|
Out-of-Class Honors Credit
IDS 285 Honors Undergraduate Research
Honors students assists faculty members with faculty
research projects.
This course is comparable to PSY 290, but it is for
Honors credit. IDS 285 provides a good opportunity for
students to become familiar with faculty labs and research
projects. Students must complete the Honors Program form and have
it approved before they can register for IDS 285.This
course can be taken for 1-3 hours.
IDS 286 Honors Undergraduate Research II
Continuation of IDS 285.
Students must register for the course with the same faculty member
for IDS 285. Students must complete the Honors Program for and
have it approved before registering for IDS 286. This course can
be taken for 1-3 hours.
IDS/PSY 299 Independent Honor Study
Intensive work in a special area of students'
major or minor. Each individual project is to culminate
in a comprehensive written report or examination.
This course is designated as an IDS Independent Honors
Study course. This course is similar to IDS 285 and 286.
However, instead of working on faculty research, students
take the primary responsibility for designing and completing
their own research project. The Honors Program form should include
a description of the research and students' responsibility
with the projects (see example below). Students must complete
the Honors Program form and have it approved before registering
for IDS/PSY 299. The course can be taken for 1-6 hours.
IDS 395.03 Honors Thesis: Psychology
Intensive research in a special area of the student's
major. Each individual project is to culminate in
a comprehensive written thesis and an oral defense
of the thesis.
This is a new course designation for Honors Thesis
and it replaces of PSY 299 for honors credit. Students
who want to obtain Departmental Honors at graduation
should register for IDS 395.03 instead of PSY 299.
Students must complete the Honors Program form and
have it approved before registering for IDS 395.03.
This course also requires students to have worked
in the faculty member's research lab for at least a semester
prior to registering for honors thesis hours. PSY
395.03 can be taken for 1-6 hours. However, a minimum
of 3 hours of IDS 395.03 is needed to satisfy departmental
honors requirements.
The honors thesis must be an independent project of students'
design. This does not mean students have to come up
with their own idea, but it must be a research project
where students have primary responsibility and must
be substantive enough that students can present their
research. This course requires a comprehensive written
thesis and an oral defense of the thesis at the department's
Honors Colloquium, during the fall or spring semester.
Contact Dr. Jeffrey Wagman, at
JeffreyWagman@ilstu.edu,
for more information.
Example—a description of an honors thesis project:
A Comparison of Familiarity and Automatic Memory
Processes for Conceptual and Perceptual Tasks
The project will involve experiments investigating differences
between conscious and automatic memory in terms of forgetting
and type of processing in the task. The student will be
responsible for all stages of the project including stimulus
development, subject running, and data coding and analysis.
The student will prepare written paper describing the
research and conclusion, and will make a presentation at the
Department of Psychology Honors Colloquium.
Note: Honors students may register for PSY
287, 290, and 390, but will not receive Honors credit
for these courses. Students may register for a maximum
of 15 hours of outofclass experiences, including Honors
designations of these courses.
In-Class Honors Credit
In addition to outofclass Honors credit, the department also offers
Honors sections of content and skill courses. The department
periodically offers Honors sections for PSY 110, 138,
and 231. Students can earn Honors
credit by completing the Honors section of these
courses.
Honors students may also approach faculty
about in-class honors projects for psychology courses.
These projects have often involved an additional research
paper, but can be
any project faculty and students agree
upon that is in addition to normal course requirements.
For in-class honors credit, projects can include the
following:
- working an extra hour a week as research assistants
in faculty labs if topics are related to the course;
- preparing a literature review on a topic related
to the course;
- proposing and conducting a small research project
related to the course;
- evaluating media news related to psychology; or
- developing study guides for the course (e.g., unit
quizzes).
|
