New ToPIX Content: 5/30/13

This update includes additions to “In the Classroom” pages (Cognition, Development, Neuroscience, Perception, Research Methods), and the Statistics Video page.

New ToPIX Content

This month, our “In the Classroom” pages received quite a bit of new content. An article on why the jigsaw method may be especially relevant for the Cognitive Psychology course was posted to the Cognition in the Classroom page.

Assistant ToPIX Editor, Aaron Richmond, posted a compendium of activities for child and adolescent psychology to the Development in the Classroom page, and a very helpful article for those teaching Neuro on the Neuroscience in the Classroom page. Students often appreciate mnemonics and strategies to master course content, and so the article on the keyword mnemonic is especially appreciated. Aaron also started a flurry of posts to the Statistics in the Classroom page on “Dance, Dance, Revolution,” application exercises in Stats, and a demo using regular class attenders and slackers. Thanks Aaron!

Also, those of you who teach the Holway-Boring (1941) experiment in Cog or in S&P may want to visit the Perception in the Classroom page for a recently published demonstration of this classic study.

Assistant ToPIX Editor, Jessica Hartnett, offered another way to interest students in research design through real-life examples (e.g., “Packages sealed with “Atheist” tape go missing 10x more often than controls”). See the Research Methods in the Classroom page. As Jessica notes, students could critique the research design and develop their own to test related empirical questions.

Thanks again to Aaron and Jessica for their contributions!

Lastly, this month’s updates included a number of recent Teaching of Psychology articles. If you have published an activity or demonstration in ToP (or any pedagogical journal) please consider sharing your materials with ToPIX for the STP community. An example of a recent ToP article with a video and corresponding article was posted to the Statistics Video page.

If you have are interested in joining the ToPIX team, or can point out any online resources you have found particularly helpful-- please send them to TOPIX@TeachPsych.org.