Hi Deb: (weren't you the one who was expecting a baby some time soon in June at AP reading? how did that come out?--pun intended)
Just first of all I think the idea of making it extra credit is not a good idea. What we do, and I think most schools do is have a 'research experience' requirement in intro psych. It makes good pedagogical sense. Lots of reasons, you can figure it out, I won't bore you. Thus, students can either participate or they can read, review and hand in a brief (2 pages double-spaced) paper on a research article from a reputable psychogical journal (we provide a list of journals that are acceptable and held in our library--mainly APA published but a few other good journals). #1: We deal with the point system by making it a mandatory part of each course, but without a grade attached. No points. It is a simple affair: you (addressing the student) MUST do the research experience. If you don't do it you get an 'F' in the course! You can satisfy this mandatory requirement by either participating in a study or handing in a typed paper. while there is no pressure on one or the other the vast, vast, vast majority of students do the participation option. On the other hand, I've had some students who wanted to 'get it over with' and handed in 3 papers the first week of class! #2 the only weighting system is based on time. Anything less than an hour (even 5 minutes) counts as 1 participation credit. Anything over an hour counts as 2, etc. with one point for every additional hour. Does that make sense? When we decided how many of these credits we would require we simply asked each of our faculty to tell us how many participants they had used the previous year and how many they anticipated needing the next year. We have 9 faculty members. We ended up with 3 credits per student. If you run out of studies they can do the other option. If you need more participants, lots of our students liked the experience so much they did more than the 'required' 3, for free! Several survey studies lucked out with nice large samples, catching people who wanted a quick credit at the end of the semester. #3 we don't worry about the glut of extra-credit seekers in our system. We believe, as a faculty, we challenge them plenty in class, and offer plenty of opportunities to perform in our classes. They don't need to spend time on extra credit. They can spend it on 'credit' so to speak. Anyway, that philosophical stance eliminates the end of semester worry. #4. The alternative, because we have structured it as 'research experience' is generally reading a research article in a reputable psych journal and handing in a report. Students are actually quite able to figure it out and usually just give a summary; something like a much expanded Abstract. I do not read them closely; I just skim them to make sure it seems to me that they actually read the article and got the idea that this is research. Lots of students find the articles bewildering but that's OK. Since it is not graded, I only want to see that they made an effort. #5: yes. we do this also but we have so few students who take the testing course in any given semester it does not 'use up' much of the subject pool. #6: we have a bulletin board devoted to posting sign-up sheets. They sign up. If they no show they must do an extra assignment. They are given a single sheet of paper with 4 potential sign-off spots. It is their responsibility to not lose this sheet over the course of the semester and to remember to get it signed it with each paricipation. They hand it in at the end of the semester. They lose it, they are rapidly doing the 3 article reviews at the end! No sheet, 'F' in the course! There are several excellent books out there on how to set up a subject pool. I have the titles at work, I am at home, I will *TRY* to remember to get those titles to you. I will also try to get a copy of our guidelines we give to students and send it to you. I would run this by my IRB. It's just a courtesy. All of our studies must have an IRB number attached--this means that we now require any study that solicits participants outside of a single classroom (which we define as the limit of classroom instructional purposes) must at least have filed for exempt status for their study. We are a small enough school and have an extremely cooperative administrator, that we can get exempt studies (and often expedite studies) turned around within a week. I know that is an exception to most IRBs. Unfortunately. Oh yes, and because it is to be a pedagogically valuable experience we require researchers using the pool to have a debriefing and/or debriefing statement, regardless of whether or not one would normally be required (i.e., no deception). Annette Quoting Deb Briihl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I know we have covered this before (sorry!), but a group of individuals in > our dept. are thinking about creating a subject pool. We don't want it to > be mandatory, but are thinking about making it for extra credit. We are > having a few issues we are trying to clear up. > 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? > 2. How many experiments do students get a chance to do? Do you use a > weighting system (based on length of time)? > 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? > 4. What do you use as an alternative to the experiments? > 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? > 6. How do students sign up for experiments? How do you keep track of all of > the points? > > > > Deb > > Dr. Deborah S. Briihl > Dept. of Psychology and Counseling > Valdosta State University > Valdosta, GA 31698 > (229) 333-5994 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://chiron.valdosta.edu/dbriihl/ > > Well I know these voices must be my soul... > Rhyme and Reason - DMB > > > --- > You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Department of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
