Philosophy and Mission

• The student and instructors share responsibility for the quality of a process -- the process of the student's learning.
• The core motivation, for both student and instructors, should be the satisfaction that derives from improving the quality of the student's learning.

Course Objectives

• Understand basic statistical reasoning. Statistical methods provide powerful analytic tools for almost every human enterprise that can state its observations in numbers. A critical understanding of statistics -- its limitations as well as its potentials -- is almost as essential for modern living as is the ability to read and write.
• Gain access to existing knowledge by:
• locating published research in psychology and statistics and related fields,
• locating information on particular topics and issues in psychology, and
• searching out psychological data as well as information about the meaning of the data and how they are derived.
• Display command of existing knowledge by:
• summarizing current controversies in the psychological literature,
• stating succinctly the dimensions of current psychological issues, and
• explaining key psychological and statistical concepts and describe how they can be used.
• Display ability to draw out existing knowledge by:
• writing a precise summary of a published journal article,
• reading and interpreting a quantitative analysis, including regression results, reported in a psychology journal article, and
• showing what psychological and statistical concepts and principles are used in psychological analyses published in journal articles.
• Learn by doing, i.e., manipulate real data using SPSS (Statistical Program for the Social Sciences) and explicate a number of controversies that are currently in the news, in a team setting.

Click the following link to view Psychology Department Course Objectives.

Readings

Software

Meeting Times

Participation

Some Good Advice

Note: A major finding of the Harvard Assessment Seminars concerns the value of small groups to enhance students' learning:

"in every comparison of how much students learn when they work in small groups with how much they learn in large groups or when they work alone, small groups show the best outcomes. Students who study in small [study] groups do better than students studying alone. The payoff comes is a modest way for student achievement, as measured by test scores. It comes in a far bigger way on measures of students' involvement in courses, their enthusiasm, and their pursuit of topics to a more advanced level. And students overwhelmingly report one additional benefit of small group work. They point out that the process of working in a group, in a supervised setting, teaches them crucial skills. The skills they learn include how to move a group forward, how to disagree without being destructive or stifling new ideas, and how to include all members in a discussion. Students should think twice if they find themselves spending all their time working alone."

If You Need Help...

Extra assistance

Any student needing to arrange a reasonable accommodation for a documented disability should contact Disability Concerns at 350 Fell Hall, 438-5853 (voice), 438-8620 (TDD).

Assignments

• Lab Exercises: Every lab class (except lab exam days) will include a lab assignment. These labs may include group as well as individual exercises. Each of the labs will be presented in a Blackboard Learning Module. A Lab Text will present instructions and material, and Lab Exercises are for you to complete. To get credit for the lab, you must save your completed Lab Exercises in Blackboard. It will be graded and you will receive feedback after all four sections of lab are completed.
• Blackboard Homework/Quizzes: There will be a total of 10 Blackboard quizzes. Blackboard (previously known as WebCT) is an ingenious Web-based system for asynchronous, interactive learning. Blackboard has been programmed to randomly generate and select questions for a homework quiz from a designated pool of questions for each concept we cover in the course. You will do your Blackboard homework quiz on-line and it will be graded on-line. The Blackboard system will then record your grade in the on-line gradebook module. However, within the time period allotted for a homework quiz, you may repeat a homework quiz up to five times. You should know, however, that,when you retake the homework quiz, the questions will be different but will test the same material.
• Exams: There will be four exams, each including part given in lecture class and part given during scheduled lab times. Exams are cumulative to the extent that the material from later parts of the class build upon material from the early parts. The exams include conceptual, computational, and SPSS questions. The in-class part will be written; calculators but no notes are allowed. The in-lab part will be on Blackboard like Lab Exercises and Assignments and Homework Quizzes. More information about each exam will be given in class.
• Projects: There will be two projects for the course. Each project is designed to apply the principles of the unit to a realistic research project. Project assignment sheets are in your reading packet and due dates are listed on the syllabus. For the Final Projects (Project #2) you will be given a brief description of a research project with a set of data. Your task will be to analyze the data set and to write a written summary of the results of your analyses. Project descriptions and data sets will be posted on the course web pages. Ask the instructors for help on the projects if you need it.

Earning Credit and Grading Scheme

• 25 labs, up to 10 points each (250 total).
• 9 homework/quizzes, up to 15 points each (135 total).
• 4 exams, up to 125 points each (500 total)
• 2 projects, worth 35 and 80 points (115 total).

Therefore, there is a total of 1000 possible points. The grading scheme is not a curve. The final semester grade is determined as follows:

You may gain up to 18 points of extra-credit.