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www.psychlotron.org.uk
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Name of resource: Ethics: collaborative learning activity (forum)
Submitted by: Aidan Sammons
Specification details: AQA-A
Other specifications: AQA-B; Edexcel; OCR
Guidance: instructions for a class based activity using collaborating learning tools (a forum).
This one was designed for a Moodle VLE but would presumably work in any VLE that allowed you
to use forums.  Presumably would also work for distance learning and as an out-of-class activity
but I've not tested it these ways.\

Students are invited to respond to four proposals based on notorious studies as if they were an
ethics comittee.  They are invited to consider whether the research should be allowed/modified/
disallowed completely, and to respond to each others' opinions.

This task was developed for AS-AQA students who had only done the social influence topic, so the 
studies here (Watson & Rayner, Middlemist et al; Bandura et al; Piliavin et al) were unfamiliar 
to them.  The looks on their faces as they read about the studies made the activity worthwhile
in itself.  They enjoyed this activity a lot and produced some excellent responses.  The forum
format allowed all to participate to a greater extent than a classroom discussion might have.

The resource you download gives you moodle forum settings and instruction text in a Rich Text Format
document so you can copy and paste it into your VLE.