Semester Project 7

Title: Educational Psychology Encyclopedia

Purpose:

This activity is designed to help students gain practical understanding of concepts presented in the text through a cooperative learning strategy.

Objectives:

• Develop a teaching resource
• Gain understanding of abstract concepts

Student Activity:

Within educational psychology there are many abstract and difficult concepts, particularly for preservice teachers with little or no teaching experience. For that reason, it is useful to develop some tools to take with you into other education classes and eventually, into your own classroom. In this case, you will be working with other class members to create an encyclopedia of in-depth knowledge about topics discussed in class.

Your instructor will assign you to a group. Each group will focus on a particular concept, though individual group members will have somewhat different areas to consider. The following is a list of some of the topics to be considered, as well as some suggestions for how group assignments might be made:

Topics to consider

• Motivation
• Assessment
• Learning styles
• Lesson planning
• Discipline/classroom management
• Development
• Theoretical approaches to teaching
• Theoretical approaches to learning
• Strategies to enhance learning
• Resources for teachers

Suggestions for group assignments

Within each group, one or two people might be assigned to develop information from each of the following information sources (Note that some of these information sources overlap, while others might be more appropriate for particular topics):

• Each of the theoretical approaches considered in the text (e.g., behaviorism, constructivism), including biographical information on relevant theorists
• Information found on the Internet related to the topic
• Information found in recent publications (this may be further specified as popular press, education journals, other journals and publications)
• State-specific resources (this may include individuals, offices, web sites, publications)
• Editor/task minder — this person checks with group members on their assignments, and ultimately takes responsibility for pulling all the information together into a clear encyclopedia entry; this individual also works with other editors to make sure the final product will have consistent format
• Textbook summarizer — responsible for appropriately summarizing text and exploring text suggestions for further reading
• Local experts — interviews local experts on the subject (from higher education in various departments, from local school districts, from alternative schools, from local government, including school boards) and summarizes those views; alternatively, this person might set up conference calls with these experts or work with instructors to arrange class visits from these experts or e-mail contact with experts
• National experts — similar to local experts, only at a national level. For example, this person might contact experts from AERA, APA, or theorists for commentary on a particular subject or recent event
• Bibliographer — will collect all contact and source information from group members and present it in APA or other format

At the end of the semester, each group will submit their findings. A class encyclopedia will be the result of combining the efforts of all groups. This encyclopedia could be made available to class members in hard copy or on a web site.

Assessment:

The individual group efforts may be turned in or the instructor may evaluate the final product as a class encyclopedia. Groups could be scheduled to give informal progress reports during the semester, or more formal presentations tying their group topic to the syllabus.

Variations:

1. Work with another class (or set of classes) and have a competition wherein these classes develop encyclopedias of the same educational psychology terms. Bring in two or more outside officials (e.g., students and instructors from other sections of the same class) to judge the result. Perhaps hand out awards when done.
2. Work with another class by assigning different educational psychology terms to each group, thereby increasing the power of the combined efforts. Have groups review the work of other groups. Share combined team efforts with each other and perhaps with other sections of the same class or with other instructors.
3. Post student term encyclopedia work to the web (perhaps have a student volunteer to do this in lieu of some task or assignment). Increase this web resource with student postings each semester. You might post a few exemplary or interesting projects near the top of the web site as guides or models. You might also consider developing a way to electronically rate or evaluate these projects. Over time, weed out and update old term projects.