Highlights
Learning by Experience and Discovery
ZAPS allows students to experience psychological principles as never before, through three types of interactive exercises: experience, experiment, and discovery.
- Experience ZAPS exercises provide students with the chance to directly experience psychological phenomena such the Simon Effect or the Ponzo Illusion.
- Experiment ZAPS exercises allow students to participate as a subject in an experiment such as a mental rotation task. Students can view their individual data after the experiment and instructors can view the aggregate data of the class or group.
- In Discovery ZAPS exercises, students take on the role of the researcher, performing experiments on virtual humans and animals.
Accessible Four-Part Pedagogy
The four-part pedagogy of ZAPS clarifies the concepts behind each experiment:
- An introduction helps students connect each experiment to a concrete, real-world example.
- An experiment allows students to experience psychological phenomena in the role of subject or researcher. Where appropriate, a data section with a detailed breakdown of results follows the experiment. Instructors can collect aggregate class data.
- A theory section allows students to read about the theoretical basis behind each experiment after it is completed.
- A further info section offers students additional real-world examples or discussion of similar phenomena.
Proven Effectiveness
The ZAPS have been successfully tested in classrooms in North America and Europe. In addition, these exercises have been reviewed by software and psychology conferences around the world and adjusted according to suggestions.
Instructor Resources
The Instructor’s Guide (Lauretta Reeves, University of Texas, Austin) provides useful tips on how to integrate ZAPS with textbook concepts and classroom discussion. The class results feature allows instructors to collect ZAPS data from students in real time.
Copyright © 2005, W. W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved.
XHTML, CSS, 508