Material:
- the material is probably the best part of the course, as it's REALLY interesting and applicable to everyday situations.
- material started off with research methods, and continued with conformity, persuasion, prejudice, aggression, altruism, self esteem, attribution, cognitive dissonance, groups, and sex (best for last
).
The Prof:
- Dr. Ostovich is an AMAZING lecturer; almost every class was captivating, and that's tough to say for a night class (IMO).
- She's very knowledgeable in the field and her lectures are easy to follow.
- Downside: she does not post her notes, but rather summary slides, so u NEED to take good notes during class and catch all of the small details
- She heavily emphasizes experiments & the significance of their results
Course Breakdown:
- Marks consist of 2 midterms worth 30% each and a final exam (40%)
- Midterms were non cumulative and consisted of multiple choice and short answer, short answer being worth twice as much as multiple choice.
- Beware of the short answer, your answers must be VERY specific and contain all of the key words the T.A's are looking for. If you fail to include something, they will not hesitate to penalize, and you'd be surprised how easily small marks off can add up.
- She likes taking her multiple choice questions from the textbook, so it is beneficial to at least skim through the assigned chapters
- The final exam consisted of 15 multiple choice and 9 short answer. I found it to be a little more subjective/ unfair with respect to the midterms. The questions were all application based, and while that would be fair in any other circumstance, the 2 midterms gave us no exposure to these types of questions, so it was kind of hard to know what an adequate answer was to get full marks. The midterms more so focused on experiments and their results, whereas the exam gave situations to analyze and apply concepts.
Overall:
- It's the type of course that has high interest, but requires more effort than expected. You really need to know the material well and have experience writing short answer tests. I found that particularly challenging, since I'm only in 2nd year sciences and haven't really had much exposure to writing paragraph form, short answer type of questions. But I absolutely LOVED the material and the prof.