Session 1 DEMO

16 student responses

Learning & Understanding Can students identify the class's main idea?

Several students framed psychology as testing explanations rather than trusting intuition. One emphasized collecting evidence “instead of just trusting our first explanation.”
Some students wanted help connecting examples and research terms to the main idea. One mixed up hypothesis, observation, and evidence; another got “caught up in the sleep example” and lost its purpose.
A student reporting good understanding inferred causes from things happening together. Their summary claimed, “We can find out what causes behavior by seeing which things happen together.”

we had sorted a few statements into observations and explanations before moving on.
we had stayed with one example while going through hypothesis, observation, and evidence. I mixed those up.
there was a short definition of psychology on the board to come back to. I got caught up in the sleep example and wasn't sure what we were supposed to learn from it.

The most important question was how we know our explanation is better than another possible explanation.
Research about people.
That psychology is about testing explanations, even when something seems like common sense.
Whether people who sleep more get better grades, and how we would actually check that.
Your own experience isn't always enough evidence to say something is true for everybody.

Psychologists test explanations of behavior using observations that other people can check.
We can find out what causes behavior by seeing which things happen together.
An explanation of behavior needs evidence, even if it sounds obvious to us.
Psychology studies thoughts and behavior by collecting evidence instead of just trusting our first explanation.

Students identified basic scientific reasoning as background someone would need. Among those finding review sufficient, one named “how to separate what someone measured from what they think it means.”
Three students wanted more review of hypotheses and variables. One remembered the word hypothesis but not “what makes one testable”; another was unsure whether the variable was sleep or its hours.
Two students found research basics familiar but psychological applications new. One recognized the scientific method from biology; the other had given little thought to studying thoughts “you can't directly see.”

what a hypothesis is. I remember the word from science but not what makes one testable.
variables. I wasn't sure whether sleep was the variable or the number of hours was.
the difference between a hypothesis and a theory.

I knew hypotheses and variables already. I hadn't thought much about studying thoughts you can't directly see.
The scientific method was familiar from biology. Applying it to everyday behavior was new.