Class Assignments
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These assignments ask students to apply course concepts through the analysis of movies, television shows, novels and other works of fiction or non-fiction.
Content analysis resources - The best aspect of this site is the set of links to many other good content analysis sites. [added 4/5/04]
Grading rubrics for film analysis and proverb analysis papers - To find these rubrics on this page, click the drop down menu in the upper righthand corner and select the Social Psychology course from Terry Humphreys. [added 3/23/04]
Film Analysis
Analyze a film - Jean Mandernach provides a film analysis assignment, with an extensive list of films and listing of possible social psych concepts within each of those films. [added 1/15/06]
Film scene analysis - Sherri Lantinga provides a very detailed assignment in which students "select an interesting short scene (no more than 1 minute) that shows a social interaction between two or more people." With a partner, students then write a paper analyzing the scene. Finally, the partners give a five-minute PowerPoint presentation of their analysis to the class. The assignment addresses sociological and psychological perspectives on content analysis. [added 3/1/05]
Applying social cognition - students choose from three films and apply social cognitive concepts to at least three instances in the film - from Kristi Lemm - other movies Kristi has used for this assignment: The Usual Suspects, Lone Star, House of Games, Fight Club, A League of their Own, The Shawshank Redemption, The Sum of All Fears, Ma Vie en Rose, 12 Angry Men, The Hurricane, Contact, About a Boy, Strawberry and Chocolate, Annie Hall, 12 Monkeys, Mystic River, The Fisher King, Minority Report, Howard’s End, Amelie, Talk to Her, Changing Lanes [added 12/13/02]
12 Angry Men - film analysis - from Lisa Aspinwall
Film analysis - over 25 films for students to choose from - from Monica Biernat's social psych course [added 3/29/02]
Film analysis - students choose from four films -- an excerpt from a student paper for this assignmentAnalyzing junk mail - Emily Fisher presents this interesting persuasion assignment in her Social Psychology course. Scroll down syllabus to find it. [added 7/4/09]
Analyzing a play - Chuck Huff asks his students to view three plays during his Social Psychology course: Macbeth (two versions) and A Streetcar Named Desire. Then he asks them to analyze the plays in terms of how close relationships are portrayed (Paper 1) or in terms of how aggression is portrayed (Paper 2). Interesting assignments. Also see the links on the paper pages for some excellent grading rubrics. [added 7/8/07]
Find social psych in a children's book - Students can earn bonus points by writing brief descriptions of how social psych appears in children's books they select. [added 1/15/06]
Guide for conducting a content analysis [added 3/1/05]
Portrayal of jury decision-making in popular culture - In her Social Psychology in the Courtroom course, Kristi Costabile assigns her students to "choose a film or TV show focused on the courtroom and analyze whether the theories and strategies discussed in class are represented accurately in the film." Click on the "details" link at the bottom of the page to see the full assignment. [added 11/18/04]
Analyzing a Play - very interesting and involved assignment in Sherri Lantinga's social psychology class. Students attend a rehearsal and actual performance of the play The House of Bernarda Alda. They also discuss play with director and cast and write a final paper analyzing play in terms of social psychology.
Apply a theory - this "assignment involves selecting a theory from the text or a topic discussed in lecture that you find particularly interesting, evaluating it, and relating it to an event you believe is important or to your own social experience" - many of the sample topics provided ask students to apply a theory to a film, ads or common behaviors
Opinion-based article - students analyze an article of their choosing in terms of course concepts
Group conflict article - students analyze article in terms of course concepts
These assignments typically ask students to summarize a research article to develop and demonstrate an ability to read and interpret the literature.
Article Summaries
Distinguishing scholarly journals from popular magazines - a brief guide from The University of Texas at San Antonio Library [added 1/10/06]
"How to read a journal article in social psychology" - 1999 article by Jordan and Zanna -- Keep a link to this article on your course website, and send students to it who are not quite sure how to read and/or summarize an article. [added 1/7/06]
Instructor: Heather Claypool - in her Social Cognition course, Heather asks her students to summarize a research article. As an added piece, she also asks them to propose a follow-up study. [added 1/2/06]
Instructor: Gary Lewandowski - Gary also provides a sample article summary for his students. [added 3/1/05]
Article abstracts - Frank McAndrew requires his students to write a critique of an article of their choice, and then assigns them to write abstracts of specific articles. Scroll down page to find assignments. [added 7/23/03]
Instructor: Erin Ross - in Word - She also includes a good handout, in Word, on APA format [added 8/30/02]
Instructor: Jon Mueller - students answer six questions about an article
Instructor: Scott Madey - students answer specific questions about a particular article and rate the quality of article sections on a scale
Instructor: Ken Bordens - sample analyses included
Other Research Analyses
Methodological critique - Mark Schaller asks his Thinking Clearly About Psychology students to critique the article "Don't the girls get prettier at closing time: A country and western application to psychology." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 5, 122-125. [added 3/23/04]
Apply findings of article to current topic - from Angela Bryan [added 12/11/02]
Research Review - students in Jonathon Brown's Psychology of the Self-concept course review and discuss two or more articles from a research area - possible topics are offered [added 11/7/02]
Reading Comments - Gary Levine asks students to comment upon and rate assigned readings. He provides forms for the assignment. It serves several purposes for him. "First, it will encourage you to read the material more than once (early on as we are covering it, and then again before the exam). Second, it will give me an opportunity to see what is confusing you and how you are interpreting things so that I can clarify things before the exam. Third, it allows me to see what stories and studies from the readings "stick-out" and would therefore make good exam questions." [added 8/28/02]
Analyze classic articles - students answer three critical thinking questions about each of four classic articles
Social proverbs - students select a social proverb from list and review a few relevant articles
Psychology and law - article analysis
"Your students = Wikipedia editors" - A good blog for teaching high school psychology described this interesting idea: "Ask students to poke around in psychology topics on Wikipedia until they find a page for a psych topic (term, concept, experiment, psychologist, etc.) that seems "thin" - one that needs more information, better information, better references, etc....Then your students research to fill in the gaps, write up potential revisions to the page, and submit the changes to Wikipedia. Hopefully there are other "editors" out there in Wiki-space who are monitoring that page and the students will get the experience of discussing the potential changes and going through a revision process. In the end, your students may see their work represented permanently on Wikipedia and they will be much more experienced not only in their chosen topic, but in the process of "Web 2.0" knowledge "creation" and writing." [added 7/4/09]
Fact or fiction? - A list of 20 "hints" for resisting unwanted influences from Philip Zimbardo -- you could ask students to pick one hint from the list and evaluate its validity in terms of current research, or have them design a test of it. (Also, find more excerpts here from Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect.) [added 12/12/07]
Observation Task - In Nyla Branscombe's Stereotyping and Prejudice Across Cultures course, students complete a very interesting data gathering task. It is carefully designed so that it is not very difficult for students to conduct, yet provides a good opportunity for students to consider research issues as well as "how social categorization affect nonverbal behavior." [added 11/24/07]
The International Tsunami Museum - The 2007 Social Psychology Network Action Teaching Awards were announced, and the winner was this very inspiring museum project from David Sattler. Students in David's independent study course helped build and designed exhibits for a museum in Thailand that "could educate the public about tsunamis and help people move forward with their lives by emphasizing hope, resilience, and the strength of human spirit." A less intensive variation on this idea would be for your students to create online exhibits applying course concepts around some theme. [added 7/7/07]
Shadow/Role-play Exercise - An honorable mention for the 2007 Action Teaching Awards mentioned above was this exercise from Bonnie Moradi's Psychology of Women course. "In this exercise, students spend a day shadowing or role-playing a woman who is different from them in age, ability status, religion, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or motherhood. Students who conduct a shadow spend a full day with the woman they select, and students who conduct a role-play transform themselves into the woman they select (e.g., wear padded clothing to role-play a pregnant woman)." [added 7/7/07]
Using Lessons from the Holocaust to Reduce Bullying - The final honorable mention from the 2007 Action Teaching Award was given to Ruth T. Hannon for her creative assignment in her Perspectives of the Holocaust course. From the proposal: "Over the next several class sessions, our college students meet in small groups to design projects to be taken to the middle school. Their task is to use lessons from the Holocaust to teach about the dynamics of prejudice, hate speech, and bullying close to home. For example, our students have spoken about the psychology of conformity and depicted how conformity operates in bullying situations. Middle school students come to see the power of conformity in such situations, and they learn ways to resist being drawn into bullying behaviors. Lively discussions follow and, oftentimes, middle schoolers share stories about bullying they've witnessed." [added 7/7/07]Read a trade book and translate it into a useful application - Traci Giuliano shares a creative assignment in which she asks "students to read a trade book written by a social psychologist (in a few cases, they are not written by social psychologists but have many relevant applications, as in the case of Malcolm Gladwell or John Gottman) and then develop a useful application (e.g., a workshop, video, website, pamphlet, etc.) from it." Here is the grading sheet for it. Here is a list of trade books Traci has compiled. But she is looking for more. If you have any examples of good books written for a lay audience by social psychologists, please send them to Traci at giuliant@southwestern.edu. [added 7/6/07]
Demonstrate a phenomenon: An assignment update! - The link takes you to an assignment I posted a couple years ago from my colleague Heather Coon. She has since updated it in a manner she says works much better. So, I thought I would tell you about it. Briefly, the assignment asks students to design a little study of their own to test out a question related to course material. It gets them involved in social psych more personally, and it gets them to think like a social psychologist a bit. Because this is a lower-level psych course, and many of the students have not yet had research design, Heather doesn't ask for a lit review and a complicated design. She simply asks them to design a task related to a social psych topic, have some group or groups complete it, and collect the data. Then they take 3-5 minutes to present their findings to the class.
Initially, Heather used each presentation as an introduction to that topic in class. This time around she had students pick a topic and try it out after that topic had been discussed. She has found that the "experimenter" and the other students in class have a much better grasp of what is going on if they design the task for something that has already been discussed. The students recognize that their "test" is rather limited in a number of ways, and Heather has found that students are good at identifying the limitations and possible alternative explanations, particularly since they now understand the material better. Most of the students conduct experimental tests, but they can be descriptive or correlational questions as well. Many students create materials ahead of time, even occasionally pre-testing them. Typically they will meet with Heather to make sure what they are trying makes sense.
Heather also requires that their presentation use PowerPoint (typically only 3-5 slides are needed) to add some professionalism to it and to make sure they can use it. She tries to have a few better students go first to serve as good models. Next time, she might try it in pairs to reduce the number of presentations and to promote some collaboration. If you want to talk to Heather about this more, you can contact her at hmcoon@noctrl.edu.
Do you have any assignments you have revised or adapted that have significantly improved the outcome you are getting from students? I would love to hear about them and possibly share them in the Newsletter. Your assignment doesn't have to be online. You can either just describe it to me or send me a copy at jfmueller@noctrl.edu. [added 1/1/07]
A choice among four - In Bonnie Rosenblatt's Social Psychology course, students can choose from four term projects that include applying three theories or principles to current events, a select (given) set of films, or an advertising or marketing campaign, or designing a research proposal. [added 1/1/07]
Research for community action - Lori Rosenthal teaches her students "about research methodology through research projects that make an important difference to the local community." This project assignment was selected as the winner of the Social Psychology Network's inaugural Action Teaching Award. [added 4/6/06]
Oral history authority assignment - Students conduct an oral history interview "examining a decision under duress" -- from Steven Gilbert and Paul Conway's Obedience to Authority course [added 2/22/06]Teach a concept to others - Jean Mandernach asks her students to design a 5-10 minute interactive activity or demonstration for teaching high school students about a concept or theory from social psychology. [added 1/15/06]
Merging art and social psychology - Nick Schweitzer asks his students to demonstrate/comment on any of the social psychological phenomena discussed by using any artistic medium they wish to create a project. He includes some samples of acceptable and unacceptable(!) projects. [added 8/30/05]
Situational Observations - From Sherri Lantinga's Social Psychology course, students choose to engage in "objective observations" or participant observations in a situation of their choice. For example, Sherri suggests a dentist office as a possible location, with specific suggestions for behaviors to observe. Very well thought out. [added 3/1/05]
Anger Observations - another interesting assignment from Sherri Lantinga [added 3/1/05]
Research Project(?): Over 13,000 rock song quotes! - I'm not sure what you can do with this resource, but I know you are aware that social psychology has investigated the wisdom in many a song lyric (e.g., "girls are prettier at closing time"). Perhaps you could have your students do a lit review to substantiate or refute one of these lyrics, or to test its validity. Or, perhaps you just want to have a few pearls of wisdom to throw out. If you ever use these I would love to hear what you did with them! [added 7/1/04]
Create an original game - Erin Strahan has taken an idea applied in math and other subjects and adapted it to social psychology, i.e., having groups of 4-5 create an original game incorporating social psychology concepts. [added 6/15/04]
Service learning experience - Students in Mark Covey's Social Psychology course participate in a significant service learning requirement which includes a service learning journal. [added 6/15/04]
Group project: Investigate an organization - In his Social Psychology of Organization course, Richard Hackman requires his students to participate in a semester-long project which involves "the collection of data about one or more actual groups that operate in organizational settings." [added 11/11/03]
Interview a Volunteer - Students in Janet Swim's Applied Social Psychology course apply concepts from their reading on altruism by interviewing a volunteer regarding his/her reasons for volunteering. [added 2/4/03]
En Español - The "interview a volunteer" assignment has been translated into Spanish by Beatriz Cortés [added 3/8/06]Group Project: Coding Personal Ads - In Ben Le's Laboratory in Social Psychology course, students in groups code personal ads examining gender differences. [added 2/1/03]
Project: Intimate Relationships - Students in Jennifer Butler's course interview attached and unattached males and females and then write a paper about it. [added 2/1/03]
The Negotiation Project - Chuck Huff assigns an involved and intriguing project in his Group Processes and Social Conflict course. From the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, students choose a client (e.g., Likud, Hamas, the U.S.). Then, in groups, they learn about their client and present that info to the class, set up meetings and negotiations outside of class with other client groups, and, finally, participate in an in-class negotiation among the client groups that agree to participate. Chuck also provides the class with relevant links and documents. [added 8/29/02]
CensusScope - easy and well organized way to search through the 2000 U.S. Census data, with charts, maps and rankings - do any of you have your students look at and use demographic data of any type? I would like to hear what kinds of activities or assignments you use so I can share them with the group. Send any ideas to me at jfmueller@noctrl.edu. [added 6/7/02]
Group Website Project Rubric - Timothy Pychyl assigns his students in groups to create a website that summarizes research related to a social problem. He has provided a detailed rubric to evaluate the group's work. Follow the navigation links at the top of the above page to see the rest of the rubric. A description of the group project can be found here
Self-projects - in his Self and Social Psychology course, Allen McConnell assigns his students to "identify a topic for self-understanding and self-improvement (e.g., weight loss, community service, exercise regimen, reduction in swearing) that can be monitored on a weekly basis. The purpose of the self-project is to provide a work-in-progress where students apply theory and findings in the course to a concrete, self-relevant situation."!
Variety of projects - eight creative assignments described here asking students to apply social psychology including a) creating and presenting a video report, b) assembling a portfolio of media clippings, c) designing a persuasive public service campaign and more
Web tutorials - Richard Sherman asks his advanced social psychology students "to inform and educate a visitor to the website about a specific topic in Social Psychology." See examples.
Group web research project - in groups, students are asked to create a web-based research resource about a social problem of interest. Good grading rubrics for the project can be found here.
Experiential projects - from Phil Zimbardo's Psychology of Mind Control course - students experience social psych first-hand by being a "Deviant for a Day," or "an Agent or Target of Social Influence," or by engaging in "self-directed change"
Scrapbook assignment - Anita Kim assigns students in her Social Psychology course to collect examples in the media and connect them to social psychological principles. I like that she adds, "Please, no ribbons, no bows, no markers, no glitter." [added 7/4/09]
Quote Journal - This is not from a social psych course, but I thought it was an interesting idea that could be adapted to any course. Students find a number of quotes and then provide commentary, evaluation, or opinion about them, which could consist of making course connections. [added 11/17/07]
Portfolio collection - Marcel Yoder provides an excellent and detailed assignment requiring students to collect a variety of entries around a particular topic. Students are provided with detailed diagrams/frameworks to help them organize their thoughts and their portfolios. [added 12/1/04]
Weekly social experience assignments - Subscriber Jamonn Campbell describes a nice variation on asking students to find examples of course concepts applying to their lives. A sample answer is provided. Also take a look at his literature review assignment and samples. [added 4/5/04]
Concept maps - In the past, I (Jon Mueller) asked my students to graphically describe the relationship between eight or more concepts in relation to some theme. For example, in the first concept map assignment students drew a map describing the relationship between three social motives (social comparison, consistency and control) and related concepts (e.g., relative deprivation, insufficient justification, reactance, unrealistic optimism) we discussed as they connect to an event of their choosing. On my essay tests I ask short questions that require students to connect two or three concepts together. But the map allows me to see them connect significantly more concepts in a more complex manner. In Fall 2002 when I first assigned concept maps the students struggled with the first map because they (and I) did not quite know what they should be doing. In Spring 2003 I shared a couple maps from the Fall, and I received a much better collection of maps. The first map was completed in pairs; some of the remaining maps will be completed individually and others in pairs.
Concept Map Assignment 1
Concept Map Assignment 2
Concept Map Assignment 3
Concept Map Assignment 4
Concept Map Assignment 5I welcome any feedback on this assignment. [added 7/21/03]
Decision journal - students record decision-related entries for Judgment and Decision-making course - scroll down page to view
Social psychology portfolio - students collect popular press material (e.g., newspaper articles, magazine articles, advertisements, comic strips, photographs, advice columns) and write brief reflections applying social psychology
Journal assignment - students are asked to apply specific social psychological concepts to their experiences - scroll down page to find journal assignment
Journal assignment - same as above - a very large sample of "best of" entries collected over the years - at the beginning of class I list the entry #'s on the board of the concepts we will be discussing so students can read entries generated by previous students
Journal assignment - same as above - a few sample entries are given
Classroom assessment techniques - some brief assessments to be used in the classroom to assess student comprehension
Multiple Choice:
Multiple-choice and matching items - Sample items from Doug Krull's Social Psychology course [added 6/15/04]
Multiple-choice and true/false questions - interactive practice tests for each chapter from Brehm, Kassin & Fein, Social Psychology 5/e, Houghton Mifflin [added 6/9/04]
Interactive quizzes covering most topics - good for student review
Interactive quizzes covering most topics
More interactive quizzes covering most topics
Many questions [added 2/1/03]
50-item test
26-item test
Essay:Essay questions - set 1 - set 2 - set 3 - from Jean Mandernach's social psych course - practice essay questions [added 1/15/06]
Possible essay questions - These study guide questions from Eugene Borgida's Attitudes and Social Behavior course provide a lot of good possible essay questions, even if you don't use the Eagly and Chaiken text. [added 1/7/06]
Possible essay questions - Possible essay questions in these study guides from Austin Bowman's Intro to Social Psychology course [added 1/7/06]Essay questions for social psychology - Scroll down to the social psychology course and look for the study items -- they make for very good essay questions as well. [added 3/1/05]
Short answer essay questions - Scroll down this page to a list of topics. Clicking on those links will take you to a large number of possible quiz/exam questions from Chuck Huff. [added 7/1/04]
Possible essay questions - scroll down to review questions
Possible essay questions - I give students 12-18 of these questions one week prior to an exam and then select 8-10 of them for in-class exam
Essay exam - students analyze a single experiment article given to themMixed and Other:
Variety of essay and multiple choice questions - Paula Pietromonaco provides her Social Psychology students with a sample of possible essay and multiple choice questions [added 7/6/06]
Hot Potatoes - excellent, free program for creating a variety of your own online tests (e.g., multiple-choice, matching, crossword)
Oral Presentations
Scoring rubric for poster and PowerPoint presentations - from Bill Altman [added 1/26/10]
Article presentation - Others have students present article summaries in their classes, but this assignment from Jennifer Spoor is spelled out nicely for her students in the Advanced Seminar in Social Psychology: Small Groups. Scroll down page to find this assignment. [added 7/23/08]
Group PowerPoint presentations on controversial issues - Ronald McLaughlin requires his students to put together a PowerPoint presentation applying social concepts to a controversial issue. Click on "Syllabus" to read the assignment. Click on a list of student presentations at the bottom to see some good student examples. [added 6/9/04]
Journal article report - scroll down page to view
Criteria and evaluation scale for poster presentations - from C.L. Hansvick [added 7/16/03]
Oral presentation evaluation sheet
Group presentations: Jonahue! - While knocking around in Don Forsyth's site, I couldn't help remembering the times I taught Group Dynamics many years ago (using Don's excellent text). So, bear with me as I reminisce and share a rather odd class assignment. I was looking for some way for my students to learn about group dynamics while working in groups, and at the same time I wanted to develop their oral speaking skills. But I didn't want them to give the usual oral presentations in which they delivered a prepared speech. They got enough of that (or at least some of that) in their other courses. I wanted them to learn to speak extemporaneously and knowledgeably about a topic. So, I asked myself, where do we find experts speaking publicly extemporaneously? One venue I thought of was the talk show. Sometimes experts are invited to come on a talk show, not to give a speech, but to answer questions. At the time, one of the talk shows doing this was hosted by Phil Donahue. My first name is Jon, and, voila... "Jonahue" was born! Each week I turned my Group Dynamics classroom into a talk show. I, Jonahue, was the host. A group of three students was "invited" to be the guests on the show because they were experts (if they prepared well) on a particular group dynamics topic. More specifically, the group was there to use its expertise on the topic to apply it to a specific topic-related problem. The other members of the class were the audience and were required to ask questions. As host, I also asked questions. And, I recorded my wife asking questions I prepared for her that I played during class as if she were a live caller to the show. Each group of three students went through this ordeal three times during the term. It was fun! And, more importantly, I think it worked. [added 3/6/02]
Discussion and Question-asking
Grading rubrics/scales
Online discussion postings rubric - scroll down to bottom of page [added 7/1/06]
Group participation rubric - a very good and detailed rubric for "assessing group members' ability to participate effectively as part of a team" - from Bill Altman [added 2/22/06]
Online discussion grading rubric - a very good, detailed rubric from Lynn Sprott [added 9/2/05]
Participation grading scale - Helen Harton offers a good grading scale for class participation in her Social Psychology course. Scroll down page to find Class Discussion section. [added 11/18/04]
Criteria and evaluation scales for class participation and small group discussion - from C.L. Hansvick [added 7/16/03]
Grading Schemes for Participation/Reading - In Erin Ross' class above, the reading questions are worth 10% of a student's grade. Instructors often look to some kind of incentive to get students to participate in class or online or to do the reading. (See the last issue, Vol. 1, No. 10, for subscribers' suggestions.) But some instructors are reluctant to give a significant number of points for tasks that may not be indicative of understanding of course material for fear of inflating the grades. I use a couple schemes to provide incentive without giving away too many points. One simple approach I and others use is to remove points for failure to meet obligations. No points can be earned for contributing entries to the online discussion board or performing small tasks in class I may ask of them, but they will lose a few points if they don't complete the assignment. The potential loss of a few points is all it usually takes to get my students to complete the tasks.
A more complicated scheme I have successfully used to encourage completion of reading assignments was adapted from Barbara Walvoord, Director of the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence at Notre Dame University. (Ed note: I highly recommend Barbara Walvoord faculty development workshops.) I assign one or two brief questions for a reading, chapter or portion of a chapter. Students can typically answer the questions in one or two sentences. However, they cannot just look up the answers in the reading. The nature of the questions require them to make some sense of the reading, even though a very brief response is required. I can grade a stack of 30 of these answers (which students must turn in at the beginning of the class at which we will discuss the reading) in less than five minutes because I simply look for effort. I give an answer a "check" if sufficient effort is apparent and a "minus" if it is not. Then I apply the following grading scheme. If a student received 90% or more checks on the questions assigned throughout the term then I will raise that student's final course grade to the next highest grade level (e.g., B to A) if the student's final grade is within 10 points of the next highest grade level. For example, if 450 points are required for an A in the course, and a student has accumulated 443 points by the end of the course and has received at least 90% checks then that student will receive an A in the course. However, if another student received at least 90% checks but only accumulated 438 points (i.e., more than 10 points away from 450), that student would receive a B in the course. Additionally, if a student received fewer than 70% checks on the questions then I will lower (yes, lower) the student's final grade to the next lowest grade level if the student's final grade is within 10 points of the next lowest grade level. So, a student with 455 points could have her final course grade lowered from an A to a B if she did not put enough effort into answering the reading questions. Finally, students who receive between 70% and 90% checks will not have their final grades altered. Did you follow all that?
Students like this grading scheme and assignment, it takes very little work on my part, and I have found it effectively encourages students to do the reading and makes class discussions better without inflating grades. [added 8/30/02]
Do you use other schemes you would like to share? Send them to me at jfmueller@noctrl.edu.
Encouraging voluntary participation - "Asking questions: Promoting student-faculty interchange in the classroom," by Judith Larkin and Harvey Pines, is a interesting article describing strategies to encourage even the reluctant contributors to voluntarily participate in the classroom. [added 1/13/06]
Debates in the Classroom
Useful or not? Talk among yourselves. I occasionally use debates in class to promote student engagement and discussion of a topic. Sometimes I randomly assign them to a position (good way to illustrate the saying-is-believing effect) and sometimes I let them choose which side they will be on. Topics I have used include:
- Eric Hansen shared the following topics: "In a research methods course I have used the article:
Middlemist, R. D., Knowles, E. S:, & Matter, C. F (1976). Personal space invasions in the lavatory: Suggestive evidence for arousal. JPSP, 33, 541-546.
I have had students write a critique of the study including identifying the theory being tested, the dependent and independent variables, the methodology, etc. In class I've had debates regarding the ethics of the study (is it okay to hide in a stall and use a periscope to watch men urinate and see how long it takes them to start and finish without their knowledge or consent) based on the current APA ethics guidelines. When I first started I let the students pick the side they wanted and it was more of a whole-class discussion, but I quickly found that no one wanted to argue that the study was ethical so I was forced to defend it. Since then I have instead told them in advance that they should prepare both sides of the debate and wherever possible know how they would respond to counterargue their own position and arguments, and that which side they would be on would be decided by a coin toss. I then let them have the
debate in groups of 4 with 2 for and 2 against randomly assigned to position. That seemed to work better.
I more recently have tried a similar type of debate with Baumeister and Vohs article taking an economic view of sexuality:
Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2004). Sexual economics: Sex as female resource for social exchange in heterosexual interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 339-363.
I tried to let a coin toss decide whether they should defend or attack the theory, but the discussion was very strained and awkward, so the students asked if they could decide which side they wanted to be on to which I agreed. In my experience the article leads to lively discussions."- Michael Richards' outburst: Racist or "ragist"? - Here's an interesting debate you can have in your class regarding the actor Michael Richards' recent tirade against hecklers in a comedy club that was filled with a lot of racist comments. Columnist Eric Zorn asks: Did Richards' outburst arise from racism, or was it the result of an uncontrollable anger problem? As Zorn suggests, "Maybe the impulse to use those words came not from a desire to express his deepest, hidden views on the inherent comparative value of the races but from a momentary desire to inflict as much pain verbally as he could upon people at whom he was unjustifiably but extremely furious." Is it possible to rattle off a list of racial slurs without a racist intent or without it revealing a deep-seeded prejudice? Here is video of Richards' outburst. [added 1/1/07]
In a few recent listserv posts, faculty were sharing some ideas for conducting class debates. Here are a couple examples which the authors graciously allowed me to share:
From Shelby Morrison: "Marlo Smith asked about classroom debates. I use a version for which I have prepared before class by posting signs on three walls reading "YES," "NO" and "?." I come to class with a list of statements and I ask the students to move to sign with which they agree. (This is a great ice breaker for first meeting of a class. It also gets the students moving!) I'm getting ready to begin an Adolescent Psych class and I will use provocative statements such as "Males are inherently better in math and science"; "It is a OK for parents to make monetary rewards for good grades"; "Early maturation is an advantage for females." Depending on class size, each group is given 3-4 minutes to discuss its stance among themselves and to select someone to report back to the class. Then, students are given the chance to change their position (to go from "Yes" to "?", etc.). Lastly, I report to the whole class the relevant research on the question after this process. I especially like this activity for Intro Psychology using statements that deal with the myths about psychology. Sometimes I do an evaluation and I find that the learning from this activity "sticks." It's a good way to get an important concept across. Plan on about six minutes of class time for each question and don't overdo it. Four to five good statements are usually enough. Shelby Morrison Ph.D. Valencia Community College Orlando, Florida Shelby4087@aol.com"
From Gail Knapp: "Shelby Morrison talked about having students stand in front of signs that say "yes" "no" or "?" for statements to start a class discussion and serve as an ice breaker. I do something similar, but with a few twists. I make the signs into a continuum with choices from Strongly agree, Moderately agree, Neutral or No opinion, Moderately Disagree, and Strongly Disagree across the room. Then I let the students write the questions they want their classmates to answer. I give them guidelines about how to write a good survey question before we do this, and I explain the kinds of things that make good survey questions. Then I collect their papers (one question from each) anonymously so no one will know who asked what. Then I read the questions one at a time and they stand in front of the appropriate sign. Our conversation is less about what their opinion was on the issues, than it is about the questions themselves. Were they easy to understand? Were the terms clear? What information did they gather? One thing they notice is that some questions don't provide useful information. For example, a question where the whole class is grouped at one sign causes a discussion about why that happened. Or questions where they don't know what to answer and find themselves all grouped in the center cause a different kind of discussion. We also talk about the public nature of this kind of survey since almost always there are questions that I tell them to listen to but not answer. This exercise is a good icebreaker, but it is also a great way to get students to understand more about surveys and survey data. -Gail Knapp gknapp@edtech.mcc.edu Mott Community College" [added 7/19/07]
What topics have you had students debate? I would be interested in hearing how you have used debates in your classes and the topics you have used. Send me replies at jfmueller@noctrl.edu. I will share them on this page. [added 7/5/06]
"Using in-class debates to teach gender issues in psychology" - Jeanne O'Kon and Rachel Sutz have given me permission to share with you an excellent article they wrote describing "two formats for using the in-class debate as a strategy to foster critical thinking in courses on gender." The formats certainly could be adapted to student debates of other topics/issues. [added 11/18/04]
Student-lead discussion of articles - Zinta Byrne, for her Advanced Social Psychology course, provides a good and fairly detailed set of instructions for students who will, in groups of 2 or 3, lead class discussion of an article. Scroll down page to "Participation and Discussion Leadership." [added 11/22/04]
Discussion questions accompanying Stanovich's How to Think Straight About Psychology - excellent set of questions from Paul Smith at Alverno College - his class discusses the numbered questions and the students write answers to and hand in the italicized questions [added 9/27/04]
Resources for discussing affirmative action - The Center for Research on Teaching and Learning at the University of Michigan provides a large number of resources to assist faculty in teaching about affirmative action. [added 4/5/04]
Reading Questions/Principal Readers - Erin Ross requires students to submit questions/comments related to the assigned readings. She also selects several students to serve as "principal readers" for a particular class to lead the discussion. Scroll down the syllabus page to "Seminar Write-up and Class Questions" to read about how these questions are used. Ross also includes a brief summary of APA format. [added 8/30/02]
Discussion Questions - Ben Le, in his psychology of close relationships course, asks his students to prepare discussion questions. Students submit 4-6 questions once per semester and they are posted on the course website. You can see examples linked from this page. [added 5/1/02]
Writing Hypotheses - Also from Ben Le, this assignment requires students to submit a hypothesis (and a brief methodology for testing it) ten times a semester. The class discusses how it would test some of the hypotheses. [added 5/1/02]
Designing an experiment in stereotyping and prejudice - Kristin Lane asks her Stereotyping and Prejudice students to design and write up an experiment with a "predicted results" section. Scroll down the above link to the bottom of the syllabus to read the assignment description. [added 7/4/09]
Creating an informed consent form - a tutorial for students on why and how to create an informed consent form -- it includes a quiz to test them on their knowledge. [added 1/1/07]
Experience sampling - Want your students to conduct some experience sampling? Here's some free software to do just that on a PDA (personal digital assistant, e.g., Palm Pilot) developed at Boston College by Lisa Feldman Barrett and Daniel Barrett. [added 7/6/06]
Research design scoring guide; Final paper scoring guide; Thesis/hypothesis paper rubric; Source paper rubric; Authentic Assessment Toolbox - The first link is to a very detailed scoring guide for the design of research projects. The second link is to a very detailed guide for grading the final paper for this project. The third link is to a rubric for scoring a paper identifying a thesis and a hypothesis for a research project. The fourth link is to a rubric for an assignment on locating and citing sources for a research project. All of these are from Bill Altman. Why do I call the first two scoring guides and the last two rubrics? Because the last two scoring scales include the criteria used to evaluate the student work (as does the first two), but the last two also articulate levels of performance for each criterion. The inclusion of criteria and levels of performance are the defining attributes of a rubric. To learn more about rubrics follow the final link above. [added 2/22/06]
Group participation rubric - a very good and detailed rubric for "assessing group members' ability to participate effectively as part of a team" - from Bill Altman [added 2/22/06]
Social influence project - Jean Mandernach asks her students, in groups of 2 or 3, to design and carry out a series of empirical investigations. [added 1/15/06]
Conformity research project - from Bill Altermatt's Social Psychology course [added 1/15/06]Ratings of attractiveness - Ever seen any of those "Am I hot or not" sites? Here is a long list of them that perhaps you or your students can use in some project. [added 1/10/06]
Data collection assignments - Patricia Frazier, in her Psychology of Women course, assigns her students some interesting data collection projects including analyzing children's toys and stories, exploring match-making services, and studying older women. Consent forms and sample papers for these assignments can be found here. [added 1/7/06]
Two class projects - Thomas Morton, in his Social Psychology I course, asks students to carry out a lab and write it up in which he provides the background, hypotheses, and materials for a study on rule-breaking by ingroup members. Secondly, he assigns his students the classic survival task in which they must decide as a group which items to keep. Click on the links under Practical 1 and Practical 2 for these assignments. [added 9/22/05]
Research materials - The Baumeister/Tice lab shares a few research tools including ego depletion and social rejection manipulations that could be used as parts of research projects or other assignments. [added 9/15/05]
Two linked assignments - Interesting set of group assignments: Michelle YIK asks students at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in an Introduction to Personality and Social Psychology course to develop a Chinese Personality Questionnaire. The second assignment asks the groups to design and conduct a helping experiment in which they try to induce subjects to complete the questionnaire developed in the first assignment. [added 3/1/05]
SurveyWiz - This simple-to-use tool by Michael Birnbaum allows you or your students to create surveys for use on the Web or elsewhere. [added 6/9/04]
Group Project: Study of Mutual Constitution - In groups, students in Glenn Adams' Culture and Psychology course conduct research to examine how some area of psychological functioning (e.g., perception, dating) and culture are mutually constituted "with the intention of showing how or why the particular psychological tendency that you have selected differs from one setting to another." Students write up their study and orally present their findings to the class. [added 8/30/02]
Replication Research Project - In Kristi Lemm's Social Cognition course, students are to "replicate an established effect in social cognition." With a partner or alone, they collect the data and prepare a poster to describe the study. [added 8/30/02]
Replicating Experiments - Mary Inman assigns students to groups to replicate (and possibly extend) one of six experiments - she provides detailed and structured directions - more detailed instructions for each experiment can be found here:
Research Paper Grading Rubric - Jeff Miller teaches a Personality and Social Psychology course among others, and has posted this generic research paper rubric
Human Participants Tutorial - a tutorial from NIH to help researchers "understand how to protect the rights and welfare of all human participants involved in research." A good place to start for students who will be designing or conducting research. Takes about 30-45 minutes to complete. Requires users to complete a registration form first. A "completion certificate" is available when the tutorial is finished. Free registration is required.
Designing Research Only:
Develop a proposal - in John Darley's Social Interaction and Influence course
Develop a proposal - from graduate course - very detailed checklist provided
Develop a proposal - another variation
Research project/lit review/web project - see examples of student web projects
Designing and Conducting Studies:
Stepping into another group - Kristin Lane asks her Stereotyping and Prejudice students to experience what it would be like as a member of another group for one day. She tells them "For the current assignment, you will spend one day with some outward sign that denotes that you belong to a social group to which you don't actually belong." Students write up their experience in a paper. Scroll down the above link to near the bottom of the syllabus to read the assignment description. [added 7/4/09]
What I Know (WIK) Papers - In her Social Psychology course, Judy Wilson encourages her students to socially construct their understanding of course material through these brief paper assignments. "For each of these topics, we will spend time establishing what you already know about the issues by discussing them in class. You will be asked to write a one-page paper about what you know after the discussion. You will work in groups to develop some questions about the topic and do some research to find answers. Each person in your group will have an opportunity to present what your group found in the research (each person only presents a summary once). This report will be given to the class in a discussion session and a written summary will be turned in. The final part of this assignment is a two-page paper saying what you know about the topic after discussion, reading the text, doing the research and hearing the other groups' reports." A good use of peers. [added 7/4/09]
Two interesting assignments - Students in Alan Marks' Social Psychology course can choose between completing an engaging task on self-monitoring or an attributional analysis of some success/failure situation in the sports or news sections of a newspaper. [added 7/4/09]Developing critical thinking skills in Social Psychology - My colleague Heather Coon and I embarked on a project to more systematically develop scientific thinking skills in our students. Click on the link to read about how we used brief research articles to develop a variety of thinking skills. You are welcome to use any of the materials. Feedback is always welcome. [added 9/20/08]
Group paper - Interesting assignment in Michael Milburn's Social Attitudes and Public Opinion course -- more detail on how the groups will work is given here. [added 9/20/08]
Social identity or hate on the Web - Another good assignment from Nyla Branscombe's Stereotyping course -- Students choose between 1) writing about 3 or 4 of their most important identities or 2) analyzing 4 different hate sites on the Web. [added 11/24/07]
Lots of assignments to accompany Aronson text - Hal Bertilson assigns over 30 brief assignments to prompt reading and discussion of the Aronson et al. Social Psychology text. [added 7/8/07]
Six assignments - Students in Dennis Sweeney's Social Psychology course are required to complete three of the six possible paper topics described at the page above. Dennis has adapted some of these assignments from ones found on the Resources website. Now, that's the way to use the website! Dennis has also written a study guide for the Franzoi (2006) social psychology text. You can find sections of that guide here. [added 7/6/07]
Correlation or Causation? - updated - I have added quite a few more links to my collection of popular press articles that often include questionable headlines. I use the links on this page to teach about the language of correlations versus causal relationships, the type of research commonly associated with each, and how to evaluate the quality and quantity of evidence to support such claims. I also have added an assignments section that includes brief tasks that could be used as in-class activities or out-of-class assignments. I would love to hear of any activity/assignment ideas you have or create to accompany this resource. I will add them to the site. Thanks. [added 1/1/07]
Theory critique or analysis paper - Connie Wolfe offers two good final paper options for her Social Psychology students. These are very detailed assignments with a lot of guidance and supports for her students. I also like the "automatic deductions" at the end of the assignment. [added 1/1/07]
Conformity and obedience response paper - An assignment from Connie Wolfe, this one is built around some resources related to the Abu Ghraib prison incidents. In lieu of the assigned readings, there are plenty of other related resources that could be used to craft a similar assignment. [added 1/1/07]
Altruism: Carnegie Hero Fund - Nora Murphy created this interesting assignment in which students choose a hero from the Carnegie Hero Fund site and apply social psychology concepts to the case. [added 12/19/06]
Two persuasion assignments - Heather Coon, a colleague of mine, adapted a couple assignments to create these two good examples in her Persuasion seminar. In the first assignment students analyze a set of ads in terms of course concepts. Heather points them to some good sources of ads online. The second assignment asks students to design a persuasion campaign for some social, political, or public service topic. The second assignment also requires an oral presentation of the campaign. [added 7/6/06]
A Holocaust Rescuer - Here's an interesting assignment from Chris Jazwinski's Psychology of Helping and Holocaust Rescue course. Students research the rescuer and his/her context as well as analyze the "altruistic motivational base for the rescuer's actions." [added 7/6/06]
Six homework assignments - Brief but carefully structured assignments over several course concepts that provide specific questions to which students respond -- from Paula Pietromonaco's Social Psychology course [added 7/6/06]
Internet-based persuasion assignment - Students visit joechemo.org and critique the site's effectiveness at persuading visitors to not smoke. Created by Scott Plous. [added 7/6/06]Applied media review - Jean Mandernach's students select a course topic, and then they summarize three articles in the media addressing the topic. Additionally, students are to analyze the three articles and then provide an integrated conclusion. Also see the Topic Report assignment in which students expand on the media review. [added 1/15/06]
Heuristics in social cognition - Students provide original examples of six heuristics in Jean Mandernach's course. [added 1/15/06]
Reviewing the Brandon Teena Story - After watching the documentary about this story of sexual confusion and identity (more famously told in the movie Boys Don't Cry) students respond to some questions. This link takes you to Amazon.com for ordering the documentary if you wish. [added 1/15/06]Ambivalent Sexism Inventory - Scott Plous has created an assignment around this online activity. [added 1/13/06]
Sexual orientation and prejudice - Find a rich set of assignments and resources at Greg Herek's course site. [added 1/13/06]Implicit and explicit measurement of stereotypes - Eugene Borgida, in his Attitudes and Social Behavior course, asks his students to write a ten-page paper evaluating the role of implicit versus explicit measures in particular domains of stereotyping and prejudice. [added 1/7/06]
Response to video Ballot Measure 9 - an extra credit assignment from Eugene Borgida's course [added 1/7/06]Social influence - Two paper assignments from Kelton Rhoads Psychology of Influence course -- in one assignment the students (in pairs) immerse themselves in situations in which they become the target of influence, and then write about that experience as described. In the other assignment, students are to find a way in which they can become the agent of influence. Examples are given. Scroll down page to find assignments. [added 6/20/05]
Variety from an Intimate Relationships course - Gary Lewandowski lets students choose from a variety of assignments including comparing popular press claims versus the research and creating a "how to" guide for relationship success. [added 3/1/05]
Variety of assignments - Read more past and current assignments, all carefully developed, from Sherri Lantinga. [added 3/1/05]
Variety of assignments: Stereotyping and Prejudice course - Sue Frantz requires a variety of interesting assignments in her seminar including a journal, group project, e-mail discussion, and interview of someone 50 years or older. [added 7/1/04]
Designing good assessments and responding effectively to student writing - A lot of good advice at this site for creating better assignments, including critical thinking in them, and responding to student writing [added 4/5/04]
Critical analysis paper and peer review
Lou Manza, of Lebanon Valley College, has shared a very well thought and detailed assignment for his Paranormal Phenomena --A Critical Examination course that I believe is relevant here. The first link above is to the syllabus for his course. It describes a few interesting assignments including the C.R.I.T.I.C. paper, a critical analysis of a paranormal belief. The very elaborate description of the assignment can be found in Appendix D of the syllabus. The assignment also includes an element of peer review. The second link above is to the rubric students are to use for the peer critique of student papers. Also included there is the rubric the instructor uses with good explanation of the scoring criteria. The third link is to a fuller description of the CRITIC approach Lou uses which could be implemented in any course promoting critical thinking. Finally, the fourth link above is to an article in The Skeptical Enquirer by Wayne Bartz which originally described the CRITIC approach. Lou adapted the idea from this article and "blended it with some stuff from other sources" to create what you find above.
How can Psychologists Obtain Accurate Measurements? - This is an assignment from Karen Gasper's Self and Social Judgment course in which she asks students to visit the IAT site, another measurement site, read a linked article and answer a few questions in response. [added 7/23/03]Homework Assignments - several short, interesting assignments for Lisa Schulte's social psych students [added 2/1/03]
"Put Yourself in a Minority Situation" - Students are asked to put themselves in a minority situation and write a one-page summary of their experience. From Elizabeth Pinel. [added 2/1/03]
Two viewpoints assignment - In Markus Kemmelmeier's social psychology of education course, students "explore two competing viewpoints on a controversial issue." Scroll down page to find assignment and supplemental materials for it. [added 12/06/02]
Trace an article - Scroll down to "Term Paper." Jonathan Brown asks graduate students in his Advanced Social Psychology course to "select one article of contemporary (1999-2001) research from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. You must then (1) trace its historical and theoretical roots, (2) describe what was done and what was found, and (3) say something about why it’s important." [added 11/7/02]
Confounded variables assignment - in PDF - several scenarios are presented for which students are to identify the independent, dependent and confounding variables, and describe how to "unconfound" the experiment - good in-class activity also
Reaction paper - Bertram Malle's Attitudes and Social Behavior students are required to write a short paper related to an article or topic from class - A peer editing component is also described in detail - Bertram includes model papers as samples, and he offers comments on the readings to assist the students in making sense of them and pointing the students to possible paper topics
Breaking a norm - from Gary Levine [added 12/13/02]
Breaking a social norm (video) - Do you ever have your students break a social norm? Apparently, that was the assignment for this class. Here is the students' video capturing their efforts. [added 7/14/07]
Theory paper - advanced assignment requiring students to make a theoretical contribution in an area of social psychology - scroll down to bottom of page
Tracing an assertion from a secondary source - interesting assignment from Greg Herek's Sexual Orientation and Prejudice course asking students to follow the trail of a claim made in a newspaper or other secondary source back to the primary source to evaluate whether or not the secondary source "got it right" among other questions
Analyzing an ideology - students "describe and analyze a set of beliefs or attitudes held by" someone or some group they know - includes model papers
Operational definitions assignment - students practice operationally defining terms and distinguishing between correlational and experimental questions - possible in-class activity
Correlation coefficients assignment - in PDF - students practice verbally and graphically describing different coefficients - possible in-class activity
Self-portraits - students create self-portraits in picture as well as essay form applying concepts of self and social belief; then they compose portraits of classmates based upon their pictures
Random Assignment Assignment - students learn about random assignment using Research Randomizer on the web
Social Identity Assignment - students answer questions about groups they belong to or identify with - from Michael Schmitt
Social Norm Assignment - students identify and answer questions about social norms - from Michael SchmittApplication of Course Concepts
Election persuasion paper - Jennifer Harman has created a very timely persuasion assignment in which students analyze U.S. presidential candidates' speechesor debates to look for persuasive techniques. [added 10/9/08]
Application paper assignments - Jeffrey Adams provides three possible application paper ideas for his Social Psychology students. Here is a rubric, or scoring scale, for this assignment. [added 9/20/08]
"Life Application Essays" - In his Social Psychology course, Jeff Joireman assigns his students five essays in which they find different ways to apply course content to their own lives. Also, check out his "goal setting" section. [added 1/8/06]
Variety of topics - Chuck Huff offers several interesting and current assignments in which students apply social psychology to subjects such as torture and cross-cultural experiences. [added 7/1/04]
Day of ...... - Scott Plous' Day of Compassion assignment has been posted on the Resources website for quite a while. Now I have the pleasure of pointing you to three other similar, creative assignments Scott engages his Social Psychology students in: Day of Nonconformity, Day of Nonviolence, and Day of Social Justice. [added 6/9/04]
Application Papers - three interesting applications of social psychology from Tiffany Ito's course: 1) Looking for biases, shortcuts and attributions in newspapers and magazines, 2) looking for attitude change in ads, and 3) looking for socialization of gender and ethnic stereotypes in
children's stories [added 3/13/03]Application Paper: September 11, 2001 - This assignment is an interesting example of asking students to apply specific research articles to real-life events from Sara Hodges' Mind and Society course. [added 2/4/03]
Application Paper Rubric - Jeffrey Adams has laid out a nice rubric that could be applied to or modified to fit a variety of application papers.
Case Studies - Susan Boland assigns her students four case studies, requiring them to apply social psychology to the scenarios by answering six questions - scroll down the page to follow links to the case studies and specific instructions for completing the assignment - could be used as in-class activities as well
Another Case Study/Group Dynamics - From Markus Kemmelmeier's sociology course, this paper requires students to "identify a group and examine its development and history using concepts of group dynamics." [added 12/06/02]
Persuasion/stereotyping - students choose between applying concepts to recruiting new students or to analyzing a group's stereotype
Attending campus events - students attend seven campus events and "turn in a brief (one paragraph) analysis of the role of social psychological principles in the event"
Resources for the Teaching of Social Psychology is a part of the CROW Project, Course Resources on the Web. CROW was initially sponsored by the Associated Colleges of Illinois and generously supported by UPS. This site was created by Jon Mueller, Professor of Psychology at North Central College, Naperville, IL. Send comments to Jon.