Advanced Topics in Psychology V (PSYC4885)

Participation is critical for an interesting and engaging discussion. Therefore, students will gain marks for attending student presentations and engaging in group discussions (e.g., by posing/answering questions). In total, there will be up to 5 marks (5%) awarded for attendance and up to 5 marks (5%) awarded for participation throughout the whole semester. Marks for participation will be awarded based on the quality of the contributions.

More details will be provided in class.

Students will be required to work together in small groups to develop a research proposal for a new study that addresses an important and novel research question in the emotion science literature. Students will be able to select any topic area (as long as it includes emotion in some way) and provide a 10 minute pitch of their proposal in the final week of the semester. Students will be given opportunities to work on this research proposal throughout the semester.

More details will be provided in class and on Blackboard.

You are required to submit an essay (2,000 words +/- 10%) for PSYC4885 which is worth 40% of your final mark for this course. Assignments that exceed the word limit will be penalised 1% (of 40%) for each 100 words over the limit.

Essay Question

You will select an essay question (e.g., Does crying make us feel better?) from a list provided by the Course Coordinator. Your essay question must be different from your presentation research question. You are welcome to formulate your own essay question but you will need to get permission from the Course Coordinator beforehand. The goal of your essay is to provide a convincing answer to an empirical question using available theory and scientific evidence.

Submission & Formatting Details:

Please ensure that your essay has a title page which includes the following information:

a) The title of your essay (which should also appear at the beginning of the essay itself)

b) Your name

c) Your student number

d) The course code (PSYC4885)

e) The coordinator details

f) The year & semester (e.g., 2025, Semester 1)

g) Your word count (e.g., ‘Total words = 1987’). Note that this includes all words except the References list and the title page. This is compulsory.

So what exactly are we looking for in a PSYC4885 essay?

Generally, like other 4th level courses, we are looking for essays in PSYC4885 that are interesting and compelling, tell a strong story, are well written, focus on empirical evidence, demonstrate original thought and demonstrate a focus on the issue/s being addressed. In terms of marking, PSYC4885 essays are marked in line with the criteria which will be made available on Blackboard.

In terms of what to aim for, a first class essay has only (very) minor errors, shows evidence of considerable insight, critical thinking skills and sophistication on the part of the student. In more user-friendly language we would expect it to be an “outstanding essay (for 4th year) that engages the topic or problem, reviews and critically analyses the relevant literature and shows original or creative thinking; the information and data presented are relevant to the topic and have been analysed appropriately; conclusions are supported by the data; sources are properly cited and referenced; extremely well-written and organised; polished and professional in presentation” (Student Writing Guide, School of Social Sciences, p11). Key to achieving this goal are the following:

Organisation: The essay should have a coherent and logical structure. It should include an introduction (in which the topic or problem is described, set in context and its relevance indicated), a main body (in which information, critical analysis, discussion etc. are presented in a logical order) and a conclusion (drawing together the main points).

Content: The essay should contain an adequate amount of supporting literature or information to support the statements and conclusions drawn. The theoretical perspective(s) from which the problem or question is approached should be made explicit and the analysis of the literature undertaken should be appropriate to the problem/question addressed. The arguments presented should be logical, and the conclusions reached should be plausible.

Presentation: Essays should be free of grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors and use APA 7 formatting.

Each student will give a 20 minute presentation + 10 minute class discussion, i.e. total 30 minutes, in class on a topic they select during the first week of semester. If you miss the first week, you will need to email the course coordinator to find out your allocated topic.

Similar to the essay, the goal of the presentation is to provide an convincing answer to an empirical question based on the available theory and evidence.

Your presentation should include the following:

• An orienting statement. A good place to start is often with a real world example, a statistic or anecdote.
• An introduction to the research area you are focussing on, as well as the importance of the topic made clear (i.e., why should the audience want to know about this?).
• Reference to key theories that may inform your specific research question, along with empirical evidence to support your answer to the question.
• A critical analysis of the evidence and/or broader literature (i.e., are there any major limitations of the literature that restrict the conclusions we can draw?).
• A conclusion that summarises your answer to the question.

Make sure you:

• Do adequate preparation. Good presentations are not prepared the night before and you’ll need to be able to answer questions your audience might have.
• Rehearse your presentation. Make sure that your presentation makes sense in terms of structure and that there is no redundancy, and is no longer than 20 minutes in total.
• Prepare your presentation using PowerPoint/Keynote/ or some other platform. Try to incorporate interesting visuals to illustrate your point(s) and to engage the audience.
• Do not read your presentation. By all means have notes or cards to assist, but remember that you have to try and engage your audience and that is hard to do when reading. You do not have to be word perfect!

Other notes:

• You are required to email a PDF copy of your Presentation to the Course Coordinator at least 2 hours prior to your presentation delivery date/time.
• In addition, the Course Coordinator will record the oral presentations per University policy that any live oral assessment item worth 20% or more must be recorded and retained as the official recording of the item for re-mark purposes (if required).
• Marking criteria will be made available on Blackboard and discussed in the first week of semester.