Justin M. Boucher
The unit will begin with an overview of the process of sensation. For the purposes of a psychology course, it is necessary to give a full review of the five senses, their mechanics, and their various anatomical structures. The students will read the sensation section of their textbooks, and we will discuss this information using the Socratic method. This approach gives the students the opportunity to clarify their understanding of sensory processes and requires their participation to address any of their difficulties.
Through their reading and their questions, the students will begin to understand the processes that are common to all senses: stimulation, transduction, sensation and perception (though perception will be dealt with later in the unit). The material will also include other commonalities like sensory adaptation, thresholds, and signal detection theory. Each of these concepts will be necessary for the students to understand the ways in which their senses function before we begin discussing the anatomy of any specific sense.
During this phase of the unit, we will also begin our discussion of the writing process, with a simple writing assignment based purely on explanation. This exercise will be partially evaluative in nature, giving me the chance to assess more fully where the students are in terms of their writing. We will begin with a simple writing prompt, "All senses are alike in that they…"to be completed in no more than one page. This time limit will encourage the students to explain the basic rules of sensation without allowing them the time or space to rewrite the entire explanation from the text. In order to function as designed, however, the students must complete this assignment in ten to fifteen minutes and with their books closed.
This assignment is suited for this phase of the unit in that the requirements for completion are as simple as possible. In that the goal is to illustrate the relationship between content and skills, it is necessary to do an assignment that is as close to sensation as possible. Initially, it may be very difficult for students to grasp how a writing assignment can mirror the process of sensation. Given that writing is an interpretive experience and that it requires sensation, perception and cognition to be successful, there is no real sensory equivalent in a writing assignment. Thus it will be easier to appreciate the relationship if the writing assignment is, like their senses, both short and imprecise.
It is therefore necessary to make use of a simple description in which the students write down only their initial impressions of the material. Ideally, their responses should take place on the spur of the moment and be based purely on their first impressions. When the assignment is complete, the students will have an opportunity to reflect on it. We will discuss the successes, failures and challenges inherent in the assignment. This discussion will allow students to note the faults in their initial impressions and hasty judgments. It may be necessary to explain the connection to initial sensory impressions, though if the students are successful, they will draw their own connections.
This debriefing will be coupled with discussion and description of our view of the writing process. I will draw explicit connections between the process of seeing something and the process of explaining it to others. At this point I will lay out the outline for the whole unit, offering the students an explanation of the goals and of the path we will take to get there.
It will also be necessary at this early stage in the unit to explain to the students the model of writing we will follow, from seeing, through knowledge to writing. This series will lay out the framework for our writing process, and it will allow the students to assess their own progress as I am also assessing it.
With this foundation in place, the students will study the anatomy of each sense individually. This sequence of material tends to be difficult for students, given that each sense is based on different mechanical and physical processes. At this point the Socratic method becomes more important. While the commonalities of each sense are relatively straightforward, the anatomy of each is quite specific and often difficult to take in all at once.
The next step in the writing process will be a series of short anatomical descriptions. These assignments will ask the class to provide me with diagrams of the mechanics of each of the senses with descriptions of those diagrams. Each student will be responsible for creating an anatomical diagram of one of the five sense organs and a complete description of that diagram. These descriptions will be no more than one page, with the goal of establishing and improving the students' ability to demonstrate their understanding of the basic functions of each sense.
Because this writing assignment will be a description of their diagram, it is more interpretive than our first piece, in that it requires students to consider the information in more detail and with a partner.The students will be given more time and greater access to the material through the use of computer resources so that they can distinguish between each sense and combine multiple pieces of information to complete their assignment.
For each sense students will be given the chance to work with a partner to discuss their descriptions. Given the time constraints in class, it is unlikely that time can be spared for an all--out evaluative workshop process. Yet even this brief process of discussing the work with another student and evaluating information to create a coherent work serves as a useful introduction to perception, thereby modeling the process by which a variety of sensory impulses are combined to create a perception. In this case, an individual student will have to combine his or her own thoughts with those of another student by compiling potentially contradictory ideas to create a coherent thought. If indeed the students fail to draw these connections themselves, it will be useful to discuss them at the beginning of the section on perception.
As we conclude the section of the unit dealing with the mechanics of sensation, it will be necessary to remind the students of the goals of the unit and our understanding of the writing process by drawing the links between sensation and experience. Once again, we will rely on reading and the Socratic method to establish a basic understanding of the process of perception. Perception, like sensation, will be broken into two parts and, consequently, two separate writing assignments. The first part of our study of perception will deal with what psychologists understand as perceptual constants, including illusions.
Our text includes a wide variety of illusions, covering a range of perceptual information. Each illusion tells us something about how we perceive the world, and each offers a piece of the total picture that is perception. Our first analysis assignment in this part of the unit deals with the information that can be gleaned by studying these assignments phenomena. The students will be asked, "What do these illusions tell us about how we perceive the world?" Unlike the previous assignment, this task will be accomplished individually. Again the students will have limitations placed on them. In this case the assignment must be no longer than two pages and will be completed within prescribed time limits of no more than thirty minutes.
In order to accomplish this writing assignment, we will begin by discussing the material together. After drawing the famous Necker cube on the board, the teacher leads the students in brainstorming potential answers to the prompt question based on the figure in front of them.
This activity serves two purposes. First, it builds on the previous activity in that multiple ideas and perspectives are considered. This strategy mimics the process of perception, as it uses multiple sources of information in order to make a determination. Second, this activity requires a greater depth of analysis than the previous assignment, just as the second assignment required greater depth than the first.
Students then write down their responses. Their writing will solidify their understanding of the content on perception. It will also require them to break that information down so that they can build it back up into a coherent idea. The text presents all this information in terms of how the illusions work, not how they demonstrate the realities of our understanding of the world. As a result, even though our discussion partially explains these concepts, the students will be encouraged to truly analyze the material to formulate their own ideas. These ideas, in their newly solid form, will also be based on one of the more difficult concepts for students to master.
When this writing assignment is complete, there will be another debriefing. Under ideal circumstances, the students will have analyzed the material including a discussion of how the mind and the sense organs interact to create meaning. Analysis itself is a difficult concept to pin down, lying somewhere between description and argument. Given that difficulty, it will be necessary to discuss the process they have just completed. The most important part of this discussion will involve convincing the students to outline in a step--by--step fashion what it is they just did. In this way the students will be encouraged to address their own thinking process as well as their own writing process.
The next step in the unit is an analysis of the various theoretical explanations of perception. These theories include learning--based inference, Gestalt theories, and depth perception. Like illusions, each has information that will allow the students to more fully understand the perceptual process. They will also allow the students to more fully understand the ways in which they perceive the world. Furthermore, with a more complete understanding of perceptual processes, the students will have a more complete understanding of the ways in which the brain analyzes the information the senses provide.
The writing assignment connected to this section goes into greater depth than the previous assignments, and it reflects our need to progress from simpler to more complex assignments. Unlike previous assignments, which required students to be responsible for the creation of multiple writing pieces covering the entirety of the material, this time the students will each write only one piece covering only one of the theories. This assignment will allow each student to analyze the material in greater depth and emphasize depth over breadth. Each student will be assigned one of the theories, and he or she will answer the question, "What does your theory teach us about the nature of our relationship to the outside world?"
This assignment will likely require some pre--writing, and therefore students will be encouraged to seek out a partner (the limited number of theories ensures that there will be more than one student dealing with each topic). While working with a partner for brainstorming and initial discussion will be encouraged, each individual student will be responsible for providing his or her own writing assignment and his or her own understanding of the answer to the question. Given that we are beginning to border on argument, there should be a wide variety of student responses even on a single topic. Thus, while collaboration is expected on the meaning of the theory, it will need to be discouraged for the writing assignment.
When the assignment is complete, the class will need to reconvene and debrief once more. In this particular case, each student has a piece of the larger perceptual puzzle. As a result, each student will be something of an expert on his or her own topic and in need of hearing from an expert on all the other theories. Therefore the first step in our debriefing session will be to have the students discuss their individual theories, explaining to the rest of the class what each theory is and what it means. This approach will lay the groundwork for the second phase of the debriefing.
Once all the students have a grounding in each of the theories, they will then take turns presenting their answers to the question that they have been asked to answer. The class will be encouraged to ask questions and challenge the writer in a respectful and productive manner. This discussion should go beyond the mechanics of what the students wrote by delving into the conclusions they drew from the material. Such a discussion has the potential to be quite illuminating for all present, but it could also go wildly astray. Thus it will be necessary to clearly explain the purpose of the conversation. This discussion should focus on analysis, not the quality of the students' writing.
The final step in the unit will be a discussion of cognition and judgment. From the standpoint of the material, the students will read and discuss the sections of our text that deal with memory and cognition. The goal of this juxtaposition between sensation and memory is to connect the ways in which we perceive with the ways in which we think. This is not only a necessary part of understanding knowledge, but it is also necessary for the students to understand the writing process.
Students will have to read about and discuss the processes of memory and then move on to problem solving and language. Each of these concepts is necessary to ultimately understand the writing process, and each has unique information to impart before the students embark on their final writing assignments. The language section will allow the students to evaluate their ability to convey their various understandings into language, and the information on the processes of memory and thought will allow the students to evaluate their ability to establish and recall those understandings. Thus each piece is necessary to the students' overall understanding of knowledge.
The first writing assignment for this section deals entirely with the memory portion of the material. After having read and discussed the various stages of memory (sensory, working and long--term), the students will come to the section on the failures of memory. For the purposes of this assignment we will discuss and brainstorm all the failures of creating memory and the process of remembering before the writing assignment is mentioned. The goal of this discussion is ensure that the students understand the nuances of memory and the ways in which it can be unreliable or totally incorrect.
With this foundation in place, we will progress to our writing prompt. The question for this section is "Given what we know of sensation, perception and memory, can we trust our recollections of events?" This question is designed to rise to the level of argument and to require the students to combine their new knowledge with all the other information covered in the unit thus far. The students will have only one to two pages in which to write this assignment, and the time will be limited as well. These limitations are designed to force the students to make quick judgments, which they will draw upon immediately as we reconvene to discuss their findings.
This discussion will take on some of the characteristics of a debate, but in most ways it will resemble our previous debriefings. As with the previous writing discussion, we will divide the current one into two phases, writing and concept. First we will deal with the conceptual framework of their writing. Ideally, the students have chosen both potential sides of the issue. This choice would allow us to have a true debate on the material and to think deeply about the arguments that have been made. However, it is entirely possible that the students will all line up on one side of the issue or the other. This will require the teacher to step in and provide the students with the other side in order to spur debate and discussion.
The second phase of the debriefing is likely to be more tricky than the first. The students will be asked to discuss what they did while they were writing. How did they reach their conclusions? What analysis did they offer? Is their position strong or weak? This discussion should have a different tone than the debate, and it will likely be necessary for the teacher to plan for that eventuality. It may even be necessary to take a break between the two. In any event, the class should go through the process of creating their pieces step by step, endeavoring to leave nothing out. A picture should be emerging at this point of human understanding of the world outside of themselves and of the process of recording that understanding for others. Ideally, it will not be necessary for the teacher to point this out to the students.
Once the topic of memory and its failings has been satisfactorily addressed, we will progress to our final writing assignment and the conclusion of the unit. Each assignment to this point has built on the last through both the content and writing skill on which it has focused. This assignment is no different, though it does encourage a more complete understanding of all the material than did previous assignments.
The students' final task will be to evaluate people's ability to understand their experiences, to know what is going on, and to convince others of that understanding. Again the students will be provided with a guiding prompt to address. They will be asked, "Evaluate the ability of human beings to understand their experiences and convey that understanding to others through writing." This prompt will require the students to engage with all the skills and the content from the unit as well as to argue persuasively in defense of their ideas. Students will need to briefly explain sensory and perceptual processes. They will need to analyze the failures of perception and memory. And they will need to evaluate cognition and language as a means of conveying that understanding to others in a convincing way. The teacher is thus able to assess not only the material that was covered in previous assignments, but also to evaluate the material (cognition and language) that is new to this assignment.
Additionally, students will be required to pass through all the phases of the writing process as we discussed them earlier in the unit. They will need to review all the information covered in the unit. They will need to know their position and evaluate it based on their experiences of the material. And finally they will need to write out all this analysis, preserving it and passing it along. In this culminating activity the students will finally be able to see the reinforcing relationship between seeing, knowing and writing. This exercise will also allow the students to see how this relationship mirrors that of sensation, perception and cognition.
As with all our later writing assignments, this one will culminate in a discussion of the process of writing their responses and the material contained therein. In this case, however, the discussion will serve as the capstone for the entire unit, and therefore it will be necessary to review the goals and objectives of the unit as well as evaluate the process of creating understanding in general. Again this discussion should be a two--part debriefing, combining an emphasis on content with one on skills. This time, however, the discussion of the skills should focus on the larger relationships present in this unit, including the notion that seeing leads to knowledge, which leads in turn to writing, which can lead to greater knowledge. Similarly, for the sake of comparison, sensation can be shown to lead to perception, which can lead to cognition, which in turn can go back to influence perception. In this way it should be possible to demonstrate once and for all the close link between these two larger activities: the relationships in each system are not just similar, but the same.
