PL3232 Module Review

PL3232 Biological Psychology

AY2017/18 Sem 2

Taught by Dr. Stuart Derbyshire

Textbook: Kalat (2015)

Initially wanted to take it last semester but it was at 8am. Unfortunately for me, the one this sem was also at 8am. But I refused to not finish my core modules by this semester. Was a pretty fun module. Professor Derbyshire made lectures pretty fun even though they were at 8am. 10% of the module was dedicated to class participation during lectures. Now this sounds weird, so let me explain. In the very first lecture we’d sort ourselves into groups of about 10 each. Whenever we answered a question he posed well, or asked an insightful question, he would award points to the group ala Hogwarts.

The way he translated these points to a final score for the semester was based on the groups’  rankings. Can’t remember for sure how it worked though.

There were 2×10% short essays (500 words) about stuff that you can find from the textbook. However, I would not recommend just using the stuff that’s inside the textbook because that’s what everyone is going to do, and that’s lame. Try to do your own research outside. Nevertheless, I got a B for the first essay despite scoring 80/100 so I’m not in the best position to give advice here (Was not happy about it, but managed to get 80+ for 2nd essay when the mean was 60 so hah).

I don’t remember the exact break down of marks for CAs but there were 2 “commentary” assignments. Prof assigned 2 papers to us over the course of the semester and we were to comment/critique. This was done on an online platform called perusal, so you can also see what other people write and reply to them. Was fairly simple, just try to stay involved in the conversations. I think the median was 100.

Finals was 50% and consisted of 20-30 fill-in-the-blanks, about 10-20 short answer questions, of which you only needed to choose 5 (I think), and 8C2 essays. I thought they were quite doable, as long as you studied the textbook and lecture slides but somehow the cohort mean was a 48/100 (RIP). Probably worked a bit too hard for that A+.