The Future of McMaster's Psychology program? 1A03?



-practice working alone at a desk, or even better in your bed, in your house without human contact for the future work-force in late-capitalism.

People are already alone. They ride a bus with 50 others, all with headphones on trying to avoid one another's glances. Our society is cold, not just McMaster.

And you can't rewind or pause a prof.
IMO, not sure what this whole anti-JoeKim attack on macinsiders is going to accomplish

What are you talking about? Dr. Kim has done a great job developing the 1X03 and 1XX3 courses through online platforms. Dr. Kim bases these courses around actual research about how students learn best. Some other profs should really learn from this.

So mcmaster becomes as bad as riding the bus alone?

Organizations teach people who they are and how to think of themselves. Kim's ideas are consistent with neo-liberal forces in society, that some believe leads to a decaying of identity, and the mixing of public and private sphere to the detriment of progress.

The school is not democratic. Macinsiders can allow the people at the bottom access to discourse (that we are restricted to because of inequality and credentialism)

lilrush, you are a fatalist, but I cannot blame you.

In the past universities were occupied (and not the lame 'occupation' of the student centre that was just dumb and pointless and not really a real occupation at all) just to get those little quizzes you do to rate your profs after the course. They schools and profs used to think 'we know what is best for the student - the students can shut up and take it. By invoking the profs ideas in the debate Commie, we are going back to this sad reality that others know what is better for us than we do.

I think we are losing this ability.
When David Campbell - the guy that is supposed to organize us now merely works for the administration and acquiescent to their ideas of what happens to his members we start losing all ability to organize and are losing the power students once had.

Its not just Psych but a few engineering courses are also offered this way now. Numerous profs said that this actually is the way that many universities (not just mac) are going. Their goal is to make every course offered online and then the "lecture" time slots are really just tutorial styled where you get into groups and solve problems or do discussions, etc. So i guess it kind of is more social; however, I don't see the $10000 a year value of it since if you're already going to sit and watch an online lecture there are numerous venues that are actually better such as Khan Academy compared to some profs' teaching style. Plus a prof only has to sit down once and record their lectures and they can reuse them for the next 10 years, not really worth it. So unless tuition gets lowered, might not be so bad.

It pains me to respond to such obvious trolling, but for my sanity I have to.

You obviously know nothing about the psychology program if you think that online learning is where "it's headed" because of Dr. Kim. The two intropsych courses are, as I said before, the direct product and the tool for his pedagogical research on education and learning methods. The upper year courses have and will continue to place an emphasis on in-class presence (funny that so many people complaining about the online lectures are the ones skipping irl classes anyway). There are many upper year courses that have less than 40 spots, and some are as small as 16 students.

So please try not to make such pointless and uniformed speculation about the future and goals of a program you know nothing about. It's an insult to our professors and department chairs who have worked hard to make the curriculum of our courses more hands-on and personal. Our research, lab and independent study courses alone outshine many other programs in terms of being able to work one-on-one with professors.



edit: plus, why are you all acting like this course is completely online? There are tutorial sections with less than 30 students AND there are live lectures in second term.

I'm not trolling at all.

I feel that people who are new to the internet think that every time someone posts an opinion, or has any kind of idea about something, especially negative, that they just dismiss it as 'trolling'

It is soo strange to see the internet going that far downhill.

Originally Posted by ooburii

It pains me to respond to such obvious trolling, but for my sanity I have to.

You obviously know nothing about the psychology program if you think that online learning is where "it's headed" because of Dr. Kim. The two intropsych courses are, as I said before, the direct product and the tool for his pedagogical research on education and learning methods. The upper year courses have and will continue to place an emphasis on in-class presence (funny that so many people complaining about the online lectures are the ones skipping irl classes anyway). There are many upper year courses that have less than 40 spots, and some are as small as 16 students.

So please try not to make such pointless and uniformed speculation about the future and goals of a program you know nothing about. It's an insult to our professors and department chairs who have worked hard to make the curriculum of our courses more hands-on and personal. Our research, lab and independent study courses alone outshine many other programs in terms of being able to work one-on-one with professors.



edit: plus, why are you all acting like this course is completely online? There are tutorial sections with less than 30 students AND there are live lectures in second term.

http://www.ece.mcmaster.ca/faculty/b.../L00_Intro.pdf - view slides 15 + 16

That is for a current electrical engineering course and it is not the only one that follows it. In the first lecture the professor himself explicitly stated that this is what the university (McMaster) is working towards because and I quote "it is what the top universities in the world use". I don't know how accurate of a statement that is but the source is the prof. And he also stated that its not just engineering that uses it but all other programs will be implementing it. It wont happen over night but you can expect each term to have more and more courses that use this system until all of them have it.

My prof put a poll on his course site. He usually uploads the course videos after class to review and watch. Now he's looking for opinions about everything online (class, homework, quiz)

edit im noob and cant get the youtube code to work

Originally Posted by andrew22

I'm not trolling at all.

I feel that people who are new to the internet think that every time someone posts an opinion, or has any kind of idea about something, especially negative, that they just dismiss it as 'trolling'

It is soo strange to see the internet going that far downhill.

I dismissed your post as trolling because literally every thread you make these days is a controversial opinion designed to elicit irritation. It's not even "let's talk about this topic", it feels more like "here is my controversial opinion presented as fact, discuss". You posted a thread about this topic like 2 days ago, and here you are again but with a more dramatic thread title.

Originally Posted by RSK1

http://www.ece.mcmaster.ca/faculty/b.../L00_Intro.pdf - view slides 15 + 16

That is for a current electrical engineering course and it is not the only one that follows it. In the first lecture the professor himself explicitly stated that this is what the university (McMaster) is working towards because and I quote "it is what the top universities in the world use". I don't know how accurate of a statement that is but the source is the prof. And he also stated that its not just engineering that uses it but all other programs will be implementing it. It wont happen over night but you can expect each term to have more and more courses that use this system until all of them have it.

The title of this thread is "the future of McMaster's psychology program" as if Dr. Kim is responsible for this change and the psychology program is the only program affected. People always give the department slack because of IntroPsych being online. IntroPsych is a research tool for Dr. Kim, and even if the university is trying to move towards online lectures, that doesn't mean that the department is in agreement or that IntroPsych is somehow representative of the upper year courses.

Full disclosure, I want everyone to have a great time at the school.

ooburii - If it is a research tool, it should be advertised as such, and cost much much less, I'm not sure if it is or if it isn't?

- Is it in fact research on how to teach as many students as possible basic information at the very lowest cost while still charging full price and calling it 'the future'? Is there not dangers in this?
If upper-year classes would never do this, why do it for first year classes? Is it that much different/less valuable to spend the money on smaller classes in first year?

you are the self-chosen voice, only reason I'm asking you.

Thanks!!

(I guess that is fair-play that you think I'm trolling. I'm just a jerk)

The fact that a mandatory course for many first-years, quite possibly the largest at Mac, is used as a "research tool" for a prof is ethically questionable. I didn't learn nearly as much as I could have, and I actually grew to hate psych, based on the intro courses. I previously was considering majoring in psych, and I still took a couple of upper-year courses, but I absolutely couldn't stand intro psych. I have a friend who literally cringed every time she heard the little clicking that happened at the beginning of each lecture section - classical conditioning. She dropped 1XX3 before term 2 started, but whenever she heard other people listening to the lectures, she'd cringe.

I should also state that I despise all online lectures - an opinion that is primarily as a result of intro psych. I refuse to take electives that are taught online, and any time a required course is taught via online lectures, I hate it.

If this is the future, then I'm bloody thrilled that I'll be done school before that happens.

starfish, we should try and spread the truth that it is simply a very expensive research project that you have to pay to be part of and HAVE to take.

I assume this could be a bigger story than the red-suits songbook, and I think a bigger controversy. Let's try to spread the news macinsiders and help our fellow students out.


I don't know how we start or who we could contact???
Or where can I gather more information?

(I feel like Grover or tailsnake or whoever might ban be at any moment btw, just because they misunderstand things sometimes, but hopefully i can be on here a bit longer, just saying cause i might disappear and you cant use PM when you're banned either)

Originally Posted by RSK1

http://www.ece.mcmaster.ca/faculty/b.../L00_Intro.pdf - view slides 15 + 16

That is for a current electrical engineering course and it is not the only one that follows it. In the first lecture the professor himself explicitly stated that this is what the university (McMaster) is working towards because and I quote "it is what the top universities in the world use". I don't know how accurate of a statement that is but the source is the prof. And he also stated that its not just engineering that uses it but all other programs will be implementing it. It wont happen over night but you can expect each term to have more and more courses that use this system until all of them have it.

Ohhhh mann. I wish I had this...
2FH3 was previously a course when you would make a good cheat sheet and do well but learn absolutely nothing. Having all the lectures online helps people who need to pause to look elsewhere to clarify or just have a short attention span. Most people in upper years agree that there needs to be more projects like EE-4oi6 throughout all years. You might be skeptical now but you will adopt this belief as you move through the years. Believe it or not this change to "experiential learning" actually a response to feedback from upper year students and Industry...

Originally Posted by qwerty91

Ohhhh mann. I wish I had this...
2FH3 was previously a course when you would make a good cheat sheet and do well but learn absolutely nothing. Having all the lectures online helps people who need to pause to look elsewhere to clarify or just have a short attention span. Most people in upper years agree that there needs to be more projects like EE-4oi6 throughout all years. You might be skeptical now but you will adopt this belief as you move through the years. Believe it or not this change to "experiential learning" actually a response to feedback from upper year students and Industry...

I don't have an issue with courses moving towards being more online, as you said it is more helpful to be able to rewind a lecture to clarify concepts and examples. My only issue with it is that there's going to be an inevitable increase in tuition prices but it's less value. Prof just has to record a video once and reuse it.

Also the fact that if everything is taught online you're essentially increasing the time requirement for each class. If it was lets say 3 lectures and 1 tutorial; that's 4 hours but now you're adding an extra 3 hours per week for the class on top of the extra time you need to study, read, etc. and of course many classes also involve 3 hour labs. Multiply by 5 classes and you're adding an extra 15 hours a week. Which is fine but what about the people with part-time jobs? Not everyone can afford the tuition, food, rent, etc but now you're increasing these costs and also increasing the time requirement for each class...

It wont really affect us but I think if everything is done online it takes away from the university experience.