Do you get grade(d) to post?
May 22, 2010 12:56 PM Subscribe
How can I effectively use a blog in my class?
tl;dr version: What sort of blog setup will be free and easy to administrate that allows not more than 30 students to post daily in a way that is significantly easier to use than BlackBoard (which we all know sucks out loud)?
I'm teaching a month-long class in cognitive science this summer. The course description is something like "The interdisciplinary study of mind and brain with contributions from psychology, anthropology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, biology and neuroscience."
This course is offered through the psychology department, but I have license to do pretty much anything with class, as no one has taught it in several years and there are no requirements concerning content or evaluation. It meets 4 days a week, 2 hours per day for one month, starting in mid-July.
I have encouraged a number of students from cognitive science's other contributing disciplines to enroll so that we'll have a diverse set of perspectives.
Another teacher in the department has taught several "small group psychology" courses in which she uses a blog as a the primary means of evaluation/participation. I think this idea is pretty neat. I'd like to make participation on the blog be the only evaluative criteria.
All you have to do is post at least one relevant comment daily, ideally one that includes a question about the readings or a response to someone else's question. I decided not to require a text-book, and will just post the readings to the site. I have no problem with giving everyone an A on the offhand chance that they actually all participate daily in a meaningful way.
Class is two hours every day, and I'd like to make it more than just me talking. I think that having an online discourse to refer to during class might be a good way of sparking discussion.
What's the best way to pull this off? I'd love input about the actual implementation of the web site or the best way to integrate in-class lectures with the comments from the blog.
Also, if you have opinions about can't miss cognitive science readings or, even better, demonstrations, please don't hesitate to chime in.
Thanks everybody!
tl;dr version: What sort of blog setup will be free and easy to administrate that allows not more than 30 students to post daily in a way that is significantly easier to use than BlackBoard (which we all know sucks out loud)?
I'm teaching a month-long class in cognitive science this summer. The course description is something like "The interdisciplinary study of mind and brain with contributions from psychology, anthropology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, biology and neuroscience."
This course is offered through the psychology department, but I have license to do pretty much anything with class, as no one has taught it in several years and there are no requirements concerning content or evaluation. It meets 4 days a week, 2 hours per day for one month, starting in mid-July.
I have encouraged a number of students from cognitive science's other contributing disciplines to enroll so that we'll have a diverse set of perspectives.
Another teacher in the department has taught several "small group psychology" courses in which she uses a blog as a the primary means of evaluation/participation. I think this idea is pretty neat. I'd like to make participation on the blog be the only evaluative criteria.
All you have to do is post at least one relevant comment daily, ideally one that includes a question about the readings or a response to someone else's question. I decided not to require a text-book, and will just post the readings to the site. I have no problem with giving everyone an A on the offhand chance that they actually all participate daily in a meaningful way.
Class is two hours every day, and I'd like to make it more than just me talking. I think that having an online discourse to refer to during class might be a good way of sparking discussion.
What's the best way to pull this off? I'd love input about the actual implementation of the web site or the best way to integrate in-class lectures with the comments from the blog.
Also, if you have opinions about can't miss cognitive science readings or, even better, demonstrations, please don't hesitate to chime in.
Thanks everybody!
You're lucky! This course sounds fun to teach!
I'm going to be teaching later in the summer and I've been trying to think of ways to better incorporate online discussion. I've found that requiring students to comment discussion boards often results in a few students who reliably start topics of conversation, and a heck of a lot of "me-too"ers who reply to threads but don't really say anything new. It's usually pretty clear that they haven't done the readings either: they're just winging an off-the-cuff response to whatever it is that the more diligent students have said. I'm not sure how to handle this, really. I thought about assigning a rotating discussion leader role, who would be responsible for starting topics, but that seems like it might prevent some good discussion.
Assigning pro and con sides to students and having them argue for a particular position might make it feel more gamelike. (And then in class, people could discuss what they really think, who won the debate, etc.)
Here's something I decided to do while listening to NPR the other day: make them listen to relevant segments of Radiolab. Especially at the beginning of the course. Everyone thinks Radiolab is fun and interesting, and it'll generate a lot of discussion and get the class off on a good foot.
Libet, Milgram, and Zimbardo usually go over really well because they freak the hell out undergrads who haven't thought much before about whether science could possibly challenge free will.
A good cog sci demonstration is to hold a playing card in the student's peripheral vision and then slowly move it toward the center of the student's field of view. The card has to be remarkably and surprisingly close to dead-in-front of the student before he or she will even be able to tell whether it is red or black! Then you explain the physiology of the eye and low-level color vision, and how we only have high-acuity color vision in the middle 2 degrees of our visual field. So... why doesn't the world look like a floating point of color in a black-and-white-scene? And how is it that colorblind people can go until they are in their 20s without realizing that they are colorblind? Then you can get into really philosophically interesting debates about high-level "filling in" (demonstrations of the blind spot and of change blindness work well here too), inverted spectra, etc. (This is one of the two or three cool stock lectures I have filed away if I have to give an impromptu presentation for some reason, and it goes over well.)
posted by painquale at 1:33 PM on May 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
I'm going to be teaching later in the summer and I've been trying to think of ways to better incorporate online discussion. I've found that requiring students to comment discussion boards often results in a few students who reliably start topics of conversation, and a heck of a lot of "me-too"ers who reply to threads but don't really say anything new. It's usually pretty clear that they haven't done the readings either: they're just winging an off-the-cuff response to whatever it is that the more diligent students have said. I'm not sure how to handle this, really. I thought about assigning a rotating discussion leader role, who would be responsible for starting topics, but that seems like it might prevent some good discussion.
Assigning pro and con sides to students and having them argue for a particular position might make it feel more gamelike. (And then in class, people could discuss what they really think, who won the debate, etc.)
Here's something I decided to do while listening to NPR the other day: make them listen to relevant segments of Radiolab. Especially at the beginning of the course. Everyone thinks Radiolab is fun and interesting, and it'll generate a lot of discussion and get the class off on a good foot.
Libet, Milgram, and Zimbardo usually go over really well because they freak the hell out undergrads who haven't thought much before about whether science could possibly challenge free will.
A good cog sci demonstration is to hold a playing card in the student's peripheral vision and then slowly move it toward the center of the student's field of view. The card has to be remarkably and surprisingly close to dead-in-front of the student before he or she will even be able to tell whether it is red or black! Then you explain the physiology of the eye and low-level color vision, and how we only have high-acuity color vision in the middle 2 degrees of our visual field. So... why doesn't the world look like a floating point of color in a black-and-white-scene? And how is it that colorblind people can go until they are in their 20s without realizing that they are colorblind? Then you can get into really philosophically interesting debates about high-level "filling in" (demonstrations of the blind spot and of change blindness work well here too), inverted spectra, etc. (This is one of the two or three cool stock lectures I have filed away if I have to give an impromptu presentation for some reason, and it goes over well.)
posted by painquale at 1:33 PM on May 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
Depends on exactly what kind of interaction you want. Looking at Wordpress (because it's popular and what I know best):
You could just have a solo blog, where you make one post a day and expect each student to comment at least once a day. That wouldn't require any plugins or anything, and would satisfy your basic requirements.
You can set up a blog with multiple authors (you'd be the admin, which has broader permissions), where you upgrade each student to the "author" role so that they can make posts, not just comments.
You can install a plugin called Buddypress that lets you run a sort of closed Facebook equivalent. That's fine for chatty stuff, not so great for long-form writing.
Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive.
The upcoming Wordpress 3.0, which is currently in beta, will allow you to run multiple blogs off of a single installation (basically they've rolled Wordpress MU, which had been tricky to configure, into the basic version), so rather than having one blog with many authors, you could assign each student their own blog. If you did something like this, you'd probably want aggregate the most interesting stuff into a best-of blog.
I think it would be worthwhile to set up some test blogs beforehand and good around with the various options to see how you feel about each one.
posted by adamrice at 1:33 PM on May 22, 2010
You could just have a solo blog, where you make one post a day and expect each student to comment at least once a day. That wouldn't require any plugins or anything, and would satisfy your basic requirements.
You can set up a blog with multiple authors (you'd be the admin, which has broader permissions), where you upgrade each student to the "author" role so that they can make posts, not just comments.
You can install a plugin called Buddypress that lets you run a sort of closed Facebook equivalent. That's fine for chatty stuff, not so great for long-form writing.
Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive.
The upcoming Wordpress 3.0, which is currently in beta, will allow you to run multiple blogs off of a single installation (basically they've rolled Wordpress MU, which had been tricky to configure, into the basic version), so rather than having one blog with many authors, you could assign each student their own blog. If you did something like this, you'd probably want aggregate the most interesting stuff into a best-of blog.
I think it would be worthwhile to set up some test blogs beforehand and good around with the various options to see how you feel about each one.
posted by adamrice at 1:33 PM on May 22, 2010
Online courses can be a little tricky for a number of reasons. Firstly, people generally put in the bare minimum. If your class meets 8 hours a week, they'll plan around that. If you require 1 post a day, you'll get that and no more. And they will dramatically underestimate the amount of time they need to contribute. So make it clear on day 1 and in the syllabus that there is substantial daily reading. In class and in the postings, make sure to publish the page count or some other estimate of how long it takes to read.
Secondly, there's a large fear of speaking in front of a group. Few people have the confidence to speak in front of a group that's known to include at least one expert; especially since it sounds like most of your students are studying cross discipline. It's important that asking questions be rewarded, but you have to make sure it doesn't cross a line and become a one-on-one discussion that people feel is a waste of time and resent that classmate's apparent entitlement to derail lessons. This article suggests a few approaches to dealing with that online, like having a fake student break the ice on various topics.
Finalyl, if you want to take the discussion on and off line, you'll need to be the one to bring it up in class. Highlight interesting questions or answers in class to bridge the gap; you don't need to bring it up on a projector but maybe print out quotations so you can quote and attribute it correctly. To encourage online discussion, you'll want to have enough people paying attention to the website at once that people posting can reasonably expect replies. In class on day one, I suggest an experiment: have everyone predict which of the next 24 hours with the most comments made, and present the predictions and comment results on day 2. The sooner someone replies to a comment you make, the more likely I think your student is to give a reply above and beyond.
posted by pwnguin at 1:44 PM on May 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
Secondly, there's a large fear of speaking in front of a group. Few people have the confidence to speak in front of a group that's known to include at least one expert; especially since it sounds like most of your students are studying cross discipline. It's important that asking questions be rewarded, but you have to make sure it doesn't cross a line and become a one-on-one discussion that people feel is a waste of time and resent that classmate's apparent entitlement to derail lessons. This article suggests a few approaches to dealing with that online, like having a fake student break the ice on various topics.
Finalyl, if you want to take the discussion on and off line, you'll need to be the one to bring it up in class. Highlight interesting questions or answers in class to bridge the gap; you don't need to bring it up on a projector but maybe print out quotations so you can quote and attribute it correctly. To encourage online discussion, you'll want to have enough people paying attention to the website at once that people posting can reasonably expect replies. In class on day one, I suggest an experiment: have everyone predict which of the next 24 hours with the most comments made, and present the predictions and comment results on day 2. The sooner someone replies to a comment you make, the more likely I think your student is to give a reply above and beyond.
posted by pwnguin at 1:44 PM on May 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Vanilla is a pretty simple way of setting up forums (which I think is more what you want, rather than a blog setup). If you have webspace, you could set up your own install, or use their hosted solution if you don't.
As for the larger question about discussion and blogging, I'd worry that a class that already meets two hours a day most days of the week would suffer from discussion overload if you also require them to post daily on the forum. If you're going to spend most of that time lecturing and think that you'll run out of time for discussion, or you're anticipating a particularly involved and passionate class, it might actually serve a purpose beyond showing that they've skimmed the reading or paid attention to your lecture. I've been in classes where almost everyone became completely obsessed with the topic and discussion spilled over into our daily lives, but that's super rare.
I took an intro to cognitive science last fall and it was definitely fascinating. IIRC, some favorite readings were Dennett's "Where Am I?" and Searle's Chinese Room paper (sorry for the crappy semilegal links). We also did a pretty cool demonstration of neural networks where we tried, as a class, to tell a picture of a cat from a dog based on a few people seeing small pieces of an image and voting their choice, and then another level choosing based on that evidence, and then a final tally. We repeated, trying to "improve" our class ability to distinguish based on how trustworthy we thought the observers were. It was a really fun class.
posted by MadamM at 1:44 PM on May 22, 2010
As for the larger question about discussion and blogging, I'd worry that a class that already meets two hours a day most days of the week would suffer from discussion overload if you also require them to post daily on the forum. If you're going to spend most of that time lecturing and think that you'll run out of time for discussion, or you're anticipating a particularly involved and passionate class, it might actually serve a purpose beyond showing that they've skimmed the reading or paid attention to your lecture. I've been in classes where almost everyone became completely obsessed with the topic and discussion spilled over into our daily lives, but that's super rare.
I took an intro to cognitive science last fall and it was definitely fascinating. IIRC, some favorite readings were Dennett's "Where Am I?" and Searle's Chinese Room paper (sorry for the crappy semilegal links). We also did a pretty cool demonstration of neural networks where we tried, as a class, to tell a picture of a cat from a dog based on a few people seeing small pieces of an image and voting their choice, and then another level choosing based on that evidence, and then a final tally. We repeated, trying to "improve" our class ability to distinguish based on how trustworthy we thought the observers were. It was a really fun class.
posted by MadamM at 1:44 PM on May 22, 2010
Other experiments and demonstrations that students in your class can perform on themselves:
Moving your eyeball by moving your head does not produce the illusion that the world is moving. Moving your eyeball by poking the side of it with your finger does produce that illusion. Gives support to a comparator model.
Arrange students in a circle and have them close their eyes and simultaneously tap the nose of the person in front of them. After a while, all their noses will feel two feet long. To be folded into discussions of body schema and body image.
Kahneman and Tversky biases in reasoning are pretty easy to produce in students. It's cool to give them the Wason selection task, have them mess it up, and then give them a version of the task that involves cheater-detection and show them how easy the task is then.
posted by painquale at 2:02 PM on May 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
Moving your eyeball by moving your head does not produce the illusion that the world is moving. Moving your eyeball by poking the side of it with your finger does produce that illusion. Gives support to a comparator model.
Arrange students in a circle and have them close their eyes and simultaneously tap the nose of the person in front of them. After a while, all their noses will feel two feet long. To be folded into discussions of body schema and body image.
Kahneman and Tversky biases in reasoning are pretty easy to produce in students. It's cool to give them the Wason selection task, have them mess it up, and then give them a version of the task that involves cheater-detection and show them how easy the task is then.
posted by painquale at 2:02 PM on May 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure if you're asking how best to do this technically or what, but there are a few ways to do it that are dead simple:
1/ Register yourclass.wordpress.com. Post your class reading as one post a day, and seperately post a discussion topic for the day. Ask a question; everyone answers.
2/ Give every student a login for your blog. Assign (or let them pick) specific readings to be the leader on for a given day. They post a comment and a discussion question; everyone answers.
3/ And finally, the nuclear option: get each of them to setup their own class blogs on WordPress, and require them to write a response to the readings on a daily basis. Link them all on your blog. Give extra credit for responsive comments on each other's blogs.
#3 most closely approximates how blogging really works, imho.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:31 PM on May 22, 2010
1/ Register yourclass.wordpress.com. Post your class reading as one post a day, and seperately post a discussion topic for the day. Ask a question; everyone answers.
2/ Give every student a login for your blog. Assign (or let them pick) specific readings to be the leader on for a given day. They post a comment and a discussion question; everyone answers.
3/ And finally, the nuclear option: get each of them to setup their own class blogs on WordPress, and require them to write a response to the readings on a daily basis. Link them all on your blog. Give extra credit for responsive comments on each other's blogs.
#3 most closely approximates how blogging really works, imho.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:31 PM on May 22, 2010
Don't make the blog the primary form of evaluation or participation. Without pointed questions, students will tend to make vague, nitpicky, or barely related responses. Not because they're bad people, but there are only so many original thoughts a typical student can have in an introductory course, and the later students will want to avoid copying the earlier students. It's unnatural. Instead, you could offer a list of questions and each person can respond to one.
For better interaction, you could have students write longer works, like 5-page research proposals or something, and make other students write 1-page critiques. But it's not good teaching to require a student to write a random response to another student's random response to another student's random response.
posted by acidic at 7:57 PM on May 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
For better interaction, you could have students write longer works, like 5-page research proposals or something, and make other students write 1-page critiques. But it's not good teaching to require a student to write a random response to another student's random response to another student's random response.
posted by acidic at 7:57 PM on May 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
Oh, and another problem is that students usually have the same schedule from day to day, and so a group of students will generally do their homework in the afternoon, and another group of students will always wait until midnight, and so some students will always have to engage with the material on a different level than the others (for lack of better responses). In my experience the vast majority of comments will probably come in a rush, late.
posted by acidic at 8:01 PM on May 22, 2010
posted by acidic at 8:01 PM on May 22, 2010
Best answer: Do you know which version of Blackboard you've got? The latest version has a pretty nice blogging tool, actually, surprise surprise. I understand that it's cooler to not use Blackboard, but given your time frame, springing new tech on students is kinda mean. But if you need a blog and you're on anything less than Blackboard 9, you're going to have to use something else.
In your situation, I'd probably use Blogger, since most of your students probably already have a google account. but Wordpress is definitely better.
So, technical issues aside: how do you do it?
Suggestion 1: Lie. Lie at least once in every class, so every day. Tell them up front that you're going to lie at least once in every class, and they should post about what they think the lie was and why they think it's a lie. They should prove it by quoting the readings, if they can. The ones to get it right every day should get points for it. Your lies should help you make a point: you lie about something that they should be able to confirm or deny based on their readings. Now, if you have Blackboard 9, you can use the journals tool to do this. Journals are like reflection journals, which can only be seen by you and the student. That way students can't see each other's posts. But that's not the nice communal effort you're going for. You can do it on an open blog as well, and give people points for arguing well about it, even if they're wrong.
Suggestion 2: have a minimum number of posts each student must make, but don't grade the blog posts themselves. Ask students to write a paper at the end summarizing their experience in the class, where the only thing they can use to support their statements is their own blog and their comments on other's posts. They should be writing a well-cited document about the fact that they learned things. It's basically like...describe why you should get an A, where no statement should go uncited. The more they can demonstrate they learn, the better. You tell them: ideally, you show how you struggled to understand something, and then show the place where it started to come together. It's okay not to understand at first, or to ask "stupid" questions. That's how you learn. You can cite them later to demonstrate how far you've come. That way, the more they post, and the more honest they are in those posts, the better it is for them. Grade the paper, not the blog posts. The students should then point you to the posts they want you to pay special attention to.
posted by Hildegarde at 9:22 PM on May 22, 2010
In your situation, I'd probably use Blogger, since most of your students probably already have a google account. but Wordpress is definitely better.
So, technical issues aside: how do you do it?
Suggestion 1: Lie. Lie at least once in every class, so every day. Tell them up front that you're going to lie at least once in every class, and they should post about what they think the lie was and why they think it's a lie. They should prove it by quoting the readings, if they can. The ones to get it right every day should get points for it. Your lies should help you make a point: you lie about something that they should be able to confirm or deny based on their readings. Now, if you have Blackboard 9, you can use the journals tool to do this. Journals are like reflection journals, which can only be seen by you and the student. That way students can't see each other's posts. But that's not the nice communal effort you're going for. You can do it on an open blog as well, and give people points for arguing well about it, even if they're wrong.
Suggestion 2: have a minimum number of posts each student must make, but don't grade the blog posts themselves. Ask students to write a paper at the end summarizing their experience in the class, where the only thing they can use to support their statements is their own blog and their comments on other's posts. They should be writing a well-cited document about the fact that they learned things. It's basically like...describe why you should get an A, where no statement should go uncited. The more they can demonstrate they learn, the better. You tell them: ideally, you show how you struggled to understand something, and then show the place where it started to come together. It's okay not to understand at first, or to ask "stupid" questions. That's how you learn. You can cite them later to demonstrate how far you've come. That way, the more they post, and the more honest they are in those posts, the better it is for them. Grade the paper, not the blog posts. The students should then point you to the posts they want you to pay special attention to.
posted by Hildegarde at 9:22 PM on May 22, 2010
Um, please don't lie to your students, unless your goal is for them to be confused and uneducated. That their homework ideally eventually negates the lie doesn't change the fact that it will stick in their heads. Would you rather they listen to you with the intent of learning or with distrust and skepticism?
posted by acidic at 7:07 AM on May 23, 2010
posted by acidic at 7:07 AM on May 23, 2010
The intent in higher education is pretty much always to have students listen with skepticism, acidic. I've done this to good effect as part of staff training, and I've seen it employed in more traditional classroom settings as well. It's a method to help students learn what critical thinking is, how to snap out of passive acceptance mode and into thoughtful interrogation of content. It also reminds students that there are many voices they should be listening to, including the readings, their own research, their previous schooling, as well as the instructor. It's not a matter of distrust: students should always be questioning every "fact" an authority figure gives them, testing it against what they read, know, and presume, and engaging in dialogue about it. This game is just a more fun way to demonstrate that process. Over time and with luck, this kind of active listening becomes natural.
posted by Hildegarde at 1:06 PM on May 23, 2010
posted by Hildegarde at 1:06 PM on May 23, 2010
Hildegarde, that may work for staff training, or review sessions, but for a daily seminar it's hands-down the intellectually laziest method I've ever heard to teach students the practice of critical thinking. Students shouldn't be asked to be skeptical about basic facts, they should be skeptical about actual controversies or methodologies or gray areas that are open to original thought or discussion.
posted by acidic at 6:11 PM on May 23, 2010
posted by acidic at 6:11 PM on May 23, 2010
The laziest method of teaching is just to get up front and preach to them. It's easy, it doesn't require you to think from the student's perspective, and it lets you not have to rattled the cage of your own authority.
Ask is not the place to argue with me. Take it to memail.
posted by Hildegarde at 7:34 PM on May 23, 2010
Ask is not the place to argue with me. Take it to memail.
posted by Hildegarde at 7:34 PM on May 23, 2010
Best answer: I have taught cognitive psychology, perception, and cognitive science for 4 years now, and have a few suggestions for the thread, but also, if you memail me, I would be happy to share any and all materials you would like (activities, powerpoint, syllabus, readings, assignments, etc)
First, I want to echo caution on using blog posting as a primary means of evaluation, especially in a class of 30 students. Unless you have a clear rubric, most students will try to figure out how little you expect of them and do that (this isn't necessarily cynical, just what happens with vague criteria).
Also, the quality of discussion tends to be dependent on how much background knowledge students have. If you let the online (and in class) discussion just simply go with what students are interested in, that can sometimes focus on surface characteristics that don't really get at what the students could be learning. Which is not to say that you should be just lecturing, but that structuring the discussion is a very very important part of teaching in this interactive way, and it is not easy (at least in my experience, classes I have observed and those teachers who I have talked to).
So the first suggestion I would have would be coming up with a series of discussion questions yourself that encourage students to look at the deeper elements of the readings, or relating them to their lives.
Having each student answer those questions in advance can help you begin to shape the discussion before class.
Also, one quick caveat that particularly applies to cognitive science, especially if you have the class makeup you wish (as I did): You will have a huge variety in background knowledge, and in interest. The neuroscience students aren't necessarily that into philosophy (and won't know what epistemology means), whereas the anthropology students who haven't taken a biology class since early high school are going to have a hard time talking about how the amygdala interacts with the hippocampus and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to mediate the experience of emotions.
Anyways, a few other particular suggestions:
the Norton Psychology Reader (ed Gary Marcus) is a great resource, and has chapters and selections from a lot of great popular books by cognitive scientists.
Philosophy Talk on NPR is also a good resource
I had students watch TED talks, many of which are excellent
Hope that helps, I'd love to hear how it goes.
posted by cogpsychprof at 7:55 AM on May 24, 2010
First, I want to echo caution on using blog posting as a primary means of evaluation, especially in a class of 30 students. Unless you have a clear rubric, most students will try to figure out how little you expect of them and do that (this isn't necessarily cynical, just what happens with vague criteria).
Also, the quality of discussion tends to be dependent on how much background knowledge students have. If you let the online (and in class) discussion just simply go with what students are interested in, that can sometimes focus on surface characteristics that don't really get at what the students could be learning. Which is not to say that you should be just lecturing, but that structuring the discussion is a very very important part of teaching in this interactive way, and it is not easy (at least in my experience, classes I have observed and those teachers who I have talked to).
So the first suggestion I would have would be coming up with a series of discussion questions yourself that encourage students to look at the deeper elements of the readings, or relating them to their lives.
Having each student answer those questions in advance can help you begin to shape the discussion before class.
Also, one quick caveat that particularly applies to cognitive science, especially if you have the class makeup you wish (as I did): You will have a huge variety in background knowledge, and in interest. The neuroscience students aren't necessarily that into philosophy (and won't know what epistemology means), whereas the anthropology students who haven't taken a biology class since early high school are going to have a hard time talking about how the amygdala interacts with the hippocampus and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to mediate the experience of emotions.
Anyways, a few other particular suggestions:
the Norton Psychology Reader (ed Gary Marcus) is a great resource, and has chapters and selections from a lot of great popular books by cognitive scientists.
Philosophy Talk on NPR is also a good resource
I had students watch TED talks, many of which are excellent
Hope that helps, I'd love to hear how it goes.
posted by cogpsychprof at 7:55 AM on May 24, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks, everyone, for your excellent replies! I very much appreciate the input, and welcome any further suggestions in thread or through MeFi Mail/email.
posted by solipsophistocracy at 12:30 PM on May 24, 2010
posted by solipsophistocracy at 12:30 PM on May 24, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by oxit at 1:27 PM on May 22, 2010