Psychology+Rich+Task

**Class:** Psychology **Number of Students:** 8 **Year:** 3 **Number of Lessons:** 2 (1 hour 30 minutes per lesson)

**__Background__** ====We were given the chance to carry out a Psychology rich task at Bobergs and as several members of the group have studied Psychology at University, we thought this would be an interesting chance to try and link the topic with Personalised Learning. ==== ====The teacher requested we give the students a general introduction into the topic of expectations with a more particular focus on the "halo effect", which is where the perception of one trait in a person or object influences the perception of other traits. For example judging an attractive person as kind and intelligent solely based on their looks. As there was quite a lot of information to teach the students we decided to begin the class with a PowerPoint presentation and then move on to a more specific task, linking the topic to Personalised Learning. ==== ====In the PowerPoint presentation we began by introducing the topic and then attempted to challenge the expectations of the students by providing them with some examples of real life people who were not initially as they seemed. For example we showed the class a picture of an old lady and asked the students to describe their expectations from the picture. Most students described her as a kind grandmother however in real life the woman "Nannie Doss" had murdered eleven members of her family. ==== ====‍‍‍‍ We then moved more specifically onto the halo effect and reverse halo effect, which is where one negative trait in a person or object causes you to automatically assume that other qualities will be negative. For example judging a non attractive person as unintelligent and untalented based on their appearance. We used two studies ‍‍‍‍from Nisbett and Wilson (1977) and Dion et al (1972) to back up our points. For more information on the topic please see the attached lesson PowerPoint at the bottom of the page. ====

**__The Task and Links to Personalised Learning__**
====Students were asked to produce a representation of the halo effect/reverse halo effect and then present this to the rest of the class. Students were given the freedom to work individually or in groups and they could carry out the task in any way they liked however we also provided them with the following ideas: ====
 * ====Design an experiment which demonstrates the halo effect ====
 * ====Describe or produce a representation of your own experience of the halo effect ====
 * ====Write a newspaper article ====
 * ====Create a video which shows the halo effect in action ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">Produce a piece on how the Halo Effect influences wider issues e.g. racism, marketing (apple), employment, job interviews and first impressions ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">Write a biography of a famous person who has been subject to the halo/reverse halo effect ====

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">The two main components of Personalised Learning that the lesson was linked to are “Teaching and Learning Strategies and “Curriculum Entitlement and Choice” because students were given freedom and choice in how they carried out the task depending on their individual learning styles. However when planning the rich task we were made aware by the teacher that there were pupils in the class who don’t respond well to choice and need clear step by step instructions on how to carry out tasks. In response to this we also included one clear example with step by step instructions that students could follow if they needed to. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">This highlights the fact that although freedom and choice is important for Personalised Learning, not all students like or respond well to it and the two do not necessarily go hand in hand.

__<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**What did the students do?** __ <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">Unfortunately 3 out of the 8 students were not present for the second lesson which meant that some of the class did not complete and present the task. The five remaining students split up into a group of 4 and an individual presentation. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">The group of four produced a short video which demonstrated the reverse halo Effect in action. The video began with the pupils depicting September the 11th, with paper aeroplanes to represent the destruction of the twin towers. They then went on to portray characters entering an American airport. Some of the students played Swedes who were able to enter the country without any issues. On the other hand when a Muslim person attempted to enter the country they were met with problems at security and accusations of terrorism. Through the video the students were portraying the reverse halo effect with the argument that one negative event (September 11th) led to a general prejudice against ordinary Muslims. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">The pupil who decided to work individually produced a poster about the British singer Paul Potts from Britain’s got talent. He spoke about how he is an example of the reverse halo effect because as he is not the most attractive person, people automatically assumed that he was not a good singer.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">__**<range type="comment" id="425676">‍‍‍‍‍‍<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">What did the students think? **__ <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">The Rich Task received an overall rating of 7.8 out of 10 from the 5 students who filled out the evaluation. Students liked the following about the lesson:
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">“ //We could choose how we wanted to show our results”//
 * //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">“It was a fun topic and good to be creative” //
 * //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">“It was interesting and fun” //
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">//“It was fun because we could choose what we wanted to do//”

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">There are several things which could have been improved about the lesson. The students told us that they thought there was too much talking at the beginning of the lesson and too many facts. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">During the rich task we felt that the students did not seem to be very motivated or interested in the task and we received some feedback from the teacher who told us that she felt the students had not put as much effort into the task as they could have done because they knew that it did not contribute to their overall grade. ‍‍‍‍‍‍ This is a wider issue that we have encountered elsewhere within the research and reflects the point that learning is not personalised when students are only interested in doing work in order to pass an exam or get a particular grade. In order to make learning more Personalised assessment needs to be catered "for learning" as opposed to "of learning", which is what we see in many instances.

[|Psychology powerpoint.ppt]