Glad I Followed the Advice
Back when I set about returning to school, the admissions advisor I spoke to at Poly listened to my goal of getting a master's in Instructional Technology. He then suggested Psychology for my pursuit of a Bachelor's and gave several reasons for it. As I'd always enjoyed psych classes and even had several definitive psychology guides for personal reading (who really goes and buys a DSM IV and reads it for fun?). It was a good call, because I did very well and loved my time in those classes.
The benefit once again is clear, as I spent a couple of hours studying for tomorrow's final with a classmate. I could define many of the terms, hearing the voices of Dr. H and Dr. P in my head saying "Correlation is NOT causation' 'Validity means your test measures what it says you will measure', and several key statistical formulas. The fact that I've drawn on that information briefly in my measurement class during M.Ed and now, my third statistics and measurement class for this program means I'm getting a lot of mileage out of those undergrad classes most people dread.
But it also means that when the classmate doesn't understand Type ! and Type 2 error, I can draw a graph in 30 seconds and then give the simple explanation and mnemonic that I use to remember it if I don't put my grid on a test paper. I was able to explain about a dozen things without reviewing a single note, which from Cog Psych, tells me that I am further encoding the information, which will serve me well to retrieve it tomorrow.
As the professor said, he really isn't teaching a lot of new stuff in this class (maybe 1/3 is new), the objective is for us to apply that knowledge. Still, it is good that I had those classes in an applied learning environment, because it means I'll do better on this test than normally would be with the amount of studying I'm putting in. So, the focus tonight and at lunch tomorrow is on the new material.
Then I can focus on the important part-three chapters of dissertation proposal goodness!
The benefit once again is clear, as I spent a couple of hours studying for tomorrow's final with a classmate. I could define many of the terms, hearing the voices of Dr. H and Dr. P in my head saying "Correlation is NOT causation' 'Validity means your test measures what it says you will measure', and several key statistical formulas. The fact that I've drawn on that information briefly in my measurement class during M.Ed and now, my third statistics and measurement class for this program means I'm getting a lot of mileage out of those undergrad classes most people dread.
But it also means that when the classmate doesn't understand Type ! and Type 2 error, I can draw a graph in 30 seconds and then give the simple explanation and mnemonic that I use to remember it if I don't put my grid on a test paper. I was able to explain about a dozen things without reviewing a single note, which from Cog Psych, tells me that I am further encoding the information, which will serve me well to retrieve it tomorrow.
As the professor said, he really isn't teaching a lot of new stuff in this class (maybe 1/3 is new), the objective is for us to apply that knowledge. Still, it is good that I had those classes in an applied learning environment, because it means I'll do better on this test than normally would be with the amount of studying I'm putting in. So, the focus tonight and at lunch tomorrow is on the new material.
Then I can focus on the important part-three chapters of dissertation proposal goodness!
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