Integrating new technology with old:

The applicability of psychology to daily life

I teach an introductory level class in Adult Development and Aging that, like many classes, has a host of possible textbooks to guide students through the materials. Each text offers an instructor's manual that summarizes each chapter and a test bank offering a selection of multiple-choice questions - all presumably created to ease the instructor's workload. I could get by with that, and would perhaps conform to many classes taught at colleges and universities if I solely rehashed the chapters for the students and asked them to regurgitate the material via multiple-choice exams. But teaching in that manner clearly fails to serve up an adequate university education.

One simple, yet powerful, addition to classroom lectures began as a challenge to myself during my first semester teaching this class. I read the Calgary Herald before leaving for work, and each day found articles that related directly to the topics I was covering in class. Thus, I began to bring in a news item each day, and I began the class by discussing how the things going on in the local and global worlds were directly related to the things we were learning in class. For example, there were relevant news stories that described or discussed the demographics of our aging population, articles on many issues of retirement (pension plans, changes in health care, and adaptation to change), frequent updates on medical advances in the areas of osteoporosis or heart disease, ample advances and discussion of Alzheimer's disease, many descriptors of death and the forces that surround death, and images of older adults (both good and bad). My simple challenge was easily accomplished. By the end of the semester, I had proven to my students, as well as to myself, that within a rather small sample (the Calgary Herald), I could find a relevant article each day.

With that first test under my belt, I expanded the challenge the second time I taught this class. I now challenged the students to join me in this exercise. Not only did I find something again each day, I asked the students to do the same by bringing in some media or personal event relevant to our class. The response was tremendous. More in-depth discussions ensued, even from the shiest of students. Creativity began to blossom in both myself and the students. Media were expanded to include video clips, WWW sites, magazines, and many personal accounts of people and events related to older adulthood and development. The course evaluations were full of positive comments about the experience, providing me with encouragement to continue the challenge.

It is unfortunate that this class has been faced with a tremendous increase in size. The first year, I taught this class to 50 individuals; 75 enrolled in year two. The enrolment is 250 students this term. Instructors are continually faced with finding a balance between serving the student and maintaining sanity (or, at the very least, making some time for research!). It is impossible for 250 students to be able to share their findings in a single term. Yet, this technique of bringing context into the classroom is possible in the larger classes. Also, this simple application of bringing a social context into the classroom works in other classes just as easily.

Natalie Safertal (l) and Caroline Brookes violating norms by acting like airplanes in Dr. Lahar's Psychology 353 class.

Introductory Psychology is one of the classes particularly plagued by enormous class size (400 students were enrolled last time I taught this class). In this introductory class, we sample bits of most areas of psychology. These areas are also simple to apply to the everyday lives of students. Social psychology is perhaps one of the most obviously applicable areas. As we discuss social phenomena, such as bystander apathy and social norms, I challenge the students to violate some norms. Indeed, students have returned with a variety of innovative violations of social norms. One pair of students entered a theatre-sized classroom mid lecture and ran through the theatre yelling and acting like airplanes (honest!). This was particularly funny since they happened upon a social psychology class, giving the professor a great basis for a lecture topic as well as providing the violators with an understanding audience. Other students have reported back more mundane examples, such as standing backwards in elevators or walking up to strangers and asking for a bite of their lunch. But beyond the social realm, almost any area of psychology has some real-world context in which to frame the everyday nature of the lectures in terms of the external world. Even when I describe parts of a neuron and neurotransmitter systems, I can easily pluck from the media some application of these materials to the students' lives. These examples can arise from discussions of drug use or from simply eating turkey for dinner. It's easy to find that biological, social, cognitive, health, and clinical psychology are well represented in the news if one keeps an eye open.

I also teach classes in research methodology and statistics. One might think that in this area it would be more difficult to make use of the daily paper. However, again each day I can find ample statistical references in the news. There are of course charts, graphs, and statistics provided with many news stories. These can all be examined with a critical eye. Yet there is applicability of methodological lecture topics. Consider the normal curve: for indeed, most things around us are normally distributed. We select an orange from the produce section, and we look for the larger, or better-coloured selections from hundreds that vary in size or in colour from each other in a way that is normally distributed. Beyond preparing our students to be intelligent media consumers, it is useful to consistently demonstrate the applicability of those things learned in the classroom to outside the classroom.

Since students tend to read, hear, and watch a tremendous amount of information via the media, it is important to assist them as intelligent consumers and to prepare them to question what is read and not to passively accept it. In a university system where it has become more and more difficult to teach critical thinking, I think it is the least we can do for the students to provide mentorship in making use of what they are learning in the classroom. One way to do this is to allow students to evaluate and consider the context in which they live and learn by incorporating the media with what we are teaching in the classroom. The social sciences are truly about society, and examining outside media reports is one accessible and inexpensive alternative that represents applying the university experience to everyday experience.

For more information, contact Cindy Lahar at 220-6476, e-mail: lahar@acs.ucalgary.ca