Abstract
One difficulty in teaching service courses such as Psychology of Adolescence is maintaining the interest of nonmajors without sacrificing course-relevant content. A course project that is helpful in overcoming this problem is described. The project requires students to observe some type of media (e.g., television) and determine the extent to which particular themes occur. The three crucial features of each project are that the students: (a) consider as aspect of the media that is relevant to some portion of the course material, (b) set up clearly defined categories, and (c) count the number of observed instances of those categories. There are pitfalls to consider, as well as advantages and disadvantages of various approaches to the project.
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