Create, Innovate, and Educate... All at the Same Time!

1. Create, Innovate, and Educate... All at the Same Time! Creatively Engaging Students

2. Global warming is the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people"

3. Jones & Fernyhough 2008Personality & Individual Differences • 219 college students • Reported daily caffeine intake • Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale (LSHS): 16-item survey “designed to measure predisposition to hallucination-like experiences”

4. Jones & Fernyhough 2008Personality & Individual Differences • Caffeine intake correlated with LSHS = +.22

5. Caffeine Can Enhance Hallucinations

6. Drinking Too Much Coffee Leads to Hallucinations Thaindian News

7. Engaging students in research • understand basic and advanced research designs • participate actively in the research process • be critical consumers of scientific information in lay media • search for alternative explanations

8. Three primary research designs: • correlational • true experiment • quasi-experiment

9. Basic Research Designs: Developing Film Plots

10. Basic Research Designs: Developing Film Plots • Hell, Michigan (pop. 266), High School: • ACT scores equal to national average • Beginning in 2001, scores began dropping 8 – 15% yearly. • Develop of Film Plot Line • A crack team of psychologists is called in • Solve the mystery • End up appearing on Oprah.

11. Basic Research Designs: Developing Film Plots • Restrictions: • Case studies • Correlational or quasi-experimental studies • True experiments

12. Basic Research Designs: Developing Film Plots • Two variables that cause ACT decline • Variables must interact to produce the decline. • Subplots are encouraged.

13. Searching for alternative explanations • Data bases on the web. • Every Child Matters Education Fund (http://www.everychildmatters.org)

14. Searching for alternative explanations • Homeland Insecurity (1st edition) • “This should be a real wake-up call to those who think that taxes are a ‘4-letter word.’ When you slash state and federal taxes, you shortchange the life and health of U.S. children. It is that simple and it is that tragic.” • Michael R. Petit • President, Every Child Matters Education Fund

15. Searching for alternative explanations • Correlation between state tax burden and child well-being index = +0.55 • Look for an alternative explanation • Correlation between per capita income and child well-being index = • +0.63

16. Cemeteries as Data Sources

17. Cemeteries as Data Sources • In the context of the changing role of women • Students generate hypotheses and theoretical justifications within the constraints of the data. • Data: • Birthdates and death dates of husbands and wives. • Pre-1958 and post-1958 • Rural, town, and city cemeteries

18. Cemeteries as Data Sources Students gather these data in teams Data from each team are tabulated and distributed Each student uses these data to test their hypotheses. Generate alternative explanations for their results

19. Searching for alternative explanations • Don’t Mock God exercise • I received an email recently that contained the following: • Here are some men and women who mocked God: • John Lennon • Tancredo Neves • Marilyn Monroe

20. Searching for alternative explanations “Those who mock God will suffer untimely deaths.” As evidence, the writer assembles several case studies. To thoroughly evaluate how true the writer’s message is. Gather case studies of not just the one category that the writer does, but three other categories as well.

21. Searching for alternative explanations • Mocked God, died young • John Lennon • Tancredo Neves • Marilyn Monroe • Mocked God, died old • Karl Marx (64) • Charles Darwin (73) • Bertrand Russell (97) • Didn’t mock God, died young • M. L. King, Jr. (39) • Joseph Smith, Jr.(38) • Joan of Arc (19) • Didn’t mock God, died old • Billy Graham (92 & going) • Ayatollah Khomeini (86) • Pope John Paul II (84)