I taught undergraduate biopsych for about four years (I'm now doing a
postdoc, temporarily not teaching) and it went really well by almost
any criterion. Sherry Ferguson's post contains most of the advice I
would have given.
I always liked to give out the following questionnaire on the first
day of class. Feel free to use something like it.
The questions on this sheet are meant to help me tailor the course to
your backgrounds and interests. Honest answers would be very helpful
to me, and that's why the inclusion of your name is optional. If
there are questions here that you don't feel comfortable about
answering, skip them.
Thanks,
David
Name (optional) _______________________
List your previous exposures to the study of the brain, whether
from Psychology 101, other courses, books, or elsewhere. Did you
take Principles of Psychobiology, and do you remember it well?
Also, what's the extent of your background in biology?
Why are you taking this course? (All-consuming intellectual passion?
Distribution requirements? Moderate curiosity about the subject,
without plans to study it further? An introduction to the subject,
with plans to study it further? Preparation for the GRE subject test
in Psychology? Some other reason?) Briefly state what you'd like to
do after college, if you know.
I've left room at the end of the schedule for a few lectures-on-
demand. These lectures can cover topics that are in the textbook
(such as: sensory processes; control of movement; development of the
nervous system; ingestive behaviors) or topics that aren't (I've
listed some on the schedule). You can suggest topics by writing
them below, or by requesting them at any time during the semester.
Also, if you have any general or specific questions about the brain
that you'd like answered, feel free to write them here.
>From the last item on the questionnaire, you can infer that I didn't
devote a lecture to every chapter in the textbook. After initial
lectures on electrophysiology and synapses, I devoted two or three
lectures to an overview of functional brain anatomy (from neocortex
down to medulla), and these lectures included summaries of material
that wasn't otherwise very compelling to me (such as somatosensory
function, hunger, and thirst). For the rest of the semester, I
covered a grab bag of topics with which I knew I could do a really
good job, such as visual processing (with case studies of visual
agnosias), language (with case studies of aphasias), emotion, sexual
behavior, and psychiatric disorders.
Students' answers to the questionnaire typically put them into two
main groups: those who would most likely never be required to study
anything resembling biopsych again after my course, and those who
might because they were planning on medical school. For the first
group, I tried to make a point of showing them why one would bother
devoting one's life to the study of biopsych--why the subject is not
dry or dehumananizing. For the premeds--well, just by presenting the
material clearly and keeping it current, I seemed to be doing more
than they'd previously had done for them, and (according to n=1 with
whom I've kept in close contact) more than they would subsequently
have done for them in med school!
I always included LOTS of information and examples that weren't in the
textbook (Carlson); I tried to use the book as a _springboard_ for
lecture topics. I explained, "I'm not doing this to make things
harder for you; I'm doing it to make it more interesting." Students
understood and appreciated that. I also tried to keep my material
updated to the _current week_. Students liked hearing, "Oh, I just
saw this study yesterday in the new issue of _Archives of General
Psychiatry_..."
Let's see...
On Fri, 23 Nov 2001, Ferguson, Sherry went:
> I try to reassure the psych students that there is a foundation of
> information that they must learn at the beginning of the class before we can
> more on to material that is likely to be much more interesting to them.
Yes. My philosophy was that there should never be a moment when
students could wonder, "Why is he _telling_ us this? Why would we
_care_?" I assured them before and during the first few lectures (on
electrophysiology, synapses, and so on) that this seemingly technical
material would underlie most of the answers to questions they were
interested in.
> I ask questions in class in the middle of lectures, typically fact
> questions and then just wait for answers (Do sodium ions move into
> or out of the neuron at the beginning of an action potential? ) - I
> do this a lot at the beginning of the semester and then students
> become accustomed to it and it becomes a review.
I did that occasionally, I always encouraged students to interrupt me
with questions of their own. I always said, "The more times I get
interrupted by questions, the better I think the lecture went."
Oh. Visual aids. I stopped teaching in 1998, pre-Powerpoint, but I
used lots of overheads and handouts, with the goal of helping students
understand where all the brain structures were located so they
wouldn't seem so abstract. ("OK, see the medial part of frontal
cortex right there? That's familiar, right? Well, if you start
digging right where I'm pointing, you'd run into the nucleus accumbens
in just a millimeter or two...") Kalat's book has great cartoon
depictions of transparent brains. For some great photographs of every
conceivable slice, try this book, which I'm sorry is so expensive,
because it's the best human-neuroanatomy atlas I've ever seen:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/3211831584/qid=1006628898/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_8_1/002-6302587-4827206>
--David
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