title: Tell me your life: including life stories in an adult development and aging course.
abstract: The goals of this study were to determine the learning impact of an assignment that consisted of interviewing and analyzing older people's life stories, and to explore how the assignment was evaluated by students. Participants in the study were 122 first-year social education students enrolled in an adult development and aging course. They evaluated the assignment using an eight-adjective questionnaire and were asked about the benefits of the task. Their answers to the questionnaire were then reviewed using content analysis. The results indicated that marks on the life story assignment predicted marks on an exam about basic course concepts. Students considered that the assignment was interesting, useful, and integrated into the course, although most of them also thought that it was very time-consuming. They identified benefits related to the explicit goals of the course (improvement in the learning of developmental concepts, the acquisition of research-related skills, and the deactivation of aging stereotypes) and personal, growth-related benefits. The authors discuss the difficulties posed by the assignment and its usefulness as a complement to more traditional, lecture-based teaching methods in adult development and aging courses.
authors: a Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology , University of Barcelona , Barcelona , Spain.
authors: Feliciano
authors: F
authors: Villar
authors: Montserrat
authors: M
authors: Celdran
authors: Josep
authors: J
authors: Fabà
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003479:Curriculum; D004517:Education, Professional; D005260:Female; D005853:Geriatrics / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D033262:Narration; D018794:Problem-Based Learning; D012947:Social Work / Q000193:education*; D013030:Spain; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: aging; autobiographical memories; developmental psychology; experiential learning; life experiences