I believe this is a very common way of doing upper division labs. It was the basic format when I was a student back in the 1970's. It was the basic format when I was a grad student at USC in the 1980's, and it is the format we developed starting about 1990 where I am now.
We have labs that are linked to primary upper division required survey lecture type courses in the major across the usual breadth of courses: developmental, social, clinical, cognitive, memory, learning, animal behavior, biological, cross-cultural...I may be forgetting a couple. All students in the major must take one lab for the requirements for the graduation in the psychological sciences major. We strongly encourage students wanting to go to grad school to take two. We do consider the lab, however, to be a capstone experience so sometimes the discussions we have in the department about encouraging students to take two different labs focus on that point. In theory students can take a lab even in their junior year if they have all the prereqs which usually include lower division stats and research methods, and either prior or concurrent enrollment in the accompanying lecture course. Having developed the cognitive lab in its early days the difference between lab and lecture could best be characterized this way: In lecture we do several coglabs (this varied over the years; started out with in-class pencil and paper tasks, then I used MindScope and evolved over time from there;next time I'm probably just going with OPL) and students answered 3 questions about each lab. Just a short paragraph for each coglab in lecture. Also, in lecture students do two article critiques to practice focusing on research methods and stats (early on we didn't do this; students were introduced to rm and stats at the lower division, then we expected students to master rm and stats in the lab without any intermediate development; now we try to have article reviews in most of our survey lecture courses in the upper division--haven't quite got everyone on board yet as a developmental step). Because students take several lecture courses most often before taking any labs they have repeated practice at this. In lab, however, we cover 4 paradigms in cognition in much greater depth. Three are common to us all but one is of the student's independent creation. So the focus on content is in tremendously greater depth, at the expense of breadth; and we emphasize skills in research methods, statistics and writing in APA style. Of course, each lab is quite different, which is why we encourage those who want to go to grad school to do more than one, because each subarea tends to emphasize different methods. Cognitive is exclusively experimental. In clinical lab, because the students can't really do the work, they write grant proposals. In developmental the focus is more on observational and other descriptive methods. Some courses focus on more qualitative methods, others more quantitative is the bottom line, and we encourage the serious students to have that breadth. I can't speak for all the labs because each is qualitatively different but this is how I have typically run the cognitive lab: for the three studies we do in common we first collect data on ourselves before the students read anything so that they are as naive as possible (not always possible of course); I then assign target papers on which to base replication studies: two for the first lab and increasing numbers as we move along. Then we start the first two labs with me writing an introduction (for later modeling) and the results section; the students write the entire balance. In the third paper they write the whole paper. By the fourth paper the students have to write a formal proposal for what is usually a modified replication study (a few get more original but it's not required and does not garner more points; I encourage those going to grad school to do this as they can develop it into an independent project if they have another semester to go) that goes through our IRB. They have to do an entire independent project. From proposal to final manuscript. At this point I try to get them to work in groups. They write drafts of each section of the paper, and do peer reviews. When they hand in the final project I get the drafts and peer reviews and I do grade the peer reviews. Also they have to do a "poster" presentation. I don't make them pay to print a poster but they put together a poster an a powerpoint slide and we project it on the board as they present their work. We are lucky that we are allowed to keep this lab limited to 10 students. Can you just imagine the workload? It's huge. I hope this helps you. I think this is a very useful course. If you don't yet have a capstone, I think it is a very good way to go. Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> ________________________________ From: Carol DeVolder [[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 2:05 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] labs Hi, Annette's question about lab software reminded me of some questions I've been meaning to ask. My department is in the process of developing lab experiences for some of our courses. The courses we have in mind are Learning and Memory, Sensation and Perception, and Social Psych; however, this is all very formative at this time. My questions are for those of you who do have labs: What courses are the part of? Are they embedded within the course or as a separate experience (a la chemistry lab)? What kinds of activities do your students complete? Anything else you can tell me would be greatly appreciated, including sample syllabi. I teach the S & P course, and last time I used a lab manual and had students complete exercises as part of the course. I'd love to turn it into a more rigorous lab experience though. Thanks, Carol -- Carol DeVolder, Ph.D. Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology St. Ambrose University 518 West Locust Street Davenport, Iowa 52803 563-333-6482 This e-mail might be confidential, so please don't share it. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a21b0&n=T&l=tips&o=8950 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-8950-13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a2...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-8950-13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a2...@fsulist.frostburg.edu> --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. 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