Stage 1, Week 2: Using psychology to learn psychology
Guide for tutors
Tutor tasks
Print this handout for tutees Log this tutorial in S4 Send email to missing students
Aims
Build group familiarity
Set tutorial norms
Model how psychology helps move from hunches –> evidence
Discuss what makes good evidence.
Practise concise writing
Reflect on study habits
Commit to a note-taking plan
Task 1: Introductions
Introductions:
Go round the group – ask names, where they are from etc.
Ask them to think of one non-psychology interest (but keep this to themselves for the moment)
Housekeeping:
Explain how tutorials run,
Attendance expectations
Highlight resources like the DLE, timetable. Check all can
How to ask for help
- Check the handbook
- Check with peers
- Ask the staff member delivering a session (questions at the end)
- Ask a TARA in a workshop
- Ask their tutor
Task 2: Pictionary icebreaker
An icebreaker task that illustrates a speed/accuracy tradeoff
Setup:
- Two teams (~4 per team)
- Timed games (suggest 60sec)
- Each student must draw/doodle their hobby/interest
- Teammates must guess
- 1 point per correct guess.
- Rotate around the team members
Debrief
- Tally up the scores and celebrate!
- Ask: “When you guessed, what made you confident enough to shout out?”
- Did some students have a hunch, but kept quiet becaue they weren’t sure?
- Foreshadow: Mention this kind of speed/accuracy tradeoff is common. XXX WHERE IN STAGE 1 … PETER??
Link to next task: Balancing speed vs accuracy is somewhat like deciding when we have enough evidence (i.e. in psychology).
Task 3: “Should students write or type their notes?”
Discuss:
- Did students use handwritten or typed notes for their A-levels?
- Any other techniques they found useful in class?
Prompt:
- We/they already have opinions.
- In this task we look at an experimental study
- We want to decide: “is this evidence strong enough to change our our mind, or our behaviour?”
Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014 excerpt
Print this handout for students: Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014 excerpt
Briefly give time for students to skim the extract and figure.
Questions:
- Who were the participants?
- What did they do?
- What was measured?
- What was found?
[Answers]
- Princeton undergrads
- Randomised laptop vs longhand
- Watched 15-min TED talk, took notes “as usual.”
- After 30 mins, given factual and conceptual questions.
- Results:
- factual ≈ same performance
- conceptual = lower performnce with laptops vs notes
How useful was the plot?
Discuss: What did the students learn by looking at the plot?
Prompts
What is a z-score? If they don’t know does it matter? Probably not… If time, extend with a discussion about how to read papers where they don’t understand all the technical details.
Where are the differences between groups? Are they big enough to matter? What do we mean by “matter”? How can we judge? Aim is to highlight that the effect size is what really matters. We could be very sure about a tiny (irrelevant) effect.
Why might there be a difference, conceptual > factual? Can they think of topics from A-level which might be relevant here: In the UK syllabus they could have covered:
- Depth of processing and impact on memory: do laptops encourage shallow verbatim transcription vs. longhand → elaborative rehearsal?
- Encoding specificity for retrieval cues: do handwritten notes create richer cues?
Should we change our habits?
How good and useful is this evidence?
Discuss
- Would you bet your exam results on this one study?
- What else would you want to know?
Decide
- “Based on this evidence, what will you try over the next few weeks?
- Handwriting, laptop, or a mix?
Suggest
There are practice tasks on this site to encourage students to
Task 4: Wrap-up
Ask all students in turn (they should all have an answer)
- What change (if any) they will make to note taking next week, and why?
- One strength/limitation of today’s evidence that stood out to them and influenced their decision.
Reminders
- Regular Monday briefings help them stay on track
- PETER ANYTHING ELSE???