Instructions concerning how to teach neuron anatomy and physiology via a one-half hour dramatic presentation involving 30 student volunteers are provided. Data are provided to support the demonstration's value as both a pragmatic aid to comprehension and as an entertaining educational technique. (RM)

Describes classroom learning activities for a college level psychology course on aging and explains how these and other activities can be used to interest students in a career in services for the aged. (Author/DB)

Described is an exercise that will help college-level psychology students learn abstract and relational thinking skills. The exercise will provide students with a new way to handle compare-and-contrast questions. (RM)

To learn about the history of psychology, college students presented past research papers in psychology as if they were the original author, and the audience was confined, in raising questions, to their understanding of the prevailing state of knowledge and social outlook at the time of the paper's original publication. (RM)

A course option in abnormal psychology involves students in interviewing and observing the activities of individuals in the off-campus community who are concerned with some aspect of abnormal psychology. The technique generates student interest in the field when they interview people about topics such as drug abuse, transsexualism, and abuse of…

A classroom exercise that involves college students in portraying individuals studied in a history of psychology course is described. Working in teams, students develop a presentation allowing figures from different time periods to discuss and debate psychological issues. Students also prepare a bibliography and position summary of the individual…

A simulation exercise of a labor-management dispute is used to teach psychology students some of the basics of descriptive statistics. Using comparable data sets generated by the instructor, students work in small groups to develop a statistical presentation that supports their particular position in the dispute. (Author/RM)

During the first class devoted to assertiveness, the professor came into class, sat down, and proceeded to write notes on a pad for the duration of the period. Their rights to an education being violated, students were confronted with the option to intervene in their own best interests. (RM)

The encoding specificity principle asserts that a retrieval cue will be effective if, and only if, the to-be-remembered item was specifically encoded with respect to that cue during input. Describes a classroom experiment that provides an opportunity to demonstrate the encoding specificity phenomenon, note its limitations, and discuss its cause…

To make psychology course content more relevant to college students, popular television presentations can be used to illustrate psychological concepts. Students in a theories of personality course wrote brief essays explaining the behavior of their favorite TV characters. (RM)

Suggests use of the planarian D. Dorotocephala, an animal 20 mm in size, in order to provide inexpensive lab experiences for students in large introductory psychology courses. The animal can be used to study perception, memory, behavior modification, and group processes. (Author/AV)

Reveals the need for departments to offer course instruction in behavioral self-change. Describes a self-change course which offers students an opportunity to apply proven psychological principles to their own lives and thus meets the need for personal relevance of education. Provides suggestions for implementation of a self-change course.…

Described are practical ways in which writing can be used to help students learn the concepts and methods of social psychology. These include keeping a course log (a type of journal), writing analyses of published articles, doing an observational study, and writing a formal research report. (Author/RM)

The portfolio writing assignment given to students in a life span developmental psychology course required that they complete 10-15 typewritten pages of writing for the course. Students were allowed to choose their own projects; for example, they might write about an interview they had conducted, or discuss an outside reading. (RM)

Weekly projects designed for an introductory psychology telecourse encourage student involvement in psychology. Each project consists of a set of instructions for a psychological study using family, friends, and other telecourse students as subjects, discussion partners, or coresearchers. All collaboration is done over the telephone. Examples of…