Re: what on earth do we teach students mayor in psychology?

[Charlotte Manly]

Title: Re: what on earth do we teach students mayor in psycho

I'd like just to throw out a related question to you all who teach undergrad methods, or courses with labs, or whatever.  Do you ever have students just go out and start experimenting, before they've learned about proper experimental control, and if so, what is the effect on their learning?  Do they have a better understanding of how and why experimental control is used, or does it confuse them, or is there a lot of individual variability or what?  I'm particularly interested in the effects on the students who don't go on to research, which is the case for most of our majors.

I ask because I've inadvertantly done this.  I teach a 300-level course in problem solving & reasoning, and I put in some optional experiential exercises which can be used to replace an hour exam.  (One is also required by the end of the course.)  For example:

        Preparation: Invent an insight problem. (Or you may look for one in a puzzle book, as long as it doesn't come from the course textbooks or lectures and as long as you reference your source.)  Write down why you think it will be difficult and how you can provide gradual hints that make it easier.  Try it on at least five friends (or other willing victims) and record what they do and what the effect of the hints is.  It's a good idea also to ask them what they thought of the problem (e.g., was it "fair"?) and record their comments.

        Report: Describe your procedure (the problem, the setup, the sequence of hints) and summarize your results.  Were people's responses what you predicted (and what did you predict)?  Why or why not?

Most of my students are juniors or seniors, and since most of our majors avoid the stats/research methods sequence until their senior year, they haven't had a lot of exposure to stats.  (We have about 750 majors, and about 20 faculty members; most classes are quite large.  Mine is "only" about 50 students.) A couple of students who did the above assignment didn't control age, and recognized in retrospect that that might be important.  (Both found that within about the 18-55 range, greater age was more or less positively associated with more insightful problem solving.)  I've also had a couple of students ask whether it's okay if their experiment doesn't come out "right" and I tell them I've had a lot of experiments that didn't work, but I still learned something from them; this suggests there is a lot of confusion about the purpose of experiments.

Charlotte

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Charlotte F. Manly, Ph.D.                 Psychological & Brain Sciences
Assistant Professor                           317 Life Sciences Bldg
ph: (502) 852-8162                            University of Louisville
fax: (502) 852-8904                           Louisville, KY  40292
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http://www.louisville.edu/a-s/psychology/
http://www.louisville.edu/~cfmanl01

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