James E. Freeman
I came to the
University of Virginia, August 1999.
Prior to coming to UVa I taught 23 years at Denison University
(Granville, Ohio). There are several
differences between teaching at Denison and teaching at UVa.
The main
difference is in the size of my classes.
Denison is a small, liberal arts school, while UVa is a moderate size
research university. The quality of
student, however, appears to be about the same at both schools. For my lecture class, I had about 130
students the first semester. This is
more students than I would have all year at Denison. My seminar class at here is about twice the size of my seminar
classes at Denison. I also taught my
first summer class this past summer. It
was fun and it only had 19 students.
The
quintessential point I attempt to emphasize in all my courses is critical
thinking and the science of psychology.
Regardless of the class, I want them to be better consumers of
information about behavior. I often
read a psychology-related, newspaper article and ask them to evaluate it. I ask them the question, are the conclusions
supported by the research design? Too
often I hear students accept as gospel something that they have hear an
“expert” say on a “talk show” or read in a “pop” psychology book. A comment they often get from me on their
first papers is “Where is the data?”
They come to know that an anecdote, no matter how compelling, is not
enough.
The course
that I teach most often—“Research Methods”—is a required course for all minors
and majors in psychology. It is in this
course that students learn about research design and data analysis. A review of the textbooks on the subject
reveal that the content is rather dry compared to that of introductory and
other content areas. For example, there
aren’t as many illustrations, photos, or humorous examples in methods or
statistics textbooks compared to the other areas. There is also a fair amount of statistics in the course, which
past evaluations have revealed to be intimidating to some students. I attempt to compensate by adding my own
sense of humor in my lectures.
I would
describe my lecture style as “interactive.”
I often ask the class questions before revealing the next point in my
slide presentation. I continue to ask
questions in an attempt to probe them to think critically about what they
say. I like to involve my class in a discussion
even when the class is large.
Perhaps, the
most distinctive feature of my teaching style is that I provide them with
explicit learning objectives for each unit of my lecture class. These are posted on the class web site. I promise that no question will be asked on
an exam that is not derived from a learning objective. After each exam I also post a rubric or
scoring key on the web that explains the answer to each question and how
partial credit is awarded.
Denison University |
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|
Research
Methods |
Honors
Psychology |
General
Psychology |
|
Statistics |
Psychology
of Blacks (Seminar) |
|
University of Virginia |
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|
Research
Methods |
Human
Sexuality (Seminar) |
General
Psychology |