Psyc 492 1
credit Fall 2007
CRN 11301
Advanced
Topics Seminar: Teaching of Psychology
Catalog Description: Seminar course featuring selected advanced
topics in psychology. Restricted to junior and senior majors by permission of
the instructor. The specific topic, scheduling format, and course prerequisites
will vary by instructor. The topics, with specific prerequisites, will be
listed each semester and can be obtained for the academic year from the
department chairperson.
Course Description: Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing;
psychology major; and permission of instructor. This seminar is designed for
psychology majors who are or will be serving as teaching assistants and
registering for the Student/Faculty Teaching Mentorship Program. The seminar will canvass the essentials of
teaching on the college level and will prepare students for completing a
teaching assistantship in psychology.
Class Schedule: Seven class
meetings on Tuesday evenings from 5:45
to 7:30 pm in AMH 214; dinner
and chat from 5:15 to 5:45.
Course Objectives:
(1) Learn essential teaching
methods during an interactive seminar
(2) Prepare you for completing a
teaching assistantship in psychology
(3) Engage in experiential
activities to develop teaching and evaluation skills
(4) Develop the habit of
self-reflection about teaching
Faculty Information:
Faculty: Drs.
Timothy Cannon, Thomas Hogan, Christie Karpiak, & John Norcross
Coordinator: Thomas
P. Hogan, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology
Contact numbers: 941-4268
(office); 388-3011 (home); Thomas.Hogan@scranton.edu (e-mail);
Office hours: Tues,
Thur 2:30-3:30, Wed 10-11, and by appointment
Office location: 223
Alumni Memorial Hall
Teaching
assistant: Ms. Judith Teter (teterj2@scranton.edu)
Required Text:
Strategies, research, and theory for college
and university teachers (12th edition). Boston:
Houghton Mifflin.
Handouts
Adapted From:
Duch, B. J., Groh, S. E., & Allen, D. E. (Eds.). (2001). The power of problem-based learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus.
Hogan, T. P. (2007). Psychological testing: A practical
introduction (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.
Hogan, T. P. (2007). Educational assessment: A practical
introduction. New York:
Wiley.
Keith-Spiegel, P., et al. (2002).
The ethics of teaching: A casebook
(2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Teaching
of Psychology (the official journal of APA’s Society for the Teaching of
Psychology) Teaching Tips (a regular column in APS’s Observor)
Evaluation
Process: Your course grade will
be determined by your performance on 5 quizzes, class participation, and 9 brief
assignments. The multiple-choice quizzes will be given at the beginning of the
designated class periods. The criteria by which you will be evaluated on class
participation are: faithful attendance; familiarity with assigned material;
content mastery; contribution to the class discussions; ability to disagree
constructively; and synthesis/integration of the material. Assignments are due
at the beginning of the class for which they are listed on the course calendar.
General guidelines for completing these assignments are provided below; detailed
instructions will be presented in class and/or on Blackboard.
The
grading rubric for each brief assignment is:
5 points Excellent,
outstanding work 2
points Passing but well below satisfactory
4 points Good work 1
point Below minimum acceptable standards
3 points Satisfactory work 0 points Not
completed and/or submitted
Eighty
points are available for the entire course (30 for quizzes, 45 for the brief
assignments, and 10 for class participation). Thus, the approximate percentages
entering into your course grade are 35% quizzes, 53% assignments, and 12% class
participation.
Attendance: Regular class attendance is essential
for mastery of the subject matter, particularly since we will be meeting only seven
times. If absent from a class meeting, you are responsible for the material
covered. You are also responsible for all announcements made in class.
Other Policies: You are encouraged to
participate fully and civilly in class. In order to develop new teaching
behaviors and to share our problematic experiences, we will all need to create
a supportive atmosphere. Each of us is responsible for fostering an environment
conducive to learning.
Please
refer to the University’s Academic Code of Honesty (revised May 1998).
Plagiarism, dishonest examination behavior, or other forms of academic
dishonesty on your part will result in the assignment of a grade of F for the
course. As stated in the Student
Handbook: Failures in the area of
academic honesty strike at the heart of what is essential to the University
community – the pursuit of truth.
Come
“hungry” for each class period. Both intellectual food and physical food will
be supplied on each of the seven evenings.
Guidelines
for the Brief Assignments: Please
word process (double-space) the brief assignments using conventional, 1”
margins. The expected length of each assignment is between 300 and 650 words. Bring hard copy to class; do not e-mail
(except for mc items). Early drafts of
these assignments will not be
reviewed by the respective professors. The Discussion Board and the
Microteaching assignments do not entail
papers.
Ethics vignette. You will be assigned two ethics vignettes in
class. Select one of the vignettes and
be prepared to lead a 5-minute discussion on it during class. Your brief paper
should address the ethical considerations involved in the vignette. What are
the ethical principles involved? What would you do as a professor/TA in this
instance? What are pedagogical
alternatives?
ToP. Teaching of
Psychology (ToP),
the official journal of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, is a
wonderful source of ideas for class activities and assignments. Each of you
will receive two issues of the journal. Skim the issues and identify one idea you would like to implement in
a psychology course. Write a brief
description of the idea and how you would implement it. Be ready to present a very
brief (3-minute) discussion of it in class.
The brief presentations will be spread over several class periods.
Multiple-choice
items. Read the textbook chapter and
the handout on constructing multiple-choice items. Then, kindly prepare 4
beautiful multiple-choice items on the McKeachie chapters (two questions on
each chapter) assigned to you in class.
Assessment plan. You are going to teach the Introduction to Psychology
course. You have authority to design the course as you see fit. Design the
ideal assessment plan for this course. Consider the following matters: How
frequently will you test? How long will
each test be? What will be the structure of each test, for example, mix of
multiple-choice and essays items? What other graded experiences will there be,
for example, term paper, group projects, or class participation? What weights
will you assign to each component?
Item analysis. You will receive an item analysis report from an
actual exam. Based on what you learned in class about item analysis data,
comment on the items in this test. Are some items too difficult? Are some too
easy? What items might be eliminated based on item discrimination indexes? Are
any distractors inappropriate? Be sure to examine the
actual content of items when commenting on these matters.
Discussion
board. We will create a Discussion
Board for a lively discussion on how to promote discussions both within and
outside of the classroom. We are particularly interested in methods of
seamlessly integrating discussions on the Board with live discussions in the
classroom. Between the two class meetings, discuss online the ways, and topics,
that could be discussed on the Board, in the classroom, or either way. Are
there topics that are best left to Discussion Board? Topics that are best done
live? Topics that would benefit from both?
Problem-based learning. Take the “difficult student” scenario we will
develop during class and turn it into a viable case study for use in problem-based
learning (PBL). To do this, you will at minimum need to add three good,
thought-provoking, PBL-type questions to the scenario. Then, to help solidify
your learning about dealing with difficult students, provide thoughtful answers
to your thought-provoking questions.
Microteaching. Speak to your
faculty mentor and arrange to teach a portion of a psychology class or a
departmental brownbag this semester. We expect that the content of your
microteaching will be a collaborative endeavor with a faculty member. Then,
videotape yourself teaching for 15 minutes. Submit the videotape to Ms. Donna
Rupp, cueing the videotape to the point where you would like us to begin
watching.
Self-reflection.
You have learned a lot about teaching
and serving as a TA throughout this seminar. Now is the time to self-reflect as
a budding teacher of psychology. Please prepare a self-reflection paper that
summarizes two or three lasting lessons for you as a future teacher that you
take from this seminar. Identify each lasting lesson and amplify the reasons
for it based on the readings, discussion, or assignments you completed this
semester. Include two paragraphs on how
you would go about evaluating the seminar – not your personal evaluation of it,
but the methodology for evaluating the seminar.
Course Calendar and
Assignments:
Class Topic
Faculty Reading Quiz/Assignment
1 Aug 28Getting Started in this Course and as a TA All Preface, Ch1
Setting
up Angel Cannon/Hogan
2 Sep 4 Becoming an Ethical Teacher and TA Norcross Ch 25, handouts Quiz 1 (1,2,3,25)
Preparing
and Structuring the Course Norcross Chs 2
& 3 Ethics vignettes
3 Sep 11 Assessing Learning and Constructing Exams Hogan Chs 7, 8, & 9 Quiz
2 (7,8,9)
Conducting
Item Analyses Hogan Handouts Multiple-choice items
Assessment plan
4 Sep 18 Facilitating Discussion and Lecturing Effectively Cannon Chs 5 & 6 Quiz
3 (5, 6, 16)
Engendering
Interest & Facilitating Active Learning Cannon Ch 16 Item analysis
ToP assignment
5 Sep 25 Dealing with Difficult Students
Karpiak Chs 14 Quiz 4 (14,17,18)
Using
Problem-Based Learning Karpiak Chs 17 & 18, handouts Discussion
board
6 Oct 2 Guiding &
TAing Laboratory Experiences Cannon Ch
20 Problem-based learning
Evaluating
Teaching and TAing Hogan Ch 26, handouts Microteaching
7 Oct 9 Assigning Grades, Detecting Cheating Norcross Chs 10 & 11 Quiz
5 (10,11,20,26,Code)
Lifelong Learning for the Teacher Norcross/Hogan handouts Self-reflection