Penultimate feedback post

Hello all,

Well done for writing another lot of blogs, only one more this semester! Top blog post goes to Abby this week, have a look for a good example of both a topic relating to psychological research and good argument rather than description.

This is what is preventing many of you from reaching the A grades; it states in your marking criteria that you should be arguing but many of the blogs contain predominantly description with a bit of evaluation at the end. The point is for you to persuade us of something, not teach us about it.

Many people this week wrote a huge number of comments. It is important to remember that writing over 7 only improves your mark by half a grade. Therefore it is far better to concentrate on writing 4 or so good quality comments than 8 or more adequate ones.

See you next week for our final seminar of the year!

Biddy

Blogs feedback #3

Well done everyone, we are now getting a nice wide range of blog topics. Blog of the week goes to Ellie for an interesting and relevant entry.

As far as feedback goes there weren’t any new issues arising this week. Critical analysis could still be improved though. Think back to our lesson in week 7 when you were designing research and then playing the part of funding and ethics boards. Every one of you raised some good points in that lesson-points which you thought of through critical analysis. So I think it may help you to analyse a study if you imagine the researchers pitching it to you and you can decide whether you would give a) ethical permission for this study and b) funds for it to be conducted. If not, why not? That is critical analysis!

Also, I am still getting emails about comments “awaiting moderation” so if you could all go to privacy>settings>discussion and ensure neither of the boxes are ticked under “before a comment appears”.

Have a lovely Easter!

Biddy

Bandura is the new Milgram and other feedback

At the beginning of last semester I read so many blog posts about Milgram it was rather repetitive which makes it boring marking for me and also not very interesting for you to comment on. Fortunately I have not read a thing about Milgram this semester but there is one name which pops up again and again-Bandura. Specifically the bobo doll study. I think you are now perfectly able to do a quick search on google scholar or psych info for a new study rather than falling back on this example. This will make you learn more, create more room for interesting discussion, and prevent me from going loopy if I read about it one more time!

Blogs: The blogs at the moment often fall into one of two camps, those which are clearly psychology research methods related but without anything which seems to interest you personally and those which are clearly a subject you enjoy reading about but which are not necessarily as relevant as they could be. To get the best marks try to combine the two-pick a subject you are interested in and blog about a psychology research method/study within that area. Good examples of this have come from Isabelle and Lynda this week, have a read of theirs to get an idea of interesting topics with some good links to psychology research methods.

Comments: here is a quote from the blog FAQs (to be found on Blackboard).

“Do I need to be critical? Yes. When commenting on other blogs, you will need to formulate an argument for why you think the point the author is trying to make is right/correct or wrong/incorrect. To do this, you will need to be critical – not of the person who wrote the blog, but of the idea, opinion or argument it contains. You will also need to do some critical thinking about the evidence you present as you write about it.”

Keep an eye out for Angela’s comments (ppp1003) which always bring in an interesting and relevant piece of evidence to argue a point. Also beware when commenting on your own blog. What often happens is you simply repeat something you already stated in your blog or in a previous comment. Look on Abby’s blog for good arguments and counter arguments.

Good luck in your midterm!

Biddy

Semester two feedback #1

Well done on the first blog of semester two! The standard was generally good and furthermore every group member wrote a blog entry! Keep it up, by second year you will all be experts.

Most of the notes I made while marking refer to both blogs and comments but one thing I would like to say specifically about the blogs is:

• You are supposed to be writing about research methods/research within psychology. This gives you a really wide scope for topics but if there is no link to research then you just will not get the marks. So if you are not sure how relevant your blog topic is ask yourself- are you discussing how you would research a particular (psychology related) issue or discussing how an issue has already been researched? No? Then it needs tweaking.

Other things to bear in mind when blogging and commenting:

• Many of you need to work on your critical analysis skills. By semester two of first year these should be more scientific and comments such as “only american students were used so the results cannot be generalised to wider populations” are not going to get you top marks. Instead think about the suitability of the experiment’s stimuli, would a repeated measures design have produced different results? etc etc.
• Following on from the previous point, many of you are mainly describing theories/research and then writing one line of analysis/argument at the end. You are supposed to be “arguing” rather than describing. In other words, I should not be learning about what theories and experiments state when reading your blogs, but instead I should be persuaded to have an opinion on it’s efficacy/reliability etc.
• Please please read what you have written before you post it! Although we do not mark on spelling or grammar some of you seem to be writing one constant stream of thought then posting it with the consequence that the sentences do not make much sense. This of course  could bring your mark down as your points are lost.

If your mark is drastically lower than you were expecting then let me know-it may be that your comments were not marked for some reason (they were on blogs not on my blog roll, they appeared as anonymous or I was outwitted by wordpress in some other unique way).

Any questions email me or ask me on Friday,

Biddy

Week three-important

Just an important point about this week’s lesson and your SAFMEDs. This week we will be looking at the SAFMED data to look at group analysis compared to single case design. To do this well we need you all to enter as much of your SAFMED data as possible onto the database we opened last Friday (on Blackboard).

I have stared marking your blogs and they look good! When I have also marked the comments I will provide some feedback.

Biddy

Semester two!

Hello everyone,

Have a look at my previous blog posts for the feedback I gave last semester, I look forward to another semester of interesting blogs!

Biddy

Week 11 comments

The comments for the semester are now over, well done. As usual if you have received an F3 despite having written something then let me know; some of you are still changing the names you comment under which can make it hard for me to assign the grade to you.

Some things to bear in mind next semester:

• By now you should know how to reference in text and this will be required of you next semester. This week there were still many little mistakes such as not writing the year of the research or referencing the author’s full name rather than just the last name etc.
• Always relate your argument to psychology research in some way. There are still some comments each week which are well written but are not actually relevant and so do not get high grades.
• You need evidence of some kind to get higher grades. See the marking criteria on Blackboard under Blog FAQs.

 

See you for our last lesson together on Friday.

Biddy

Week ten blogs

Well done everyone, the quality of the writing this week was much higher. To get from the B+ range to the A range add some more original evidence (note how many of you this week talked about twin studies!).

Yes you do need to continue writing blogs next semester (and in your second year too!) so if you’re running out of ideas here are a few:

• Look in newspaper science sections for current research (is it ethical? Are the findings being reported accurately? Were the samples representative? etc)
• Read New Scientist/The Psychologist etc.
• Think about all the studies you have done this semester through SONA; each of those uses a research method. A few of you have done my study using prism adaptation, is that not interesting enough to blog about?
• Of course there is always plenty of recommended reading you could blog about.

About the practical report-no I cannot proof read a draft before you submit as I will be marking them so it would not be fair. However you can still ask me questions. Don’t forget there is also help on Blackboard and the handouts I have been giving you each week should also be useful.

Biddy

Week nine comments

Whether you listened to my feedback last week or it was just a coincidence your comments had fewer errors in them this week which makes them much easier to read and therefore your arguments are more scientific.

Last week I had many questions about referencing so I will mention it here too. By now you should know how to reference in text so I expect to see that in the blogs and in the comments. The quicker you get into the habit the less hassle it will be later! As for putting references at the end of a blog, I don’t deduct marks if there are no references but there are bonus points for those who do it properly. Next semester this will probably change and you will be expected to put references at the end at all times.

One final remark about the comments-a few of you are rushing around before the deadline trying to write as many as possible to get that extra half a grade but in your rush the quality of each individual comment is reduced and you are then ending up with lower grades than others who wrote just two really good comments. Try to aim for quality rather than quantity.

Biddy

Week 8 blogs

Marks for your week 8 blogs are going up soon. I got the impression that many of these were written in a rush as there were many spelling and grammar issues. As I have mentioned before it is really important that you proof read your work because although I do not mark down for a few spelling errors a few of you lost marks this week because there were so many errors that I did not even know what you were trying to say! And with just a brief read through before submission this can be remedied.

On the up side you all seem to be getting the hang of referencing properly which is really great for the blogs and very important for your practical report.

Next week we are continuing with the same data set so if there was something you did not understand in the last session it would be a good idea to practise before Friday and email me if you have any questions.

Biddy