Summary / extract
+ keywords: |
Personality types, intelligence strengths, and students' personal network diagrams are the focus of this activity. It is designed to follow on from the 'Semester Opener' activity hear on Skillcity. That activity contains the homework assignment that is debriefed here.
Basically, this one-hour session helps students to understand the ways in which they differ from one another and to appreciate the opportunities that those differences provide. The personality-type test is a free version of the widely-used, Myers Briggs Temperament Indicator (MBTI) called the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. Although such tests are vulnerable to being used for stereotyping, students in the class discussion seem to pick up on that danger very quickly.
Students are also introduced to Howard Gardner's intelligence strengths -- verbal, mathematical/logical, musical, kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. They tend to like these distinctions more than the four general personality temperaments that the free online Keirsey test has to characterise them.
Finally, the activity has students comparing diagrams that they have drawn of their personal networks. Students have stated that they particularly appreciate seeing what other students do for homework. In addition, early in the semester, this sort of public comparison helps students who are not putting in the energy they should to recognise the standard of work that other students are investing.
Taken together, as noted above, these activities work well early in the session to help students to see and appreciate differences and similarities among them. This perception can be particularly useful when there are significant cultural differences in a class. Students from very different cultural backgrounds might recognise that they share a personality type category or an intelligence strength.
This set of activities has become a cornerstone of several subjects that I teach and guest lecture in. They introduce issues of diversity by letting students focus on themselves.
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| Uses of submission: |
Activity, Teams or groups |
| Time needed for activity: |
1 hour
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| Sender department & institution: |
Science Communication Program, University of New South Wales
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