax)
Dept of Psychology
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB Canada
[EMAIL PROTECTED], http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~mdlee, http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~mdlee/Teaching.html
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"Our situation on this Earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntarily,
and uninvited, for a short stay without knowing why. To me it is enough to wonder at the secrets."
-- Albert Einstein
"Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science."
--Henry David Thoreau
