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A computer-interactive
Honors Introductory Psychology course
encourages students to pursue experimental approaches in psychology
and neuroscience.
Developed
by Kenyon professors
Tabitha Payne and Hewlet
McFarlane
Poster at APS meeting
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| Honors
Introductory Psychology: A computer-interactive course design
This course was designed with several goals, one of which was to provide a more personalized learning environment for students that are seriously interested in a career in psychology or neuroscience and have had experience with these topics prior to college entry. A growing number of entering students express interest in neuroscience and experimental psychology, without realizing the skills that are needed to pursue these fields.
The Honors course has a variable format that consists of meeting for lecture, discussion, and laboratory exercises each week so that students would acquire a variety of skills to apply for later courses in psychology. The course covers topics in greater depth that the traditional introductory course, and used supplementary readings to facilitate discussion. Finally, the goal for this course is to provide the opportunity to learn computerized skills that can be applied toward collection and analysis of data. Having such training should better prepare students for research methods courses in the upcoming years.
In order to provide a more in depth understanding of topics in psychology, this course focuses on basic processes, as opposed to psychology in context, which is offered the following semester as an independent course. Basic process topics include introduction and history of psychological science, research methods, statistics, sensation, perception, learning, memory, language, and intelligence. For each topic, students attend lecture, which is also computer-interactive in that students follow along with the instructor using a Powerpoint presentation that was displayed on each individual’s monitor. The presentations include links to web sites with example demonstrations and exercises (such as the Stroop Task). Class discussions are held in a separate classroom where students can sit in a round-table environment to facilitate active dialogue. Lastly, students have the opportunity to participate in laboratory experiments, some of which are computerized, such as a study on hemispheric lateralization. Other experiments are more hands-on in the sense that students learned to use equipment, such as an audiometer to test absolute threshold, or learn to run a computerized program for a working memory assessment. In 2005, students learned to analyze data from some of these studies, and they created a class survey on Sleep and Dreaming Behavior in College Students. This study was a successful exercise in how to prepare a survey, collect data, and report statistical results. Weekly class activities are documented on the course web page, as well as student resources.
With the goal of a heavy computer-interactive format, it was necessary to create a computer laboratory for this course. The enrollment of students is kept low in order to ensure that instruction could be more personal (i.e., 10 students. A new laboratory was equipped with Mac computers and software for various exercises. Software packages included programs such as Prism (for graphing and statistics), Neurovision (for visualization exercises), and CogLab (for experimental exercises). Students also use SPSS for statistical analyses and learn to create graphs using Excel.
The computer laboratory and course development were funded by the Kenyon's undergraduate program award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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