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Watch and Report Assignment
The watch and report assignment aims to bridge classroom learning and daily life
for students by having them watch for news items that are relevant to course topics.
Students report on the item to the class in a brief oral presentation.
I have used this assignment in classes at a large university in Canada, in a small college in
Japan and at a community college in America.
It is a valuable assignment for increasing critical thinking and for applying classroom learning
to everyday experiences. It also is a useful language teaching tool.
Links to files you can download and use/adapt for your
class:
Watch and Report directions (handout for students) - includes
presentation pointers
Watch and Report Helper
(handout) - to assist students in preparing
their watch and report, and also can serve as a graded worksheet.
Sample Watch and Report class calendar
You can read more about this assignment in these sources:
- Lahar, C.J. and Philippoussis, S.A. (1999). POSTER HANDOUT
Cross-cultural application of student media presentations in psychology classes.
Presented at the American Psychological Association, Boston, MA. August, 1999.
- Lahar, C.J. (1999). Bringing student's media reports to the EFL classroom: Reflecting on
enhancing the applicability of psychology to daily life.
Published in Comparative Culture, Vol 5, 117-123. (email
Cindy for a copy)
- and a related article available on the WWW is:
Lahar, C.J. (1996).
The applicability of psychology to everyday life:
Integrating new technology with old in the teaching of psychology.
The Gazette, New Currents, December, p. 5
RESEARCH PRIOR TO 2001
Classes which I have included "watch and report" as a graded assignment.
The total number of courses (prior to Fall 1999) in which I have used newspaper articles and other media to help relate the daily media to
course topics is 10 (Canada) and 7 (Japan). Of these courses, 2 in Canada and 7 in Japan had a graded assignment which
required that the students find relevant articles and orally report on these in class.
It is these nine courses that were reported on in
the APA presentation in Boston.
Additional classes in the Fall of 1999 and in 2000 have also completed this assignment. In a number of these courses
students filled out surveys about this assignment. Survey results will be made available soon.
Feel free to email me with any questions or to request
copies of handouts and/or reprints of articles.
E-mail me at clahar@yccc.edu
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This page was updated in September,
2003 by C.J. Lahar |
