Deb, Here are a few answers on how we do it at The College of Saint rose.
Deb wrote: 1. Multiple people teach Intro to Psych (and therefore, the average weight of each assignment can also vary). So, my class may have a total of 600 points and someone else's may have a total of 500 points. How do you deal with that? Everything we do is based on the number of 15 minute segments of participation students have. Then, various faculty teaching intro can assign any weight they want to to a single 15 minute segment of participation. At the end of the semester, each faculty member gets a report indicating the students name and the number of 15 minute segments he/she has earned. Deb wrote: 2. How many experiments do students get a chance to do? Do you use a weighting system (based on length of time)? Each semester the number of experiments available for students to participate in (and their length, which is an important variable for us) vary as do the participant restrictions for each study (males only, no smokers, no diabetics, etc). Thus, we do things based on time of participation as indicated above and we have an alternative to participating which involves a 2 page paper (1 page summary and 1 page critical reaction) of selected APA journal articles. This way, if there are not enough experiments for students to participate in they can still earn credit. Many of us who teach intro require students to earn "experimental points" as an important introductory level experience. Students can earn them by participating and/or doing article summaries. Deb wrote: 3. Do you have a system in place to prevent a glut of students looking for extra credit experiments at the end of the semester? No, but we make it very clear that students who wait until the end of the semester may not have much of a selection. Personally, I tend to stop data collection toward the last 1/4 of the semester, as I have found that the participants are generally unreliable and very often display clear signs of not caring about the process and only caring about earning their experimental point. I actually had one student put his head down on the desk after about 3 seconds when I asked him to complete a paragraph recall test for which he was given 5 minutes! Needless to say he didn't write down anything. Deb wrote: 4. What do you use as an alternative to the experiments? We offer students the opportunity to write a 2 pg paper as stated above. Students get to select articles from specific recent issues of APA journals. Deb wrote: 5. Can students participate in more that just experiments. For example, we have a Masters in Clinical/Counseling and students in that program are required to take classes that train them to give Intelligence and Personality tests. Could Intro students be participants in this? We don't have anything like this, but it sounds like an interesting possibility. Especially if your purpose of creating a subject pool is like ours...to provide students with some real experience with the empirical process and primary research/assessment. Deb wrote: 6. How do students sign up for experiments? How do you keep track of all of the points? There are a couple of ways students are exposed to opportunities to sign up for research. Some researchers arrange with intro psych faculty to get 15 minutes of class time to administer a survery or conduct a study. Sometimes sign-up sheets are passed around intro psych classes and there is also a bulletin board just for posting sign-up sheets for experiments. Our department has one faculty member (me) who serves as coordinator of the human subject pool. Faculty notify me when they will be using the subject pool and tell me the title of their experiment as well as the number of minutes students typically earn for participation. Students wishing to use the subject pool must meet with me, fill out a form indicating they have read the rules of using the pool, and provide me with a copy of their IRB protocol approval. All researchers fill out and submit to me a card with the participants name, experiment name, researcher name, supervisor name (if applicable), name of student's intro psych professor, and the number of minutes the participant earned for his/her participation. When I receive these I have a graduate assistant create a spreadsheet for each intro psych faculty member's class. I must caution you, however, if you take this approach, it must be made very clear to students that they do NOT come to you (coordinator) for information about the study(ies) they have participated in or signed-up for. I'm not a clearinghouse for students who didn't bother to write down when/where the study is they think they are supposed to participate in today! Hope you find this helpful. I'm at home right now, but if you would like copies of our forms for students and researchers send me an emial and I'll send them to you on Tuesday. Cheers, Rob Flint -------------------------------- Robert W. Flint, Jr., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Psychology The College of Saint Rose --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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