Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis
Department of Psychology
402 North Blackford Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202-3275
Dear 2015 SETOP Attendee,
Please accept my invitation to present a classroom demonstration during the newly created Friday
Night Live (FNL) session of the 2016 Southeastern Conference on the Teaching of Psychology. As
the chair of this session, it is my responsibility to invite participants and to act as its moderator. FNL
demonstrations must pass the rigorous "Appleby PCP Test," whose three criteria are listed below.
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It must be PORTABLE (i.e., it involves procedures that are possible on all campuses).
It must be COMPELLING (i.e., it captures and holds students' attention).
It must be PEDAGOGICALLY SOUND (i.e., it increases students' understanding of an otherwise
hard-to-understand psychological concept, principle, theory, or method). It must not be a gimmick,
game, or trick that merely entertains.
Reach into your bag of demonstrations, pick out one that meets these criteria, and bring it to Atlanta.
Your colleagues will be forever in your debt, their students will benefit from your pedagogical
expertise, and your fame will spread to other campuses. Please use the following guidelines to plan
your demonstration.
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Each demonstration must be 10 minutes or less. Presenters who exceed this limit deprive their
fellow presenters of their rightful time, so please maintain the temporal integrity of your session.
The purpose and context of each demonstration must be readily discernible. In the past, some
demonstrations have required more time to introduce and explain than to demonstrate!
Each demonstration must be accompanied by a one-page description, which I will distribute as
part of a single, multiple-page handout. A sample description appears on the next page. You do not
need to adhere slavishly to it, but you must include all of its parts (i.e., title, name, school, principle
demonstrated, purpose, equipment needed, preparation, procedure, and ethical problems).
Contact me (dappleby@iupui.edu) at your earliest convenience if you would like to participate in FNL
and attach a draft of your demonstration’s description to your message. I will need final copies of all
descriptions NO LATER THAN FEBRUARY 4th, 2016 so I can create our handout in a timely manner.
I hope to see you at SETOP next year,
Drew C. Appleby, PhD
Professor Emeritus
USING TEXTBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS
TO DEMONSTRATE THE
INTERDISCIPLINARY NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY
Drew C. Appleby
Indiana University Purdue-University Indianapolis
PRINCIPLE
DEMONSTRATED:
Psychology is an interdisciplinary discipline. That is, it both draws from and enriches the knowledge
and methods of many other academic disciplines (e.g., biology, education, medicine, philosophy,
chemistry, mathematics, etc.).
PURPOSE:
I designed this demonstration to increase my introductory students' awareness of the interdisciplinary
nature of psychology. It can also help them understand that the psychological concepts, principles,
theories, and methods they will learn in my course can also be applied in other academic and
professional fields. I have found that my students are more receptive to the information I present if they
understand how the academic disciplines in which they are majoring (e.g., biology and mathematics)
contribute to psychology and how a knowledge of psychology can enable them to be more effective in
the profession or career to which they aspire (e.g., nursing or education). The discussion that concludes
this demonstration is also an effective way to break the ice on the first day of class, demonstrate that I
advocate active learning, show that I respect other academic disciplines, and establish that I consider
student input to be an important component of my class.
EQUIPMENT:
An introductory psychology text, black board, and a box of chalk
PREPARATION:
I skimmed through my text and noted the numbers of the pages that contain illustrations that could also
be found in the textbooks of other disciplines (e.g., diagrams of the nervous system, the electromagnetic
spectrum, and mathematical formulae).
PROCEDURE:
When I discuss the course syllabus on the first day of class, I stop after I explain the interdisciplinary
nature of psychology and ask my students to take out a piece of paper, open their textbooks to page 70
(which contains an illustration of the human brain), and imagine the following scene.
You are studying in the library. Your psychology book is lying on the table in front of you and is
opened to page 70. One of your friends walks up behind you, sees the illustration on this page, and
says: "Oh, I see you're studying __________."
My students' task is to guess what course their friend would say they are studying and to write page 70
followed by their guess on their papers. I then write the numbers of the pages containing other
interdisciplinary illustrations across the top of the board and tell my students to follow the same procedure
for each of these pages. As soon as I see students looking up after they have completed the task, I invite
them to the board to write their guesses under the page numbers. (I invite everyone in small classes and
the first 20 who finish in large classes.) When all the guesses are written on the board, we discuss the
results, which are usually quite consistent within each page number. Students almost always say that their
friend would guess math when the illustration is formulae and graphs, physics when the illustration is the
electromagnetic spectrum, and biology when the illustration is the nervous system. However some
illustrations produce more heterogeneity of responses (e.g., a picture of three trephined skulls often elicits
responses of archeology, medicine, or criminology and a photograph of a homeless person often prompts
responses of sociology, social work, economics, or theology).
ETHICAL
PROBLEMS:
I have encountered no ethical problems with this demonstration.