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Needs Improving
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- Very easy to navigate, logical progression of unit content and help provided at every stage for anyone who struggled.
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- Nothing. This unit is a well thought out and developed.
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- Unit was structured okay.
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- The unit didn't really develop anything from experimental psychology and felt like it was much more advanced and more stressful.
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- Tutorials were hands on and informative. SPSS was presented clearly and the examples given were relevant to the material being taught. Recorded online tutorials were great in order to revise key concepts. Wikiversity was used well and there were numerous helpful links especially practice quizzes. Moodle posts were answered promptly and drop in sessions were helpful when completing the lap report. James was accessible and readily answered questions in regards to clarifying content.
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- Content of this course is complex and takes time to understand and comprehend. Because of this more time could have been spent on lecture content. As classes for this unit ended in Week 11 the two remaining teaching weeks could have been used so topics were spread out. Often the amount of new content being taught was overwhelming. This was especially true for the EFA topic. This deserved to be two lectures in order to fully explore the information and new concepts.
- Often the quiz questions were difficult and required more time to interpret and choose an answer. As you often had to read SPSS output or do mathematical calculations I believe that the quiz time should be increased. Additionally, answers should be saved if the quiz times out and submitted. The race against the clock aspect made completing the quizzes nerve-wracking. If the time limit was to remain the same this would make it fairer.
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- This unit was really well structured. The content was explained in a sequential way which made it easier to learn. James was the most helpful teacher I have ever had. The lab report workshops were extremely helpful. I like having weekly quizzes as it motivates you to stay on top of study.
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- Third year statistics is typically one of the most dreaded classes a student has to take. James made the unit not only bearable, but somehow, semi-interesting! I have dreaded having to do the lab report well before I was actually enrolled in the class, but after watching all of James' youtube tutorial videos, I actually got it! James also spent a lot of his time helping students with the lab report one on one in the weeks leading up to the due date. Compared the second year stats (not a class taught by James) where I felt the help given was extremely poor, where students were told by their tutors that they were not allowed to answer any questions on the lab report and that questions had to be emailed to the lecturer (something that time poor students do not need to be doing), James was not only available for every tute and help session, he was also very active on the Moodle questions page. I have never given any teacher such good feedback, especially not for a class that is supposed to be so incredibly painful, but James definitely deserves it. Thank you.
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- The unit convener/lecturer/tutor James Neill was very helpful for assisting with any questions on the assignment.
- The weekly quizzes encouraged me to learn the material each week.
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- The use of wikiversity was quite useful, but there were too many documents/web pages to look at.
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- The tutorials were helpful in understanding how to perform tests on SPSS. Youtube videos in the lectures were insightful. Giving other students surveys to fill out made it more hands on. There was also a lot of time to do the lab report and quizes.
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- The lectures could have had something that was more hands on, like having the students to discuss concepts together. And some of the topics were hard to understand, something like a video in a lecture may make it easier to understand. Maybe even print out quizes on moodle to test our knowledge.
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- There were a lot or resources available and tutorials set up to offer help in the lab report.
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- The quizzes were regular enough to keep me on track with learning material, yet not time based for each week- so I could use them without being stressed out by them.
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- Perhaps having a one quiz buffer, such as cognitive psychology, since the mark is such a large part of our assessment.
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- The quizzes were helpful because they made sure that i was keeping up and understanding the content
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- the teaching materials could be presented in a more interesting way. There was too much of a summary at the beginning of lectures which was not necessary as there were summaries throughout.
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- The lecturer was knowledgeable. I like the quizzes being spread out across the semester. I think this manner of assessment helps us retain our knowledge and expand on what we've learned.
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- Some of the questions in the quizzes seemed unfair - sometimes they seemed very arbitrary, about minute details not important to the topic. I don't think this is fair or helpful. I think getting a zero if you time runs down to zero is absurd - inappropriate, unfair, not conducive to learning. One person might study hard and be doing well but get stumped by the last couple and forgets about the time or whatever, or there may be a legitimate distraction, or uncontrollable lag, but this person can still just get a 0, whereas another person may be slack and guess at everything in 2 minutes and get 3/10. I believe that randomized order of quiz questions is inherently unfair. There are some serious differences in how hard some of the questions are relative to each other (e.g. one sentence true/false compared to whole paragraph with five similar or logical choices), which means that someone who gets 5 easy questions ('Okay, they were easy, whatever I encounter next I've got a good 7 minutes to deal with them and some in the bag already') followed by the hard ones has a great advantage over someone who gets the hard ones ('They're this hard? I can't take 7 minutes for my first 5 questions - they might all be this hard... I'm going to have to just guess') loses out - take into account the added stress of the latter person as well. I think a better way to do it would be to give everyone the same questions in the same order and let people know that they get harder throughout (or whatever). This would relieve a great deal of stress (especially given the quizzes are 45% of our mark) and better reflect the time people have spent studying and learning and their general ability.
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- The lab report, although really stressful, was extremely useful to develop my report writing and statistical skills. I thought it was a great assessment task to complete early in third year in preparation for those students who may wish to continue into honours. The quizzes too were a good assessment task to test our knowledge from lectures on a weekly basis. Also the drop in support sessions for the lab report were FANTASTIC!! Thanks James!!
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- The lectures could be made a bi more interesting, so the statistical content isn't so dry. More feedback on assignments could be given, as students we put a lot of effort and time into composing it, so greater information as to where we went wrong would help immensely for future assessments.
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- The best aspects of this unit were access to teaching staff as our lecturer James put a lot of time and effort ensuring we got as much help as possible for our Lap Report. There were also extensive teaching materials and content that really assisted in keeping up with the workload.
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- Probably the only unit you can get a distinction in and still not understand half of what you learnt! Amazing teacher though! The easiest person to ask for help when you need it!
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- Presentation was very clear and made interesting despite the seemingly overwhelming topics at first impressions. A lot of material was accompanied by online resources (wikiversity) and examples from previous years made assessments clearer with respect to what was expected of us.
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- Very happy, can't think of anything
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- No exam!! just having the major assessment and the quizzes without an exam was a definite bonus for this unit :)
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- James went above and beyond any other Psych lecturers support to assist students with the large assignment.
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- the large assignment was unnecessarily complicated through the use of an online assistance through Wikiversity. the multiple layers of the website were difficult to navigate to find directions for the assignment and information on how to best complete the assignment. the live Unit Outline was constantly being updated on Wikiversity and there are no version control measures on Wikiversity and this lead to issues for students who had recorded a different due date for the large assignment.
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- James was very approachable and willing to assist when I had some trouble understanding a component of the lab report. He was also always easy to reach by email, if not in person.
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- The quizes were exceptionally difficult for the time limit provided. I found by the time I read the question I only had maybe 10 seconds to answer the question.because of that several quizzes were not a reflection of my knowledge and understanding, they were a reflection of my luck on the day of picking a response when i ran out of time to read questions.
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- James was really helpful and understanding. Everything was well organised bar the confusion with one assessment due date.
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- More information posted on Moodle.
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- James was great with replying to emails and explaining questions, particularly regarding the lab report. Classes were also very flexible and easy to manage.
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- The weekly quizzes were extremely hard. After extensive study I barely pulled out a credit. We should have been given more time and the questions should have directly referred to what we learnt in lectures.
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- James responded promptly to Moodle questions over the weekend prior to the lab report submission. His responses were helpful and detailed, and that was greatly appreciated.
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- There was too much content presented on the lecture slides (one lecture had 90 slides!). A greater time limit on some of the quizzes would have been helpful. I also hate Wikiversity as a platform; I find it overly complex and difficult to navigate and search, making it really hard to find the information needed to complete assessments.
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- James Neill was fantastic. always gave his time and help and was patient in explaining all aspects of the unit content. Great teacher, lovely guy!
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- The quizzes were too complex for the time limit. The questions were a bit convoluted.
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- James Neill.
- Being able to go to any tutorial.
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- James, I've told you before in Health Faculty Committee Meetings that you teach a wonderfully constructed and thought-through unit. It is evident that I struggle with statistics in my results but my affection for studying psychology is demonstrated by my results in less mathematically-inclined areas of psych. When employers look at my university transcript in the future they will (hopefully) (hahah) see a pass mark for 7126 but that in no way reflects your ability to teach, your capacity for creating a wellthought through unit structure, nor your effort in trying to convey your material to your students. Thank you for trying your hardest and I really truthfully appreciate it. Thank you.
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- James is such a helpful lecturer! This is a very difficult class and the amount of information and help he provided to get us all successfully through the unit was wonderful. James was also fantastic at answering any queries and sorting out any problems that may have occurred.
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- Moodle quizzes with questions that have more than one correct answer are mean!
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- It was great having access to both the lectures and tutorials online.
- The use of Wikiversity as a resource was fantastic - it really helped me gain a better understanding of particular content.
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- The online quizzes were quite difficult given the time limit. If often had trouble with the questions, and could not find any content in the lectures or tutorials to be of help. More practice quizzes would be great, as well as a longer time limit.
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- It showed me how great psychology students are. It encouraged support which was great.
- James is very nice in person.
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- James is very intelligent but lectures are boring. The dim lights made it hard to concentrate. The delivery was very bland.
- He also is very blunt in emails.
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- I thought the lectures were very informative and had all the information needed for the quizzes.
- The data collection was a good exercise as well to get us used to what we will need for the assignment.
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- Perhaps tutorial handouts with instructions of what we will do, will make it easier to undertake the assignment analyses. The screen casts as well as a handout may make students feel more confident about doing the assignment.
- I think the last lecture of what is needed for the assignment is too close to the due date. As there is no final exam the assignment should be due in the last week instead of having a 10 week semester.
- Previous stats provided on the assignment show that this is a difficult topic and people need time to understand what they've just learnt before doing an assignment due a couple weeks later.
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- I liked that the examinations were spread out throughout the semester, less stress.
- Also James was very helpful with the lab report.
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- The lab report was very hard
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- I found this to be an extremely difficult unit, however, James makes all of the information readily available. He is methodical and helpful regarding questions and always makes sure that you understand before moving on. I can't praise James highly enough for his efforts with Wikiversity and making a difficult unit understandable. I like how James looks at the content each year and tweaks it to improve on any flaws. He is methodical and pragmatic. Great unit, great lecturer.
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- having weekly quizzes instead of an exam, lecture and tutorial content were relevant to and useful for the assignment ...
- everything was explained really well by James
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- Having more workshops for the lab report
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- Great unit well organised. James is very good at explaining the concepts. He put in so much extra effort to make sure students were happy and had support to get through the unit. One of the best classes I have taken so far.
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- Only thing I was unsure about was the marking rubric for the assignment. I found it different that you received a set mark for each section e.g. 16 or 20 no in between or half marks. Prehaps I just received the set mark for each section not sure if it was the same for everyone. There is probably a good reason for doing this, I had no problem with it. However, it might be good to explain it in the future.
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- EVERYTHING (almost) James was a great tutor, he was fast at replying to emails and made himself avaialable to students at all times
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- The way the lectures are given is quite dull. Although you can tell how passionate james is about the unit he is quite boring to listen to in lectures! his tone is flat and its difficult to listen to for two hours! haha apart from that his fantastic
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- The head of the unit needs to be less of a prick.
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- The lectures were boring, it was just like reading from a slide. Itegrate activities into the lectures to help understand. We did little to no work on how to work out factor analysis by trying some examples. Very disappointed in this unit
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- The use of the Wiki pages and the links in each page led to confusion for me, at one stage I had about 20 tabs open in a web browser. I found it difficult to navigate to the information that I needed.
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