Cognitive Psych Case Study

Case Study 1


1. After participating in this activity, what do you think the students will remember? How might those memories differ from those students would have if they only read about the Civil War in their textbook?

After students have the opportunity to do a civil war re-enactment they are more likely to remember the feelings felt when marching into battle, the difficultly of the weaponry, the uncomfortableness of the battle gear, feeling cool being a soldier, and fatigue. The student who had the chance to re-enact the battle compared to reading it in a textbook will more likely remember the hard facts but not the personal feelings of being a soldier. They will know what happened at the battle and who won, but none of their information will help it come alive for them.

2. How does Mr. West’s use of a Civil War re-enactment engage students’ emotions? What is the relationship between emotions and learning?

Students emotion's were engaged by the use of empathy and exhaustion (both mentally and physically) which ultimately it goes back to empathy. When learning and emotions are effective and they are positive then the emotions are used as a recall or a stimulus. Students are able to store this information in a different file folder than when they only read information out of a book. Students are more likely going to remember what happened at that battle than anything else they learned in class that year.

3. Based on the principles of dual-coding theory, what activities would be effective for Mr. West to use as a follow-up to the re-enactment?

Now that the students have visualized and seen the images of the battle, I believe it would be affective to students to now go to the linguistic side. When the students come back from their battle experience they should have a teacher lead class discussion finding out what they learned, what they thought was neat, the unexpected. After the class talks about their experience students should be instructed to write a two page letter home to their family as the soldier back in the civil war. The letter should consist of everything they did, how they felt, anything specific they want their family to know, and to include whether they died in battle or not (another soldier added this part if they died).
Case Study 2

4. Who do you think provides better instruction for his students? Support your answer from an information processing perspective.

Mr. Richards provides better instruction for his students by hitting differences in sensory memory (videos, role play, group work), differences in attention (writing on the board what will be happening that day), and differences in metacognition (with different strategies being used in class the students can decide easier if they understand the material.) He is also helping students to not lose the information.  They are storing the knowledge in their long-term memory.  They will be more likily to retain history information compared to the other class. 

5. How would you expect the students’ learning outcomes to differ depending on which teacher they had?

I believe in Mr. Richards’s class they are more likely to retain and remember the information. With a variety of instructional methods this allows students a better chance to remember the information. They are creating several file folders to store information; not just one.