Summer SAVY, Session 5 Day 1, Exploring the Human Mind: Intro to Psychological Research (7th-8th)
Dear Exploring the Human Mind parents,
It is such an honor to be spending the week co-constructing knowledge with your fabulous students. We began the day with introductions, where I got a small peek into your students’ individual interests. We then engaged in some peer-to-peer class norm-building and interviews about previous psychology experiences, interests, and/or hopes/fears for the week ahead. It was shortly after this morning’s slew of icebreakers that some of your students’ personalities really began to come to life.
We jumped into our “introduction to psychology” segment of class, where we went over the 5 major domains of psychology and watched videos about some famous psychology experiments, like the Stanford Prison Experiment. After each of these videos, we chatted as a group about the experiments’ limitations and discussed what important information we could take away from the experiments as a whole. We then played Kahoot games to check what knowledge your students had acquired so far, and the students loved this competitive aspect! Based on their enthusiasm, we will be sure to include more games during the rest of the week.
Before we knew it, the morning had flown by, and it was time for lunch. After pausing to eat, we went on a tour of one of Vanderbilt’s psychology buildings, where we looked at research posters and toured the Stress and Early Adversity Lab. It seems like your students really enjoyed looking at 3D models of infant brains during this tour! We spent the next hour discussing challenges to conducting research, including balancing ecological validity with experimental control. I was so impressed by the students’ lively discussions and encouraged those who didn’t feel as comfortable sharing with the whole class to discuss their opinions in small groups.
Tomorrow we will begin to come up with ideas for students’ own research projects. I cannot wait to see what they come up with! In the meantime, here are some dinner table questions:
- Is there such a thing as a “perfect” research study? Why or why not?
- What are some ways we can test research questions that are interesting to us?
- How do we weigh the strengths and limitations of different study designs?
We have much to look forward to still!
Sincerely,
Abby
P.S. If students have iPads or laptops, please have them bring their devices tomorrow for some group work! If not, they will be perfectly fine to share with their groupmates.