Experiential activities for teaching psychology of aging

Undergraduate students provided quantitative and qualitative evaluations of the usefulness of a variety of experiential activities in a course on the Psychology of Adulthood and Aging. Students evaluated the degree to which t hey felt an exercise or project had facilitated their learning of course ma terial. Thirteen activities were rated and the results suggest that on aver age, students perceived each activity to be helpful. The Elder Mentor Proje ct and a new variation of an activity, the Cognitive Assessment Demonstrati on, received the highest ratings. It appears that highly interpersonal acti vities were perceived by students to be the most valuable in facilitating t heir learning. Students' written comments reveal that learning occurred on a personal level for several activities.