[speaker001:] or sort of characteristic behaviours of groups and the way that the dynamics happen. You've probably heard of group think haven't you? Yeah? Where members of the group all tend to think the same way, you don't get new id, new ideas are challenged. Certain types of groups only have one way of viewing problems as the right way to look at problems you don if any of you have been in the R C P, Revolutionary Communist Party, you might find that's a fairly similar sort of thing there's a party line and dimensions of what constitutes it. Erm group think is usually taken as negative. Of course it can be a very positive thing. You tend to find that groups, if you've got a group who're gonna launch a bomb y'know that that groups make far more risky or dicy de decisions than individuals. So if you look at individuals making erm decisions about punishment or some decision where there's a consequence or an element of risk, you'll find that groups quite often tend to go for more extreme behaviour than any one of the individuals in the group. There's a lot of stuff written about why that might occur.... Right, there's a list of reasons why that might occur. Erm how do people sort of beco when you become a member of a group, usually in some way the group changes you as you go through different stages of it, your values may change as a result of interacting with people in the group and th this process of erm somebody's come up with how it is that you start off in a group, how it is that you become an active member of a group, how it is you may even become involved in the maintenance of the group and the leadership of it and then you sort of die away and that's the y'know retire from the group. So process is normally talk talked about group socialisation [clears throat]. What was in that cake you gave me? [LAUGHTER]
[Barker:] Erm and we talk about erm the stages of evolution or of a person and a group and then there's the list there. It goes through evaluation, commitment, investigation, ok? And finally there's a divergence when you sort of leave the group when your values change. So there's a sort of list of socialisation. And then there's some recent work using the concept of groups. Now, as I say, I've covered that very quickly. That is probably about two lectures worth there, ok? I mean if you go it's normally I chat about two lectures on that and you give lots of examples. Text books are very good, do read them and that about covers that part. So that's your lecture on groups and group processes. Erm I think what I'll do with these handouts is I'll let you take some for absent friends and then any that're left over are put in the reading group, shall I? So that other people can pick them up... In fact there weren't that many left over because all the other ones. Okay, introduction to psychology exam notes, right? These are the things that you really want isn't it? It doesn't tell you anything I haven't already told you but it gives you reassurance.... There's only one sheet. D'you wanna pick them off the front at the end? Yeah? Well a cos then you can pick them up altogether if, are you with me, if you're doing the rounds for your friends cos some of them'll be on there and some'll be... Pick them up from the front, it's just that some of the stuff will be at the front and some of it won't.... Some of you bring picnics here don't you?.... Now, it's gonna I've probably already said this to you. This will be ok the exam or paper will consist of six questions which you will do in two hours, er not all six of course. The exam paper's two hours, there'll be six questions on it and you will have to do three essays, right? They're essay type questions, they're not short answers or multi-guess. Now, two of the questions out of the six will come from developmental and four of the questions of the six will be coming from the topics that I've covered on most of s it'll come from one one of the many topics that I've c or several of the topics that I've covered. Now, the paper format hasn't quite been decided with reference to whether it will be compulsory to do at least one from each section. Right, if you've gotta do three essays now from six you have to do one from each section, then you're gonna do either two of developmental,o it's unclear exactly what the breakdown will be on that.. Er it may be that you can do three from my stuff, it may be that you can do two from developmental and one from mine. They're the two extremes. Now, from my point of view of course, all do developmental so I don't have to mark the papers, right?
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Barker:] So er I will not be offended in the least. An if you really don't know any and you're gonna have an attempt at a question that you don't understand, make sure it's the other person's, ok? I don't want. Right. Now the areas that I've identified are the same ones as I put on the board last week. Erm so there's s I think there're about ten major things that we discussed erm what is psychology, research methods, psychoanalytical approaches, cognitive and information approaches or approach there, perception, memory, learning behaviourism, attribution and groups. Now, you'll notice the numbers in the brackets are some indication of the amount of time that we spent, the relative amount of time that we've spent on the subjects. So, what is psychology erm we spent about one week on, whereas we we spent about three weeks on memory. Now, the question pool or the topic area pool comes from topics one to ten. The way it was done was that if you imagine putting one card in for psychology, two cards in for research methods, one card in for psychoanalytical approaches, three cards in for memory and so on and so forth an then they were sort of drawn out and then when a topic had been picked the other cards were removed. So although memory, for example,ha is three times as more likely to appear on the paper than say, what is psychology or groups or perception, it's nonetheless possible that perception, groups or what is psychology could appear. Are you w so it gives you some idea, if you're gon if you're not gonna revise the whole syllabus, shame on you, erm then it gives you some indication of how to spend your revision wisely. Er but don't I mean I'm not the fact that erm some topics have a bigger number than others and others have only got one doesn't mean they won't be on the paper... Now, there will be some of you who will do spot revision. You will revise three questions, perhaps one developmental, two psychology or something like that and you will hope that they come up. If they don't alright you might end up with one or two questions. In my experience of doing exams, and I'll talk to you about revision techniques in a minute, erm generally you're better off to have a broad coverage of a syllabus rather than having a shallow one, right? But there's a compromise. Clearly you don't want to know all the syllabus so you're gonna miss parts out but you're better off knowing more topics in case some of the questions are difficult on the ones that you've covered or they're not on there at all When is the exam? May. So you've got quite a lot of time... Now, there's some spare ones of these on the front as well When you get this scr scrub out item number eleven which is on the back because these are the notes that w went out for the social psychology exam... And I would be you'd be in a little bit of trouble if you revised wh influences of text ha b li had literature had on our lives, discuss three books, cos it ain't gonna be on this paper... I'll talk to you about that You've already got some have you? Cheers Okay what I'll do is go through this and you can ask questions as we go through. Okay, these apply to any exam. Everybody make sure you cross out item number eleven because I; m not giving you any advance notice of a of questions and if I was it certainly wouldn't be that one, right, so make sure you cross it out and make sure you tell your friends who you're giving copies to that number eleven doesn't apply. Yeah so if it was somebody you didn't like you could say, here I saved you one of these, have a look at number element, very useful
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Barker:] Okay yes, most of this is common sense erm er i what I'll do is relate it to things that I'm looking for in exam questions as we go through. Right, don't spend most of your time trying to come to grips with something that you just don't understand. I mean if you can't get it quite quickly and get to grips with it, don't waste time on it. Move on to other topic areas, right? [clears throat]. If there are bits that you don't understand and you're having trouble, give me a phone, I think I put my phone number on the board, give me a ring at home, give me a ring at Aston or come and see me or go and chat to your friends or go go and look at a text book but if that doesn't help, then come back, right? Don't waste your time. Other people probably understand it better than you and if you're struggling to understand it, go and ask them. And as a first resort, come and bug m. Most of my revision in my first and second years was done the night before and I managed to get through but a lot of friends who did the same didn't. I don't think it's good exam technique. You're better off doing a little and often. The only problem is you start revising at sort of three months in advance or something and then, or a month or whatever, and it comes to exam and you think you've forgotten it all. In fact you haven't. Think back to the stuff we did on memory, a little and often is a good way of trying to remember things... Okay, it's useful if you've covered topic areas to actually think about writing essays about questions that you think about to get you used to the style and time s scale of actually dealing with exams. Right, we're dealing with three questions in an exam in two hours. How many minutes is that? What is it? You've gotta write three essays in, is it forty minutes? No it c forty minutes, ok? So you've got forty minutes. What people tend to do is they answer a question that they've revised well and they can easily answer and they spend an hour and a half on it and then they fi they do, I mean you know you see them answering they write you pages and pages and pages and it's a perfect answer and they get maybe ninety percent but had they spent about half as much time they'd have got seventy percent anyway because they knew most of the important bits. So don't, you get most of your marks for the first erm sort of twenty minutes writing usually unless your r I mean some of you might not get any marks at but I mean most of you will yeah you get most of your marks on the first twenty minutes. So once you get towards, take a clock in, make sure you pace yourself, and say at the end of that just put in a sort of sentence to make it look as if it's been finished off... Erm, what I usually do when I do an exam is I spend the first five minutes actually looking at the questions because initially you look for the ones that you've revised and you see but there may be others there, there're you can do in a slightly different way than the way that they first appear and that might help you quite a bit, although there are no trick questions in this. I think it'll be fairly evident from the question's erm titles wh what they want. Y'know I don't think there's any ambiguity in that sense. Erm, there are no trick questions only there're s very straight forward sorts of questions that they ask. Right, let's, this is hypothetical so it is it's the first thing that comes to my head but it may I wouldn't take it as s take groups, for example, you just got the handout on groups and you get a question coming up that might say erm, I don't know, how could groups how could a w what does our understanding of groups owe to speech therapy? Now I wouldn't put a question in that related to speech therapy in that way cos it's far too complicated right for for you, but, completely hypothetical, and then what normally happens is people think groups and they just spew the lot out, right? You get that back, right? But in handwriting that's under exam conditions with grammar to match, right, and you g and you get pages of it an most of which is absolutely irrelevant if you look at the question. Now, because it's first year exam, what tends to happen is you to tend to ok regurgitate the stuff you let through. In a final year paper you just put a line through that and say, that doesn't answer the question. So it's good exam skills. I mean those, by and large, those who who need to listen to what I'm saying to and take it on board won't and those who already do don't need it anyway but they'll take it on board. So, answer the question, right? It's usually worth putting an introduction in. Er a few sentences saying erm th q I y'know define your terms, talk about how you're gonna answer the questions, just an introductory paragraph and that usually sets it up to how you're gonna answer it. Make your answer relevant, actually addresses issues to the question. I'm not sure of your backgrounds you see. With psychologists, most of them've done English and and history or some, they've done essay type questions that're geared to answering questions. Erm, if you're not used to that then perhaps this' ll be more useful. Now one of the things that you tend to find is that if you were to ask about groups then people regurgitate all the stuff about groups but with most questions you can usually see links to other parts of the syllabus. Bring them in, show that you've actually thought more generally and you can see how you can bring different parts of the syllabus in because that's the novelty, that's what makes a piece of work stand out. If two of you regurgitate the notes perfectly generally in line with answering the question but then one of you brings in only a few sentences saying, well this could be accounted for with di dum di dum or, if we think about learning and er behaviourism, this has something to say about that. You don't need to write another essay, you just need to acknowledge that you can see a link between the work and that actually makes the work look a l a lot better, a lot more rounded, so that's a cheap way of getting marks. Erm, referencing things. Okay, if you're talking about child development, you're gonna use, if you're talking about er psychoanalysis you're gonna use Freud, or psychoanalytical techniques. If you're talking about learning theory, well I've given you a few names. I don't expect you to remember Higginbottom and Smith fifty four y'know I don't expect that in an exam. Try and remember the key names though, right, that associate with the sort of concepts that you want to discuss. It always helps. Whatever you do don't put that geyser who er bald headed and looks like Clement Freud or w y'know, nothing like that, ok? So, referencing. For an essay referencing is extremely important but for exams it's nt but just get the names in not necessarily the years... Okay, when you think of erm any, when you're revising stuff and you want to learn studies, try and put them in a context. Put them in the context of the times. Were they in the fifties, sixties or the seventies? If they're the seventies, think of people in kipper ties on the O U and flares and things like that. Y'know, try and place a historical context to the work and see how it influenced other works. So if you're talking about somebody's, I mean why was behaviourism for exa, if you think about the major topic areas that we've done, there's a historical sequence to them. You've got the psychoanalytical approaches which came out of Vienna, you've got behaviourism at the 1920's and then you've got the emergence of cognitive in the fifties and sixties, so there's already a sort of historical structure there. I don't need to erm elaborate much more... Okay, the give it, give it a mechanical structure, well that doesn't necessarily apply to some of the things that we've done but it does to other parts and if you're gonna discuss somebody's model, think about it in the real world. Think about simplifying it and actually having examples of it. So if you're gonna talk about, what did we do last week? What's the one with the boxes and whether or not people, what was it about? Attribution? Whether you'd attribute it to the actor or the situation, yeah? That model for example. Think of examples, it makes life a lot easier. Think of clear cut examples that demonstrate the model.... Okay, er practice makes imperfect. Don't don't erm just revise three questions and keep re y'know writing those topic areas and certain limited questions. Erm I didn't see any past pa I did see some past papers but it was subsequent to my setting these exam questions, right? So these are not based, they they are similar, they're not out of line but erm they I mean I don't think that you can necessarily pick up from past exam papers what'll be on the next. The best bit of information you've got is the syllabus coverage that I've given you. That gives you some guidance. Erm, try I mean psychology is actually finding the text books quite interesting y'know. As I got into psychology I'd read text books at nights, it's sad isn't it? But I did, right? They're the interesting psychology. If you I mean if you see some interesting stuff just r it tends to go in. I mean, find stuff that's actually interesting. The bigger thick American social text books for example are very good on social. Have a look at the introd the erm I find is a bit sort of sleepy, I tend to go to sleep, but the and quite got nice big pictures and interesting stories. I mean just read round for fun yo and see if there's anything that sticks and if you get chance to use it in an exam, do... Okay, then it says develop a stock of gems. All it's saying there is, if you do find something from erm other bits of the text books that we haven't covered in lectures, bung it it. I I mean if you put stuff in that wasn't in the lectures and it's relevant I mean that's lot of brownie points, yeah? So think about that, there's ways of doing that... Yeah, I it's incredible when you see erm th who was it? She was a bio-chemist and one of her abilities was a phenomenal memory. D'you remember the erm, you can't get a better bit of butter on your knife, Country Life butter adverts? Well we were trying to remember the lines to that and she came in and for about half an hour she gave a rendition. She said, well there wasn't only one version of that y'know and she knew the lot and there were all the d slightly different versions y'know, on the country gate and things like that. And she was going through and she knew them and er she was going into I it was her second year bio-chemistry exams on the bus and she's got a bi a text book on bio-chemistry and she's reading the introduction bit before you even get into proper bio-chemistry and Michael s look leant across and said, what on earth are you doing? And she said I'm revising. He said, but the exams in half an hour and she said that's right. He said well why are you reading that bit? She said, you've gotta start somewhere. Don't for God's sake, do that y'know it's what I find is, once panic sets in w and that's usually either the night before or the day, I d anything that I try and read doesn't really go in very well. You're better off, you're much, and don't stay up late. The only time I've ever frozen in an exam was when I'd gone for three exams solid without kip, one after the other, and I just brain and the other ones were a real struggle and I had to graft my marks out of solid granite y'know I was chiselling away. And then, for the first time ever in my life, I what I normally do is I have sort of maybe some questions that I definitely pre-plan and if I'm lucky one or two of them, and this paper all three of my prepared questions actually came up exactly as I'd worded them, or near enough. And I looked, I wrote the first one, first class answer and I thought, this is a doddle, and I'd done three days then or two nights without kip, and I sort of and erm suddenly I f and I went Smith nineteen forty? And I couldn't remember it was forty four and my mind went totally blank and I had to walk out of the exam for over half an hour with a and I couldn't remember a thing and went back in. I passed but that w I mean it was so, it was lack of sleep and the worst thing was the chap who was marking the paper said er, when I was there, he said, I told him what had happened and he said er, did you get much sleep last night? And the last thing you wanna say to somebody who's gonna be marking your paper is, oh yeah I stayed up all night revising for this. I mean, that wasn't gonna work. So don't stay, I I've generally found most people who stay up all night revising it doesn't do them any good. You're much better off having a fresh brain in the morning and ha being able to think on your feet. So so don't don't leave revision till the last minute. Make notes. When you go through your notes now they're a very good start for revision. Make notes as you go through. You won't remember them after if you don't look at them for a week but when you come to look at them the night before you'll be surprised what you do know. But it's no good starting from scratch the night before, or it is but I mean you'll you'll suffer for it. Right, look at an exam paper. I think erm Winston Churchill when he went for his Eton exam or the entrance exam to Eton or something and erm y'know they asked some question and he and he goes on and erm after five minutes he wrote his name, very neatly, right? If you don't know what you're doing, do it neatly. I mean that's that's, it's true as well. It works a tr. You get away, as long as you do it neatly you're usually alright. Erm, good thing is to actually say, to define the terms of the question and say how you're gonna answer them. It's money for old rope. Y'know what is, you might say, if you got a question on groups, I'm using groups hypothetically here because that's the thing that we've just done, ok? There's no relationship between that and whether it's on the exam or not. You can't infer that, right? I'm not trying to throw you here. And erm what you might say is, well what is a group? Y'know jus and things that you already n and just that'll give you a nice little gentle start to the paragraph. We're working on sleep- learning, over here? Is it? [LAUGHTER]. It doesn't go in. The work on subliminal learning doesn't work... Okay, Brown suggests that you bring a c wardrobe of cuddly toys and mementoes and things like that that were in the room when you were learning, context dependent learning. I don't think I'd suggest that, right? But do bring something from home, little little l y'know it can be useful Y d computer? Right, some people take the attitude of, well I'll do the difficult questions first because I know the easy ones. It never works that way. Do the easy ones first, the ones that you can definitely answer, rattle those of as quickly as you can so then you know what time you've got to spend on the difficult ones... That's a very good point. Make sure you leave at least a page at the end of each question in case you suddenly g cos what can often happen is you're writing the answer to one and you think, oh that relates to the earlier one. Bang it in. So leave a space so er usually a page, a whole blank page in between your answers if they're in the same booklet... Now that's very true. Don't waste time again struggling. If you start struggling with a piece, just stop it, work out where the next question'll roughly start and start r answering another one and the come back to it later. It's not a bad idea to chop and change if you get stuck. It'll it ensures that you're productive for most of the time. Erm, generally speaking, the people who get firsts are the ones who can write neatly very quickly and that does help. Erm but, having said that, I mean some of the worst ones are the ones that just go on and on and on about drivel. So I mean y'know j it may help you get a first class mark if you're a good candidate by writing lots, but generally writing lots doesn't ensure that you get a good mark. It may affect the top of the scale but it's certainly not most of it... Yeah, when it becomes desperate, ok? If it ever does. Just talk about examples of your everyday life that sort of illustrate in some ways some aspect of the question. It doesn't have to be academically rigorous. I mean and usually it will you see most people are looking to past students when they mark. You actually, if they don't do the r if they don't actually put anything down then you can't conjure it out of nothing but as long as you can get the benefit of the doubt then you'll prob y'know we'll give it to you. Well I will, and most people I know. I haven't met anybody yet who's punitive on student's work. People're looking to pass you. Erm, now what that means is, if you can't answer the question and you've only got a few lines down then sort of trying t w blur it a little bit and make it waffly so that there's something we can point to and say that you've written something, right? Tha this is for the desperate people. If you've got a per perfectly good answer, don't start writing a load of waffle as well because it'll only detract from your mark. But if you're really stuck and you've got a third question that you can't come up with I mean y'know sort of blur it, fudge it and make it look like there's a sort of metamorphic answer there and we can sort of say well that's sort of twenty percent or something and then that counts and it may carry you over. It's only for the people who get desperate and get stuck. Erm, we I won't be there to invigilate the exam but usually there's some, I mean if you get stuck and you want a break just stick your hand up, but not everybody cos everybody can't go to the toilet. But I mean y'know ah y'know g if you want if you're in that s if you're getting a bit worried about it, do get out of the room for a bit and then come back in later. Now, if you've got a block of exams, don't go straight from one exam to the other. Have a kip or a rest in between. Don't go down the pub though, that probably won't do you any good... Now, that covers exam techniques in general and what I'm we're looking for in papers. In terms of I mean how much can you actually write in forty minutes? It's not very much is it? Yeah? I would imagine that an adequate answer to a question could be done very easily with one side of that. That that's not much but if it's if it's I mean if it's not padded out with waffle and drivel cos you I mean if it's a good ti concise answer that'll probably get a good mark. If tha if it's a short answer, concise but answers the question, you'll get a better mark than a much more wordier answer that doesn't address the question. How're we doing for time? Five past twelve. Okay, I'm not saying to go. Questions about the exam? Right? So y w feel free now to ask questions... I mean, you must have something that worries you about about this partic I can only really talk about the exam. I don't know the system here but I know what I'm doing with those papers. Do I have sampl? I don't have sample question papers, but you do have one from previous years. But really the questions that you tend to get erm are things like, critically evaluate and discuss. Now if it means critically evaluate and discuss w it doesn't mean you just write a load of criticisms of it. What you actually do is erm list what it is that you're gonna critically evaluate. Now usually that's what students are very good at because they've learnt something about that. What students aren't so good about is actually critically evaluating it. Usually what critical evaluation would mean, for example, is to erm actually compare erm the model or the theory with what happen in practice. Compare it with other theories, try and look for the limitations of it. It's you don't have to be an Einstein to critically evaluate something. In fact, most of the criticisms and critics of theories are self-evident, they're not that difficult, yeah? Erm, compare and contrast. If that's in the question, then do compare and do contrast. I'm not sure what the difference is. Comparing and contrasting. Anybody have an idea what the difference might be between comparing and contr? Sorry s one of you ov green jumper at the back who gave me your cake. Similarities and differences. Compare. Well compare probably means you'd define both of them wouldn't you? And contrast means you then compare th a compare means you look at the similar yeah it could be the similarities and differences, I quite like that. It's quite nice and simple, isn't it? No sample questions but I mean in terms of the syllabus that you've got there is y'know you're much better off just having an understanding of it. You ca there's no sort of questions that sort of s jump out of a text anyway. I mean not gonna ask you anything difficult. You have nothing to fear in this exam at all if you d if you revise, right? Even if you b I I I would imagine that many of you, based on the notes alone that you've got from here, without any reading, would probably get through... So, you've got nothing to worry about as long as you do the work. I think that's what it boils down to. If you leave it til the last minute and you question spot, you might end up in a sticky situation... How many people here have failed an exam? One two three four five six seven. So most people haven't in fact failed exams. How often do you fail exams? You don't. That's why you're here. If you did, if you failed them on a regular basis, you wouldn't be here, right? If you look at the statistics I would in don't forget there's a re-sit paper. Now the re-s yeah?... The re-sit paper will take the same format as the original paper. Now, generally speaking wi I I I've act what I've done for the re-sit paper is that I I pooled a load of questions, some of which went to the first paper and some of which went to the ne and some of which went to the re-sit paper so I don't know which topics are coming up erm on the re-sit paper. However, they will be drawn from the same list of topics that're on the first and there may be some overlap. Generally speaking, re-sit paper erm will contain at least one question very similar to a question on the first paper. Er I, does anybody know where the past papers are kept? Yeah, in the library, that's where I'd usually go and look for them What was that? Where's the library? Yes What was the handout that you got from on Skinner? You had a single sheet, first of all the Oh, was that the article by Skinner? Well first of all i Erm, did anybody else have that problem? Well I er agree with it but I mean you understood it presumably then. I mean that's wh who had difficulty with the Skinner thing? Who was there of course? If you didn't bother turning up and reading it then that was no p The Skinner seminar, as far as I can remember, you've gotta bear in mind I I mean it must be eight nine years ago I probably read Skinner in earnest, yeah? Erm my understanding of the paper that we had for the seminar was that it discussed the nature of explanation. Skinner was trying to talk about psychology as a science because a lot of psychology at the time wasn't and if you ask pe... I'm sorry that my sort of talking's coinciding with people's conversations but er er will you try and finish it. Er the reason for the book that was written at that particular time was that that i you've gotta remember it was, what was it? What year was it? Nineteen fifty? Nineteen fifty-three. Most people didn't even know the nature of scientific explanation and things like that. So in a way we've covered aspects of that seminar in, what is science? Okay, Skinner talks about scientific explanation in that, so that's what he's addressing in that particular paper. He then advocates erm an approach based on a functional analysis of behaviour. Now a functional analysis of behaviour is o a a function is where you draw a box around something and you say it's got inputs and there's an output and the thing in between in the function that relates inputs to outputs. You're not interested in how it achieves the function, you just observe the function. So wh I mean it's all to do with behaviourism in the sense that, rather than being concerned with the mechanisms that iner er what's the word? Mediate behaviour that go on inside the head. What you do is, you look at the environment and consider like the inputs and then you look at behaviour as outputs and you learn the relationship between the two and you don't neces you don't have to understand what goes on inside. Now I remember you quite strongly disagreed with the notion that in fact if you don't know behaviour itself from w our own experiences, we behave differently in different situa in very similar situations and it's based on our interpretation of the stimulus. And that I mean is one of the major criticisms against a functional approach, that sometimes you need to know what's going on inside the box fully to be able to fully appreciate the behaviour anyway. But ultimately most theories will be reduced to their functional component. There will be something that you draw a black box around and you describe purely in references to it's inputs and outputs. So I think the seminar itself wasn't giving you much new stuff, it was stuff that we've already picked up in the course. And I I mean, for example, he was talking about astrology as a way of predicting. Well we discussed that right in day one, what's the difference between astrologists and psychologists and we explored the differences No, I drafted the questions so erm well I'm not saying there's nothing on behaviourism in the paper, I'm not saying there is. But I mean if you had a question on behaviourism I mean look at wwhat did we cover in your notes? If we had a car if we had a question on psychoanalysis? If we had a question on perception? What did we cover in your notes? I'm not gonna ask you questions that you don't und that I don't expect you to understand. It's not in my interests to to mark another fifty papers. Erm, do write big and and and with yeah do write big so that I can read it. Don't scrawl it please. If I can read it, it puts me in a far better mood. Just make your handwriting as clear as possible under the circumstances because it's er it'll speed the process up quite a bit Well, what d t I think if you draw a pl if you draw a plan, er that certainly should be taken i I I mean if you don't want me to consider the plan, put a line through it, yeah? If you do not want me to cons y'know if you put, this is a load of effing sh or whatever and then suddenly you suddenly realise that you might actually pass so you then I mean cross it out, I'll pretend it's not there, ok? So anything you don't want me to take into account when it's being marked, put a line through it, otherwise I will. A plan is actually a very good thing to put in. In my experience I c if I do a plan I haven't got enough time to write the essay. I don't know if anybody else finds that. The defe most people, if they've revised, would do very well on any one of these as a single essay if they were given three hours. If you were given three hours to collect your thoughts and write it down, you'd all d excuse me, hello, right. The chances are that, if you were all given a lot of time to write each essay without your notes and you just sat at a desk and had about three hours on each question, you'd all do very well. The fact is, it's condensed into a very short space of time so you haven't got much chance to think. A plan is a very good way of addressing that but unless you can get a plan out in under five minutes, yeah, then it mi you might consider a better use of your time. I don't know. I mean, is u it isn't very long, is it? Forty minutes, for an essay?... My spelling is awful by the way so the chances are I won't spot any spelling mistakes, yeah? So don't worry about spelling o... Any other questions? I'm sure you must have some... Who's n I mean ho I pres how many of you have come in here without on A levels that didn't require you to write an essay? Put your hand up, I ca Okay, it may be worth, in that case, having a look at past papers and having a go at writing the essays. Now, the seminar session that I'm going to run, we can eith we'll have Jeannie set up but we can sort of kick off with a discussion about topics that you want to cover in the revision Another possibility for the seminar is that if you want to bring some notes along to a sort of, if you show me a if you dream up hypothetical questions and then put a plan to answer them so that I can skim down it in about a minute or two. So you're not writing an essay, what you're doing is saying, well if this question came up, this is how I would answer it, then what I will do is give you feedback there and then on wh what else you can include and what else you can't. But if you give me a blank sheet of paper and put a question, I'm not really gonna tell you what you should include and what you shouldn't, yeah? So make use of the seminar time. Bring along questions to do with revision, bring along planned essays that you've written if you want me to have a look at them. I haven't got time to er mark them all in a formal sense, so just bring a plan y'know if y give me somebody give me a mock title cos I'm very reluctant to dream up titles under these circumstances... Okay, compare and contrast two theories of aggression. Now we've not done aggression, so there's absolutely no way that you're expected to know anything about it, but that's a typical question that you might get on a social psychology paper. Then what you might say is well what ar y'know erm you might say well s one define aggression, two define one theory, define the other and then y'know just structure it so you're talking about single or sentences maybe on on a line that go down to very little but enough to show how you would go about answering the question.... Anything else?... There is a pos Can you read it to me I I can't Don't forget if you, have written any essays for anything else, as course work? Okay, erm the quality of exam I mean there'll be some people here who will feel embarrassed to have submitted the work that they've written, right? I have felt embarrassed because I've had to meet people afterwards who I who I who I care what they think about me and I've put in the biggest load of old rubbish. You get used to seeing it, right? You get used to seeing insulting poems about you, all sorts of things on exam papers from students, right? So and i I mean you read them in a they're marked within five to ten minutes, yeah? Scripts fifteen minutes at most. I'm not looking to give you constructive feedback on them, I'm just looking to see what grade it gets so you go down and put it in a pigeon hole. Do not worry about the quality of the essays. There is a mar if you got a two two for a piece of course work, ok, it would easily get an equivalent two two in an exam would be the eq would be about a third or a pass, yeah? The the grades, you do not mark the essays that you've put in at course work t erm you don't mark the exam questions to the same rigorous standard. I mean, most people are in an absolute state of terror in exams and it comes across. It's an awful way of assessing people. I don't think it's very fair at all. It doesn't get at what you want either but it's one of the system that we've got... So if you write something th that you for a piece of, an essay that you got say a two one for and then you write an appalling piece, you might still get a two one for it under exam conditions Is there anybody who has w or has trouble writing fast? Seri I mean due to some physical difficulties or or whatever. Because if there are you can arrange for things li if you if you break or sprain, you start getting strain or whatever you can ask for an amanuensis... Oh, you're interested now, oh what's an aman where's the dictionary? The dictionary isn't here. Oh, we haven't got one. Now, I'm not shu how do you think you're spelling amanuensis? It's either E or A, could be amanuensis,ema amanuensis, it's somebody who sits beside you and you dictate to them. I'm sure if receives a plea for twenty amanuensis from the first year speech therapists there might be some eyebrows raised I'm s can you shout? Okay, er generally speaking the vocabulary that you've been taught within the lecture series is the vocabulary you should use where possible. It looks like you know what you're talking about, doesn't mean you do but i I mean if you use th if you if you start going on about that thing that there is er when some what on earth? But the independent variable then we get there quite easily... Have you found it? I think it begins, is it A E I? No, it's it's erm it's somebody who, all they do is write your answers for you but dictated I m if you've ever been an em especially I mean I used to be I usually end up doing the amanuensing for courses that I've taught on students on my paper. It's because you can't just sit down and di if you don't know how to spell, I can't spell anyway, d'you know when I did it, the student actually wrote a letter to me and to th or to the exam board car saying that this hand-writing is appalling and the spelling, it's due to the person who was doing the amanuensing, rather th but I was marking it anyway so it didn't really matter, but they were so distressed at the handwriting that I produced. Erm, the trouble is, if you don't know the vocabulary it's very hard to dictate and write down because you have to keep stopping and asking them to spell things. Erm, the other thing is, if you know anything about the subject, which most amanuensists should do, you actually start filling in the gaps. Y'know you a you're going along and they'll say group, and you write therapy or something y'know and you've done it and you think whoops and you just hope, and the worst thing is when they say Smith and Jones and you put seventy nine in and you think, shit and y'know they get the thing slightly wrong... Draw up a revision plan, pick out the topics that you're going to revise... Any problems, bring them along to the seminar. Now, any more questions that might benefit?... Is there anything that's unclear apart from the series of lectures?... Okay,wh with regards to, if I was teaching this next year to the first years, what changes would you recommend I make? Apart from sack myself?
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Barker:] You don't like the overheads Okay, overheads are boring. Would you go with that? The problem I must admit the problem that surprised me with overheads is that erm people can't write and listen at the same time, or the other thing is, you put something on an overhead th every bit of it gets written down which is why I adapted it so that you did. The idea was I was using them as sub-headings originally but then people were kept y'know slowing d it's erm very hard to work out whether what you actually want is a good detailed set of notes. I think handouts ma you you're all sort of absolutely your eyes lit up when the little handouts came round. Erm, so it might be an idea to talk around handouts and perhaps use the O H P occasionally, yeah? Well we don't really actually have any schools si I mean schools of psychology were a thing of the fifties really, there's no identifiable school of psychol The problem is in fact that's exa in fact I did that right at the start, right? The first lecture I gave I was going on about the different approaches to psychology. Have you got all the handouts that you need? I'm not giving any more so you should have thr erm three main handouts, groups, yeah? Erm but the trouble is of course it doesn't go in. If I say to you behaviourism is about di dum di dum and I did but obviously it didn't sink in at the time. Perhaps more time labouring them and giving a more a briefer introduction to them may be, erm a more in-depth introduction? Hello? Right, I think it's always been time-tabled for two hours though Well the alternative would be to have had the tea break in between Mhm, do you have many other two hour slots? No you're not but in fact studies show after about the first ten minutes, people aren't absorbing much anyway It's true, most studies show I mean if, lectures are one of the way of delivering information I think Yeah, but they wouldn't pay me for the hour I was sitting there doing nothing you see Well but there again that's not your problem is it? I mean how they ch the fact they choose to sub-contract out to me is one thing, yeah, I mean that's their problem in that sense. No but I mean I I I was planning on having a break in the middle but y most of you voted and you wanted a break at the start but perhaps it would've, but then you you'd have been going straight on from s w phonetics How much of this is a consensus by the way? I mean a few people are talking, how many of you agree with that? That two hours is two long?... And ho Well it's and how many of you would want the break? And if we did So you're going for the hour slots aren't you really? That's right but I think j I think just the fact that you're doing psychology and then psychology again in a way I think that's the pr I agree with you, what you're really saying is, I mean how many people would object, or how many people would prefer to have the straight two hours rather than the two single hours? Yeah, I'm in favour of videos and things like that Yeah, ok, I'll bear that in m is somebody writing this down at all? I know we've got it on this actually so, but I'm thinking of the course reps. Who are the course reps? Okay you, I mean is any of this of any use to you?... What I'll do, actually what I'll do is I'll take you name and I'll send you a transcript of it, yeah? I'll pick out the points cos I'm gonna send it to anyway to say that th y'know I personally think two hours is too much for me. I don't like sitting here for two hours. Erm, I also think that if you have two hours, a video and a talk would be better. Erm I think that's that worked quite well but there is a bit of I I suspect if I was to show a video every week there's a reluctance th for people to want to pay me in a sense. Y'know they feel that if they're paying me to teach yeah Right, the trouble i the problem that we do have is a very big syllabus that I was given. I wouldn't have covered half the things that we covered in that time, yeah? And the other thing is that it's er a wide syllabus is fine as long as you're not expected to go in any depth, but you're expected to go sort of both, a broad syllabus and into a little bit of depth more than perhaps erm I mean in effect I mean you're not far off of covering A level psychology at this at tha the level we're going to. We don't cover the breadth of A level but I think the depth is getting close to it. So if you're doing A level psychol y'know I think perhaps you ought to say, ok what we'll do is go for less depth but a more general approach. That may be it, and perhaps one or two topics only we go into some depth on. I think that may be an idea. So, overhead are out. That's a shame because I don't normally use overheads and I've got into them this year and er my stats group in particular, who get the same sort of treatment as you do, have actually said th Right That's right the prob that's The the problem that we did have, I mean my normal lecturing style until here in fact, was that I would just waffle y'know and generally do a few bits on the board and then carry on for an hour or two but the sh people weren't getting the notes down, that was the problem with that. Now, note taking is a skill in the sense that y'know the final years you wouldn't, final year lecturers I mean are so waffly and ah go off in all directions because of different people. I mean it's hard t y I mean you come away with a list of t things that you've talked about, maybe headings and that's about it and then you go and build your own notes up. I think there was a lot more concern here with getting a good set of notes that you can revise from. Maybe by the t I mean so my lecturing style was I I geared if you like towards a more, you go off and do some reading based on the following topics and I agree with you, that was too vague given the the fact you're not psychologists. Y'know, I mean you're here to do speech therapy. I think what we may get away with then is handouts and less overheads. I think that would do the trick but preparing handou I mean I was doing those till two, this lot for you this mor I'm absolutely y'know it's quite hard work when you're concurrently teaching all the time. If I'm not teaching I'm marking in th to actually get a lecture through cos I was given this with about a weeks' notice you see, so I didn't have a chance to prepare the stuff for this course other than as we go along... Right? But I te I agree with those points, I mean most of them I go along with. It's not very interesting for me to waffle for two hours. Other points?... There's only half the class so you can't really throw many eggs and rotten tomatoes and things can you? Okay, you tell me. How's your first year going then cos you've nearly finished it now? Generally... All glad you did speech therapy? Really? I mean i a how many people are a bit disillusioned with the whole business since they started, from how they initially set off? Couple? I know s I've chatted to some other people and they've said the same so you're not alone. You haven't done much speech therapy which seems to be the main problem. You don't even, do you get a chance to look at speech therapists in action? Pardon? Yeah, what surprised me is, I mean you don't wanna let you loose on the general public, with with due respect, I mean you don but but you should certainly be, I mean I'm surprised they don't take you somew have videos showing you sessions in practice and things like that You do go out place? When? Right but the first year I mean you wanna get the I'm surprised Mhm Now, I agree with the point that you've just made and I've heard some other people say, well the teaching that they've got so far isn't going to influence what they see in their second year. So that might be worth bearing in mind. But it's tr it's true in most, if you do clinical medicine erm er ophthalmic optics you don't get to play with the patients until quite a way on, and most of them don't even get a chance to observe for a lot of it. I mean if you're doing me medicine, for the first couple of years you you're just doing text book work aren't you, mostly? And a bit of lab stuff? Mhm?... But your course is a very good erm non-drop out rate. Most cour I mean you nor you can get up to about ten percent on most cou on a lot of courses, where people leave after the first term. Here, one person out of fifty over the year isn't bad, is it? Three? Oh, who else is gone? Oh the the boy that you got rid of, yeah. Very careless of you wasn't it? Mind you, what was he like?
[speaker001:] Not bad
[Barker:] Not bad?
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Barker:] Are there any particular topics that you think would have been useful to have seen in the course that weren't? And are there any bits of the course you'd rather not have done? Well no apart from all of it, but a. Right, things we'd like to see in psychology... Is there any I mean any the trouble is you don't know what's on the menu so it's hard to but I mean what sort what sort of things would you like to have seen from pr what you have a? A question? So sort of yeah, how to deal with people, inter-personal? I think you'll probably get that next year though. I think you've had the crash course and inter-personal communication is next year Okay Of communication. I I think what we may be able t I mean yes I think that what you may be able to do is jiggle things about so that, you don't get much social psychology until the end I know I mean there wasn't really much time Right, I'll make a note of that Okay, somebody suggested that the communication essay or which reflects the communication model w in the hand book it says that you've had input from linguists, er sociologists, psychologists and people like that and in fact you haven't I think that Okay, any more? How're we doing for time? Well, unless somebody can come up with something to talk about, I think we might as well go. Anybody who has any concerns or questions I I'm gonna be here for a few minutes. Good luck, been fun teaching you. The race is on for the spare hand-outs