Experimental Psychology
Student Comments – Fall Semester 2003
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The strengths of this course were:
The weaknesses of this course were:
Suggestions for improvement or additional comments:
I was glad to learn how to write an experimental paper. It will be very helpful in my future courses.
There needed to be more focus on how to develop the paper because for many of us, this was our first time ever doing anything like it.

The course should be divided up into two sections that could be taken at the same time. One part should focus on the basics of experimental psychology and the other should follow with how to apply them.

The website and all the resources it provided was very helpful and answered many questions I thought of outside of class.
All aspects of this course were valuable and needed. It would have been helpful if more time would have been spent on the paper and what goes into it and how to set it up.
I think it would be more conducive to students if the course was split up into two semester. The work load was quite heavy, and I feel I could have done much better in the class if I didn't feel so rushed to get things done.
The instructor is extremely knowledgeable, almost too knowledgeable. The homework assignments, lectures, and examinations were the most valuable part of this course. The experiment/paper were also valuable, though only to a certain extent.
One semester is not enough time for the effective teaching/learning of the course load. I would suggest the class be broken up into to seperate, successive semesters. The first semester could be all lecture, exams, and homework assignments, and the second semester could be almost like an independent study, where the student is required to run her/his own study and write the paper etc.
If this course is only one semester in length, the professor should probably be very explicit about the experiment and paper required for the class from the beginning and help make sure the students feel comfortable talking to her/him. I appreciated the honest feedback on the paper, but for students who have never in their life written an experimental paper, a first draft should be allowed or successive sections of the paper so that students will have some idea of what and how they are doing before a final draft is turned in, in my opinion.