The Media Assignment: Enhancing Psychology Students’ Ability to Apply Their Knowledge of Psychology

In this study, I explore whether a media assignment, similar to that used by Rider (1992), increased introductory psychology students’ ability to apply their knowledge of psychological concepts to examples of real-world events. Students collected examples from the popular media that illustrated either operant-or classical-conditioning concepts. Afterward, they took a quiz that contained factual and applied multiple-choice questions on these concepts. Students who collected examples of operant-conditioning concepts performed better than other students on quiz questions designed to assess their ability to apply their knowledge of operant conditioning. However, students who collected examples of classical-conditioning concepts did not outperform other students on applied classical-conditioning questions. Media assignments may enhance students’ learning and their ability to apply course knowledge to real-world events.