Matthew Schulkind
Office: NSC D213
Office Hours: Wednesday 12:00-1:00; Friday 2:00-4:00 or by appointment
Email: mdschulkind@amherst.edu

Let’s quantify the MAGIC!!
~ Anonymous

The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.
~ Pablo Picasso

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
~ Maya Angelou

Overview and Goals: This course will be a research seminar exploring human creativity.  The primary aim of the course is to give you hands-on experience with conducting a novel research project of your own choosing. Although you have all read about psychological research, most of you have not had the opportunity to put the tools of behavioral research into practice, at least not in as rigorous a way as we will do in this class.  Over the course of the semester, you will engage in each of the following ‘steps’:

• Informal observation
• Proposing an experimental question
• Searching the scientific literature for work relevant to your question
• Critical reading of the literature to refine your question
• Creating a research design
• Developing/borrowing relevant materials
• Submitting an IRB proposal
• Providing feedback on that IRB proposal
• Collecting data
• Coding and analyzing the data
• Oral and written presentations of your experiment

I chose creativity as the topic for the seminar because creativity is a fundamental aspect of human cognition that can be observed in ideas, objects, people, and social groups.  It can be credited/implicated in the best/worst things that people have done on this earth.  Thus, creativity is not only interesting, but will provide a fertile ground for proposing a wide variety of engaging research projects. 

Attendance: You must come to every scheduled class.  This is not a joke.  Much of the work needed to propel your project forward will be completed in class.  Missing class will set you behind with no obvious way to catch up.  You will also be letting the other members of your group down.  Things happen that may require you to miss a class.  That is unavoidable, but please think carefully about what is and is not an unavoidable absence.  Do NOT be late!  Late is better than absent, but not nearly as good as ‘on time’.  It’s not that difficult! If there is a reason why you will not be able to arrive to class on time, please contact me so that we can discuss it. Short of that, please arrive to class on time.

Website: The course website contains all of the information in the syllabus including the schedule.  The main website is linked to the Moodle page, but you will not need to use the Moodle page once you have located the main course website.

Written assignments: As you can see from the course schedule, written assignments will be due almost weekly throughout the semester.  Information about the requirements for each assignment will be available on the website and discussed thoroughly in class.  These assignments are important for making sure that we stay on track.  Falling behind is not an option in this class; again, there is no obvious way to make up for missed assignments.

Office Hours: My office hours are listed at the top of the syllabus.  If these times are not convenient, please come see me after class and we can schedule an appointment.  You can also email me to set up an appointment, but that system often leads to round after round of "Email-tag".  One of my favorite parts of this job is meeting with students so please stop by even if you don't have a major problem.

Final Grades:Your final grade will be determined as follows:

Accomodations: If you have a documented disability that requires accommodations, you will need to register with Accessibility Services for coordination of your academic accommodations. You can reach them via email at accessibility@amherst.edu, or via phone at 413-542-2337. Once you have your accommodations in place, I will be glad to meet with you privately during my office hours or at another agreed upon time to discuss the best implementation of your accommodations.

Policy on video/audio recordings and sharing of online materials: You may not record any part of this class without written consent of the instructor. You also may not share online materials with anyone outside of this class without written consent of the isntructor.

Artificial Intelligence: Because generative artificial intelligence is a relatively new technology, it is hard to set firm boundaries regarding the use of AI and other generative technology in the classroom. For the purposes of this course, the general rule is as follows: If you would not ask a person for a particular kind of help, you may not use AI for that function. For example, you would not ask a person to write a section of a paper for you. But, you might ask a person for help finding journal articles related to the topic of your paper. Therefore, you can use AI (or PsycInfo) for that purpose. You would ask a person to provide written summaries of articles that you might use for your paper or to identify quotes that might be of use to you. Therefore, you cannot use AI for those purposes. Similarly, you would not ask a person to complete a question on an exam, quiz, or problem set for you; consequently, AI cannot be used to do that, either. But you might ask someone to remind you of the correct formula to use in a problem; AI could be consulted for this purpose, as well.

It would be impossible for me to list every scenario in which AI could be brought to bear in this class, (maybe Chat GPT could generate such a list...). So the above is meant to serve as guidance. You can always ask about appropriate use of AI if you have questions. And, you should always indicate how AI was used in the preparation of any academic work that you submit for this class. Failure to disclose the use of AI for an assignment will be considered an act of academic dishonesty that will be reported to the Office of Student Affairs.

Course Schedule