Carlson POB

Course Decisions

The following section on course details is written for the benefit of new faculty. Experienced faculty may wish to skip this section, and turn directly to Section II to consider how to create electronic lectures using PowerPoint or to Section III to examine the resources available that can be incorporated into their course.

In a short period of time, you will find yourself in front of a group of undergraduates who will be your students for the semester. You have to make a number of key decisions prior to that first course meeting. Among these decisions are:

Which textbook do I use for this course?
How do I prepare a syllabus for my students?
How do I handle grading and exams for this course?
Should I attempt to do a laboratory with the course and if so, what should I do in the laboratory?
How will I present the material to my students?
What demonstrations will I be able to use in my course?
Where can I locate support materials (videos, slides, and images) for my course?

The intent of the following sections is to guide the new instructor in making informed choices and decisions that will lead to a quality course in physiological psychology.

One of your first decisions will be to choose a textbook for your students to read in the course. Your choice will depend on a number of factors. The coverage of topics within the text will be an important issue. At the present time, there are a variety of textbooks with topical coverage appropriate for a beginning course in physiological psychology. These choices range from texts of biological psychology to texts aimed at the more general field of neuroscience. Another factor will be the writing style of textbook author. If the author not only covers the important material, but also does it an interesting and engaging way, you will lean toward using that textbook.

In addition to considering your personal preferences, you will also need to consider the intellectual and achievement capacity of your students. There should be a general match between the level of the textbook and the capacity of your students. New faculty may wish to consult with colleagues to estimate the level of achievement for the average student who may enroll in your course. In addition, ask whether students have a background in physiology prior to enrolling in your course. Your department may require that students have taken one or more prerequisite courses in biology, chemistry, or physiology prior to enrolling in your course. These prerequisites will ensure that your students have a solid foundation upon which you can build your course. Avoid extreme mismatches between the text adopted for the course and student level. Examples of mismatches are when an instructor adopts a low-level textbook for a group of students who are quite talented and knowledgeable or when an instructor adopts a high-level text for students who do not have a background in physiology. Neither situation is good for you or your students.

In as much as I am writing this Instructor's Manual (6/e), it will not surprise you to learn that I am an advocate of Neil Carlson's Physiology of Behavior (6/e) textbook. The text meets my expectations for topical coverage and for an engaging writing style. Moreover, the text is appropriate for mid- to high-level students with a background in physiology. I enforce the departmental course prerequisites that ensure a background in physiology1. Carlson's text is a good match for my students and for my expectations for a course textbook.

In addition to influencing your choice of textbooks, your estimate of student level will impact your approach to lecture. If your students have a solid background, your approach may be different than if your students are poorly prepared for your course. In the former, you will be able to assume a background in physiology that will allow you to move quickly through the preliminary core concepts. In the latter, you will have to take your time in lecture to ensure that you adequately cover the foundation material. Practically, this often means that you will not be able to cover the same amount of material that you might have with more advanced students. Another practical consequence is that poorly prepared students often require more attention outside of class, including office time and course material reviews.

Whether or not you include a laboratory component in your course is a more complicated issue. The number of formal physiological psychology laboratory courses has declined over the years for a variety of reasons. Decreases in funding have led to cutbacks in undergraduate courses. The physiological psychology laboratory is an expensive enterprise. In addition to cost, there is the issue of the use of animals in undergraduate laboratories. In many instances, physiological laboratories involve surgical and experimental procedures using rats as subjects for the laboratories. Over the years, animal care guidelines have become more stringent and have driven costs upward for the use of animals in undergraduate laboratories. A related factor has been resistance to using animals in undergraduate laboratories, in part because of pressure exerted by animal rights activists who deem behavioral research to be without value. The combined effect of these factors has been to reduce the number of animal laboratory components associated with the physiological psychology course.

Yet, it is possible to effect a laboratory component with only a minimum number of animals. Part of the intent of this manual is to provide you with ideas for inclusion in a formal laboratory or ideas that you can use as demonstrations in your course. Examples of these are to use sheep brains for dissection for neuroanatomy, and microcomputer exercises designed to illustrate neurophysiology, neurochemistry, and sensory/motor processes in brain. Moreover, you may wish to use Internet research exercises as a part of your course. These resources are described in Section III of this manual.

Your next decision relates to the sequence in which you will cover material in the course. If the course level is low to intermediate, you may wish to spend more time on the foundation material in Chapters 1-5. This will require that you in turn decide what topics you will cover in the remainder of the course and at what depth you will cover those topics. For a higher level course, you may spend less time covering the basic material in chapters 1-5, and more time on class demonstrations and exercises.

How you cover topics will also be a function of the number of contact hours in a course and the course schedule. If you are teaching in a semester system, you will normally have 3 hours of student contact per week (48 hours of course contact over a normal semester). The hours are likely to be in three meetings (MWF) or two meetings (Tues-Thur) per week. You will need to decide how many exams you will give during the semester and then subtract these hours from the number of course meetings. Layout the number of course meetings with a separate line for each class meeting. Pencil in the exam dates (including the final exam) as well as days devoted to University, Federal, and State holidays. Then decide how many class sessions you are going to devote to each topic. If you are to use a demonstration in class or to show a film, note that on the outline.