PSYC20008: Developmental Psychology

2x1000 word lab reports: in the first assessment piece you need to write the Introduction + Method of a lab report, in the second piece of assessment you need to write the Results + Discussion + Abstract sections of a lab report as well as resubmit your Introduction + Method based on any corrections.

I had a love/hate relationship with this subject. I'll say this from the beginning: the content in this subject is very easy to grasp for the most part, it does not require you to learn any complex ideas about development and it is far less scientific than its Biological Psychology counterpart. If you're looking for a Level 2 Psychology breadth, choose this subject as the assessment isn't too difficult and little extra reading is required to do well. HOWEVER, the administration in this subject was absolutely dismal. There appeared to be a lot of inconsistencies between head tutor requirements and the requirements of individual tutors for their marking and as such a lot of students suffered because of miscommunication. There were differences between classes in terms of the style of reporting (how to report p values, how to report graphs, where to put the 'Design' section of the lab report, whether to include DOIs) and the tutors (well, at least my tutor) was very fickle about small things that were correct in APA 5th formatting style but not in APA 6th style. This was despite instruction from the head tutor that APA 5th style was acceptable. The tutorial component/assessment of this subject was ultimately a disaster. When we were told to write up our Results section of the lab report we were brought into the computer labs (with many students quite unfamiliar with SPSS) and pretty much told to make our own way through the reporting despite most of us having no idea what to do. This really made me despise the subject and a lot of students were in a similar position.
Now, on to the lectures. This was the only real positive of the subject - they were really interesting and all of the lecturers were so engaging and fantastic. I loved all of their presentations styles and you could easily tell that they were all enthused about what they were talking about. In the exam most of the multiple choice questions were quite fair and reasonable and only a few questions out of 30 were regarding explicit memory of readings (which I didn't bother to actually do unless they were explicitly mentioned in the lectures). The exam involved 30 MCQs and then 2 essays to be completed in 2 hours. They suggest dedicating 40 minutes to each section although you can normally smash through the MCQs in about 20 minutes or so and have the rest of the time for essay writing. I thought that the essay topics in this exam were mostly quite average and I'm pretty sure Katherine's questions (which were the most reasonable and approachable) will receive the most responses. Maybe if she receives an overwhelming number they'll make sure that the other questions are a bit easier next time. Overall, the content of this subject is quite manageable it was really just the administrative side of things that really ruined what could have been a really beneficial experience!

Yes, with screen captures.

Katherine Johnson (Biological Development/Theory of Mind/Autism)
Bob Reeve (Theories of Development/Infancy)
Fiona Reynolds (Development of Language)
Heidi Gazelle (Social Development/Family/Attachment)
Judi Humberstone (Quantitative Methods: Chi Squared)

No, each lecturer gave a small series of question (between 10-30) to practice with.

3/5

The textbook for this subject is really unnecessary, unless you're having difficulty with the content don't even bother.

2x1 hour lectures per week, 1x2 hour tutorial every fortnight.

2013, Semester 1

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