Syllabus: Psychology 280

Instructor: Prof. Kenneth M. Rosenberg
Room 464 Mahar Hall
Telephone: 312-3469 (voicemail enabled)
E-mail: rosenber@oswego.edu

Office hours: T -Th 1:00 - 2:00 P.M.
(other times by prior arrangement)

Class/Lab: T - Th 6:00 - 8:20 P.M., Mahar Hall room 210 (PC lab).
The teaching approach I shall use in this section of Psy 280 relies heavily on student-computer interaction. Therefore, all classes will be held in the Mahar 210 PC lab, which is reserved for our use for all class times. Every student will have his/her own PC available during all instructional periods and examinations.

Required materials:
- The Excel Statistics Companion CD-ROM and User's Manual (Rosenberg, 2004)
- Statistics Unplugged (Caldwell, 2004)
- A set of course handouts
- SPSS for Windows (prepared by Prof. Izzett)
- An active ICC account

About the required materials:
- The Excel Statistics Companion ("ESC") CD-ROM contains exercises, demonstrations, and sampling experiments for teaching statistical concepts and skills. The CD-ROM is located inside the back cover of the hard-copy User's Manual. The Basic Skills workbook covers the limited set of Excel and Windows skills you will need for a successful experience with ESC. Consult the screen captures in the User's Manual and/or Basic Skills if you get stuck. If you own your own PC and Microsoft Excel software, that's great. Otherwise, to do independent work outside of class you may use any of the PC labs on campus (Penfield Library, Snygg room. 7, Mahar room 210, Swetman room 218, or PCs that are in the dormitories.)

- The Caldwell (2004) textbook is a secondary resource that will add narrative depth to the relatively brief explanatory text in the ESC workbooks. Caldwell is "bundled" with ESC as a single purchase.

- All students will receive a set of hard-copy handouts, the content of which is linked to the ESC CD-ROM. The handouts will enable you to continuously evaluate your mastery of ESC's content. Some quiz questions will be similar, if not identical, to the questions on the handouts, so careful completion of these review sheets is key to doing well in the course. Some will likely be collected and graded without notice.

- The SPSS for Windows Instruction booklet is available for purchase at the bookstore or online at: http://www.oswego.edu/%7Epsychol/spss/ (SPSS, the "official" statistical package for use in Psy 280, Psy 290 and Psy 40X, carries out a greater and more advanced variety of data analyses compared to Excel. Learning how to use SPSS is an important component of Psy 280. An alternative to purchasing the SPSS manual is to read the instructions on your screen and/or download it.

Class Schedule

Policies and Procedures

You will no doubt notice as you read the syllabus that we must cover a lot of material within a very tight time frame. Psych 280 is an intensive 4-credit course that leaves no room for lagging behind schedule. It is very easy to become swamped with information overload if you miss a class, or fall behind on your assignments. Having more than three absences on your attendance record or coming late to class is likely to have a substantial impact on your course grade.

Most ESC workbooks are paired with a hard-copy review sheet (handout). If you are successful with the questions on the handouts, you know most of what you need to know to do well on the quizzes.

It is key to your success that you familiarize yourself with the contents of the ESC workbooks and hard-copy handouts before the class(es) during which the material will be covered. I intend to reserve precious class time to deal mainly with difficulties students are having completing the Excel workbooks and handouts. Our classes are long (2 hrs. and 20 min.) and talking at you during that entire time is not an effective instructional method. Instead, much class time will be taken up with independent student-computer interaction and consultation with your class partner. I will assign groups of 2 study partners early in the semester. When necessary, I will address the class as a whole while using the big projection screen in the front of the room.

Every group of students is different, so it is difficult to say with precision how rapidly we will be able to progress through the course material and exactly what we will cover during any specific class. I should emphasize, however, that there are 10 folders in the ESC package, and each folder contains 1 to 6 Excel workbooks. There are 34 workbooks in all. Some are short and straightforward. Others are long and relatively complex. Let's do the math. We have 28 meetings during the semester, and 6 of those will be partially taken up with review and a quiz. So, having only 22 complete class periods to cover 34 Excel workbooks, the Caldwell textbook, and the series of exercise handouts means we have to maintain a steady and fast pace to finish all the material.

I will incorporate the contents of folders 9 and 10 into the final examination rather than taking the class time to give you an additional quiz. The final examination counts as a double quiz, so there are 80 possible quiz points over the course of the semester. You may earn as many as 20 more points by completing the handouts and taking part in class recitation. Your total out of 100 possible points will determine your letter grade.