1. Where do you find information about
Psychology?
Identify appropriate sources of
information
Apply strategies for finding
appropriate information
Evaluate the usefulness of different
sources of information
2. As university students, you will need to make sure that you have plenty of
information to develop your knowledge and provide evidence for what you are
saying and writing.
When there is so much information out there, how do you know what you should
read?
Around the room is a market
place of information. In pairs, go
shopping for the information
you think you would use.
What have you bought?
3. So, what criteria should you use to decide what to
read?
In your pairs, look again at your selection.
Do you want to get return or exchange
any of collect, or go back and buy some
more?
Where and how would you find such
good sources of information?
Write down some suggestions on your
post-it notes and stick them to the wall.
4. Now you know what to read, listen to and watch,
you need to think about how useful it is to you.
Get in the habit of reading an article or
listening to a podcast about Psychology
every day.
How about listening to a podcast on a
topic from another module while
you’re on the bus?
It’s amazing how quickly your
knowledge about Psychology will
grow and you can use that
knowledge in all your classes.
Dr Keon West (Goldsmiths University),
‘Obedience to Authority’, Available at
www.ThePsychologyFaculty
5. Now you know what to read, listen to and watch,
you need to think about how useful it is to you.
For your assignments and some
of your classes, you will need to
be more focused in choosing
your information.
Why do you think that is?
6. What would you choose?
You have been given the question:
Discuss a range of ways in which
Psychology can help us to understand
and treat stress.
In your groups, narrow down your
original choices from the market place
even further. Can you decide on at least
two you would use?
Can you find one more yourselves?
Be ready to explain the reasons for your
selection.
7. What have you learnt?
Write down three top tips you
would give another Psychology
student about choosing sources of
information.
8. Online activities for this week
1. Complete the referencing activity on
Canvas. Find it either in Quizzes or by the
link in Weekly Resources (Week 1).
2. Week 1’s entry on your blog
9. Homework
Find an up to date article (magazine,
newspaper) or podcast on anything related to
Psychology that you think is interesting.
Bring a summary of it next week.
Notas del editor
The session is going to help them see the woods for the trees! This session is planned so that there is relatively little directive tutor-talk but tutors inform them through their responses to what they say so that the whole session feels discursive.
30 minutes including the activity’s introduction and follow-up discussion - go through each source, who ‘bought’ it, why, q and a on whether they should. NB some of the popular non-academic can still be used and useful but not all of them will be - get them differentiating between them. The non-academic but useful/reliable/expert ones are also top show them that in Business they need to keep up to date with various developments and companies, individuals in the field etc.
10 mins – pause the video after popular sources and ask them to recap on which of the popular sources they would use (eg expert blogs, twitter, professional publications, quality newspapers but not others eg Wikipedia, random ones where they don’t know the author’s credentials) and when they would use them (eg background, to supplement the academic). Carry on play and finish with some questions about how the academic sources they have got those features described in the video. Once they have finalised their choices, get them to review their selection as signposted above and do the post-it activity- respond to their ideas through discussion and question to elicit and add any they have missed (e.g. follow a leading Psychologist on Twitter, read professional magazines online, watch podcasts given by experts such as TED talks, the library and its physical collection as well as its database, Google SCHOLAR, etc)
10 mins Make the point with the video as an example (also enables learning through different media during the class). How do they know it is a good source? E.g. the website may sound dubious but te reputation and academic standing of participants suggests it is a good source. Play the video and ask them what they have learnt from it and how they might use it in their studies as an example of people they should be watching talks by and how they can learn in very small and accessible chunks.
5 mins Q and A on purposeful reading and why they need to think about what their class or assignment is on when deciding what to read (answering the question, importance of being relevant, being efficient in use of time etc.).
15 mins– if they are in an IT lab, they can do the extra search; if not, this will still work using what the material they have in the room. Ask each group of four to explain their choices, including how they found the extra source and why they selected it (NB this is also getting them going on how to do their homework task).
The plenary 10 mins – They do this individually and then go round and ask each student for one of theirs (doesn’t matter if they repeat). NB they may want to put these in their blogs as something they have learnt this week and how it will affect their learning!
5 mins. This could be a good point to make any comments on their online work from last week, e.g. well done on your blogs so far; email etiquette etc.
(Asking them to bring a summary next week will help lead into the next session in which they will develop note-making and summarising skills, enabling some self-reflection of this task, so if any students ask for clarification on what you mean by summary, you can just tell them that they need to write the main points, without going into any further detail – you and they need to see what their current understanding of that is and where their skills in relation to it are at)
