Suggestion 187. Give students field experience assignments

IF YOU WANT TO:

• Give interesting and stimulating assignments

• Have students apply concepts to demonstrate understanding

• Motivate students to do their best work

Making assignments which give students field experience.

A political science professor always includes at least one experiential assignment in his courses. A recent example was to require students to interview a Bay Area politician as well as his or her spouse, children, staff members, and several constituents in order to get a better understanding of daily life of a politician and the issues and problems he or she faces.

"Students were then asked to share their experiences with the class so that some generalizations could be drawn. They compared their own conclusions with those presented by both the theoretical and the popular conceptions of politicians represented in their reading assignments.

"Students are so experience-poor and theory-rich," he explains, "that I find as many ways as possible to get them to use the Bay Area as a laboratory for enriching their understanding of the course concepts and theories. Students are also so competitive, that I try to give them a few non- competitive assignments where each student has his or her own unique experience which can be pooled with those of others in the class in a way that enriches everyone's understanding."

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Copyright 1983 by the Regents of the University of California

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