Generating a Product for an External Audience

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 OTHER TIPS: GENERATING A PRODUCT FOR AN EXTERNAL AUDIENCE

Generating a Product for an External Audience

Shared by: 

Abe Rutchick, Psychology

Materials needed:

Variable, depending on project, but various wiki-building tools are a good start for many projects

Learning challenge addressed/predictable outcome:

Greater student engagement; more applied projects

Best used for:

Any class (particularly useful for large and/or online classes)

Learning objectives/skills fostered:

Collaboration skills; writing/communication practice; command of material

What to do/how to do it:

Assign a project (possibly a semester-long project, though this is not necessary) in which students (ideally in groups) distill a subset of the course material into a form that can be read and accessed by an external audience. This audience can vary; high school students is a good one, but community members, senior citizens, etc. could be appropriate for different courses and projects.

The specific form of the distillation can vary. In the past I have assigned a Wikipedia for introductory psychology (“Psychipedia”), which was shared with a high school psychology course...but the possibilities here are many. Multimedia products are particularly successful.

Tips for implementing:

Have the audience evaluate the different subsets of the product. That is, the audience should rate the different sections (the products of each group), and those ratings should be incorporated into students’ grades. (Students, of course, should be aware of this, and should design their product accordingly.)