Departmental policy is that all PSYC 104 classes (including summer session) must participate in the human subject pool. Other classes may participate at the option and on the terms of the instructor.

The instructors of participating classes need to get an instructor account (separate from their research account) from Kate in the main office. They also need to have her register their class on the system before the term starts so that the students can identify which class they belong to. If this is not done, instructors will not be able to obtain a list of the students in their class from SONA and experimenters will not be able to screen students by class. Note that the subject pool coordinator will deactivate the list of classes at the start of each term so do not expect to have a previous term's class listing available to the students.

PSYC 104 students are required to earn 11 credits during the Fall and Spring and 6 credits during the summer, not including penalties. They have the option of writing a research paper instead (details and grading up to the instructor). Instructors may manually grant a student credits as needed via their SONA instructor account (under Course Reports). Fall and Spring students will earn one credit if they finish the pretest by the third Monday of the term (SONA will automatically credit them). The prescreen is mandatory for pool usage so students do not receive credits other than for the early completion bonus. The instructor is responsible for handling the incompletes due to failure to complete the research credit requirement. It might be a good idea to use SONA at the end of the following term to check the status of the incompletes or to tell the students to contact you when they have finished the credits.

Students may not fulfill more than one third of the requirement (3 during Fall and Spring and 2 during Summer) with web-based studies to ensure that they get a broad experience of experiments. SONA will automatically enforce this limit.

Instructors should pass out the instructions and consent forms for the subject pool to the students during the first week of classes so that they can finish the pretest by the third Monday (to get the early completion credit) if they so desire. Please emphasize to the students that if they wait till the end of the term to sign up for experiments they may not be able to complete the requirement. Also, please encourage them to complete the prescreen as soon as possible.

Students who are retaking a class can apply the pool credits from the first time they took the class. Have them contact me to get their credits switched over to your class. They will need to send me your course ID number.

INSTRUCTORS - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What do I do about students from last semester that have an incomplete because they failed to obtain the necessary research credits?

If a student is making up an Incomplete from the previous semester and he or she successfully registered last semester, the student should already be on the system. He or she will just need to login to reactivate the account before signing up for experiments. The student should verify that the correct course & course line number are selected so that credits will be assigned to the proper course. Once he or she reactivates the account, the student can sign up for experiments. If the student is not registered on the system, he or she will need to sign up as a new user.

How do I get a roster of my students with record of research credits earned?

You will need to see Kate for a login name and a password. Then you will be able to go to the following web site to logon and download the roster for your specific course. You also have the option of downloading the master list of all students. This may be useful because students may have signed up for the wrong course on the system.

Download credit reports at: http://ku.sona-systems.com

Who has responsibility for making decisions about granting credit and so forth?

All decisions about granting credit and so forth are that of the instructor. The subject pool coordinator has no decision-making abilities.