PSY1022: Psychology 1B

10% weekly quizzes. (You do 12 quizzes throughout semester, but they only take the marks of your best 10 so it's okay if you flunk 2!, [each quiz is 1%])
20% Research proposal plan. 950 words summarising 3 different past research journal articles on one of the topics you choose from.
40% Research Proposal. 2000 words. You can use the parts of your plan^ in your intro. (Continuously check the guide to make sure you've included everything they specify)
30% Exam. 60 multiple choice questions in 90mins. 'Closed book' but non-invigilated (might be different in a non-covid situation)

-DON'T LET THE QUIZZES PILE UP!! Stay up to date as long as possible, because you will (probably) fall behind on weekly content coming up to assignment deadlines, and if you have already fallen behind before that you find it harder to catch up on the weeks of quizzes. Also try do the quizzes the same day as you've written your notes when it's fresh in your mind.
-There are 6 weeks on psych content, and 6 weeks on research methods (and some basic stats at end too)
-I don't think it's necessary to watch lectures (unless you have time and want to consolidate readings)
-I found it easiest to take notes from textbook, then skim eworkbook after and add anything to notes [psych content weeks]
-I reckon it's easier to base notes from eworkbook for research methods weeks
-there are a lot of complaints about marking in the psych faculty as they mark to a 6.3ish average. It's pretty hard to get above an 8/10 on an assignment that I've heard. Some tutors apparently give bad feedback on assignments or no comments on how things could be improved, whereas others give awesomely comprehensive feedback (I had a really good tutor luckily!).
-I recommend attending tutes! The (zoom) tutorials were most helpful for the assignment info. Towards the end there were only around 10+ ish people coming (out of 30+ish), I wouldn't say it's crucial to go but I did gain some better understanding of the weekly content that was gone over by the tutor, also really nice to talk to people in short 'activities'.

They gave us a 20 question sample exam.

3.5 out of 5

Yes, lectures recorded, but tutorials are not.

You need to buy/find 'Psychology Research Methods' and also 'Psychology PSY1011PSY1022 a custom edition'
The latter is definitely necessary, it's pretty much your main method of learning for the psych content. For the research content I think it's possible to get away without reading, I preferred using the eworkbook mainly for these weeks because the reading was less fun and long/drawn out with words.

8 x 2h tutorials throughout the semester (optional, but they were useful to attend because they aren't recorded and you don't get access to power points, and that is where they explain the assingments).
Basically each week you had to do:
-Textbook reading (around ~30pages per week)
-Read eworkbook (basically includes important parts of readings and occasionally new concepts not in readings + some videos and short online activities)
-watch lecture videos (these weren't examinable, and pretty much went over the readings again, so I didn't bother watching after the first few weeks) Roughly 2h.
-10 question weekly multiple choice quiz (assessed)

2020 =completely online

80

Unfortunately, a lot of the issues present in PSY1011 were also present in PSY1022. Whilst the actual unit schedule felt a bit more organised that PSY1011, the assignments were still very poorly organised. The assignment instructions for the research proposal plan were very unclear and contradicting. In the unit guide, different Moodle forums and consultations, it was suggested that students were required to outline the various parts of their research proposal (e.g. hypothesis, aim, etc.); however, the actual assignment instructions required students to research articles and look at gaps in research. Understandably, this caused a great deal of confusion, and many students had no idea how to go about writing the research proposal plan. Another key issue was with the actual teaching of the unit – with consultations feeling quite pointless and going far too long. Nevertheless, I did like the fact that this unit felt less ‘crammed’ than PSY1011; i.e. there were less unrelated topics crammed into one single semester. That being said, I found the psychological discovery part of this unit very dry – and unfortunately, psychological discovery made up half of the unit. The other half of the unit involved cognitive social and abnormal psychology, which were all very interesting (although very similar to VCE Psychology).

- 50%. The exam is closed book and students are given 2 hours writing time and 10 minutes reading time. The exam has 96 multiple choice questions, with 48 on psychological discovery, 16 on cognitive psych, 16 on social psych and 16 on abnormal psych. The exam is also a hurdle, so you need 45%+ on the exam to pass. A lot of the exam questions were poorly written, and some featured content which wasn’t directly covered in the lectorials (which was a bit annoying).

There were a number of different lecturers who taught different topics throughout the semester. The main lecturer who taught psychological discovery was Joshua Wiley. He was pretty good, and his lecture slides were very detailed – however I found what he was teaching quite boring, so I found his lectures quite disengaging at times.

No, however students are given access to a revision quiz on Moodle (although I personally didn’t find it very useful or similar to the actual exam).

2.5 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture.

- 25%. For this assignment, you are required to design a study and write a research proposal (as the name suggests). You have a 1,500 word limit, and your research proposal needs to have the following: A title, abstract, introduction (including an aim and hypothesis), method section, results section, discussion and reference list.

- 10%. Despite the name (and some of the instructions provided), this assignment isn’t actually a research proposal plan. Instead, the assignment requires students to research one of three topics (social psych, abnormal psych or cognitive psych) and find at least 3 articles relating to the (pretty specific) topic. You then discuss the similarities and differences between these articles, and the limitations and knowledge gaps in the area of research.

The prescribed textbook is a custom textbook for this unit (and PSY1011), and it is pretty important. The other prescribed textbook is a psychological discovery textbook – however I didn’t purchase it, so I can’t comment on how useful it is.

- 15%. There is a multiple choice quiz each week, which assesses your understanding of the readings. These quizzes are completed using ‘LockDown Browser’ which prevents you from accessing anything other than the quiz during the 20 minutes you have to complete it. However, I will mention that some quizzes were completed without LockDown, because of technical issues. Of the 12 quizzes you complete, the scores from your best 10 contribute to your final mark.

1x 2 hour lectorial (basically a lecture) each week.
1x 2 hour consultation (basically a tutorial) each week for 8 weeks (non-compulsory).

2017, Semester 2.