Meeting
Time: 11:00
(Day/s to be determined)
Room:
SH 307
Objectives:
The purposes of this course
are
1.
to
prepare you for your independent project you will conduct the next semester
2.
to
engage you in advanced issues of research and design
3.
to
develop critical thinking as applied to psychological research
By the end of this year you will
have developed, conducted, and reported your own research project. This project will be conducted either
individually or with one other person.
This Fall you will develop your research proposal including a detailed
timeline for conducting the project during the next term and proposed data
analyses for the project. This project
needs to be an advanced piece or research, by that we mean beyond the scale of
the class projects you have conducted in your other classes. It should be equivalent in scale to
independent studies.
The first activity of the semester
is to determine if you are doing the project independently and if not, to
indicate your team partner.
You will need to orally present to
the class the research topic you are thinking about for your project. This presentation should indicate the issues
and questions you are thinking about addressing and include a references list
(to be handed out in class) of references you have reviewed and at least read
the abstracts.
You will lead a class discussion of
one of the articles you are reading for your project. You will need to make a copy available 3 days prior to your
presentation and pass out questions to be considered to the class at the same
time. These questions should indicate
how this article is related to your research question. This activity will take 1/2 of a class
period so we will have two articles per class.
During class of week 6 you need to
hand in a brief 1-page paper describing your research project with a tentative
hypothesis. We will use these papers to
assign projects to your faculty research advisor.
During this portion of the course
you will make a formal presentation of your proposal for class critique. You need to indicate the background research
of the proposal, the methods for the project, the timeline for completing the
project and the proposed statistical analysis.
This is not expected to be the method you will have in your final
proposal but a serious design proposal that can be modified by input from other
members of the class.
All good researchers keep detailed
records of their work in a lab notebook that can be examined by others. During this entire semester you are to keep
in a single bound notebook a record of all your work, e.g., brainstorming of
ideas, efforts to find research, notes on the research, development of your
design, etc. In addition, in this book
you are to critically assess your experience in this project, e.g., how you
developed your ideas, what was surprising and interesting about the project,
reactions and questions about articles and proposals presented by other members
of the class. This journal is to
be kept by each student separately and the evaluations are to be personal. It will be used to grade your involvement in
and understanding of the research process.
At the beginning of the last week of
the term you will hand in your finished proposal. This proposal you give the background and justification for your
project, as in an introduction to a journal article, the method to be followed,
the proposed statistics, and a timeline for completing the project (agreed upon
with your research advisor). This
timeline will be used in grading your efforts next semester in completing your
research.
|
Week |
Activity |
|
1:
9/6 |
Introduction
to the course |
|
2:
9/13 |
Indicate
team or if do individually |
|
3:
9/20 |
Present
Research Area (with general research and reference list) |
|
4:
9/27 |
Present
Research Article (1/2 Class). Meet twice a week |
|
5: 10/4 |
" |
|
6:
10/11 |
"
\ Research question and hypothesis needs to be handed in |
|
7:
10/20 |
Proposal
presentation. Meet twice a week
(project advisor will be assigned) |
|
8:
10/25 |
" |
|
9:
11/1 |
" |
|
10:
11/8 |
" |
|
11:
11/15 |
" |
|
12:
12/6 |
No
Class |
|
13:
12/13 |
Proposal
and Journal/Lab Notebook is due at beginning of week |
Class
participation: 20%
Article
Presentation: 10%
Proposal
Presentation 20%
Research
Journal: 20%
Research
Proposal: 30%