Katherine Fox-Glassman

I just think it really depends if it's relevant to your goals- for a psych phd student, I'd definitely recommend. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Fall 2024 Course: PSYCGR6200_001_2024_3-PRACTICUMINTEACHINGOFPSYCH : Teaching Practicum- PSYCGR6200_001_2024_3 - PRACTICUM IN TEACHING OF PSYCH Instructor: Katherine Fox-Glassman

- Attendance (have to participate in polls during class using an iClicker remote) - 2-3 short (~5 minutes) videos and a short quiz (online, open note, has 1-2 questions, worth 2 points, can retake many times) due before each class - Weekly problem sets (graded on completion) - Short paper analyzing a decision you made (very easy, can be in outline format) - 2 midterms (lowest is dropped, you can bring a double-sided handwritten cheat sheet) - Final exam (2 double-sided handwritten cheat sheets)

I highly recommend this course for students planning to teach at a university and who plan to apply for academic jobs in the future. It has been an extremely insightful and helpful course. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Fall 2023 Course: PSYCGR6200_001_2023_3-PRACTICUMINTEACHINGOFPSYCH : Teaching Practicum- PSYCGR6200_001_2023_3 - PRACTICUM IN TEACHING OF PSYCH Instructor: Katherine Fox-Glassman

Great class and professor! I learned a lot about how people think and make decisions, and I definitely found myself applying it to the real world. Lectures are pretty interesting, and slides and audio recordings are posted after each class (the class is very well-organized on Courseworks). The professor is kind and keeps class engaging with interesting topics and jokes. The assignments might seem like a lot of busy work, but they really don't take much time, and I honestly found them to be a very helpful way to stay on top of the material, which made studying for exams feel a lot easier since I was already familiar with the concepts. You can bring cheat sheets for exams, but they have to be handwritten, and I found that making the cheat sheet is actually a great way to study! Exams and grading felt fair. This is not a zero-effort class, but I also definitely wouldn't call it a heavy workload, and it is truly structured to help you succeed and learn the material well.

I did not find that my work was graded too harshly. Honestly, I found the grading to be pretty generous. I'm wondering if the people saying that maybe just... thought they were more correct than they were? The answers seemed to have pretty objectively correct answers to me, at least. She provides so much scaffolding and gives you so many opportunities to mess up while you're learning with almost no real penalty (a literal pedagogical unicorn)... I honestly think anyone could do well if they put in a standard amount of effort. She has a mix of grad and undergrad TAs, and all of them seemed perfectly nice. No one seemed to be frothing at the mouth at the idea of giving out low grades, so I don't know what that one review was talking about. Workload: iclicker questions for in-class participation grade (5 free absences), weekly problem sets graded for completion (lowest dropped), short pre-class quizzes that you can attempt way more times than you'll need (worth literally 2 points each and get 5 late passes), two midterms (lowest dropped), one super easy paper (you can literally write it in bullet points), and one final exam.

Oh wow, I'm surprised about the negativity of these reviews! Thinking and Decision Making is my absolute favorite course I've taken in my time here. The course definitely asks a lot of its students, but she has it structured so that it is very, very manageable. If you're looking for a class where you can zone out and skip most of the lectures, this is NOT the one for you. There are a lot of little assignments, but they force you re-engage with the material at key junctures in ways you probably wouldn't otherwise and give you SO MANY opportunities for points. Like, the whole course is structured to help you succeed. And she's really funny! She uses humor in a way that makes even the toughest topics approachable. No doubt, it's not the easiest possible course you could choose, but I think it's one of the most fun! And I actually use the things I learned in this class like all the time! Don't be put off by the workload!! And Prof. F-G is in a league of her own! Someone else said that her mind goes a million miles a minute, and they're so right. She's brilliant! It feels like there's very little she isn't at least broadly knowledgeable about, but her expertise in decision making research is clear. She is clearly invested in her students' success, and it's obvious that she's there because she loves to teach. Prof. F-G is a literal treasure, both as a lecturer and as a person, and t…

The workload is really not bad at all, there are weekly psets but they are purely graded on completion. Just remember to do them, although one time I forgot to do it until two days after the due date and I turned it in and still received half credit. She drops one of the psets anyways. There is one decision-making "paper" which I put in quotes because it's really just doing some decision analyses by answering a list of questions. Very straightforward. You can be creative with it, but it won't be hard to just complete it. The exams are not difficult. She gives a review sheet before each midterm (there are two non-cumulative ones) which contains a list of concept questions as well as a list of key phrases by topic. As long as you skim the readings and the slides, and find yourself comfortably knowing what each key phrase is about, it's not hard to get 90+% in her exams. I can't comment yet about the final, which will admittedly be different from the normal semester, but I doubt it will be very difficult. She also drops one of the midterms, so you could choose not to take the second one, although it is good practice for the final. In terms of the day-to-day, I find it more helpful to do the readings after class instead of before, because she recaps the readings very well in class that it might feel repetitive to have read it before. But reading it after would be a good review to…

I went to try out this class despite of all of the reviews, and I have to say Katherine is absolutely LOVELY! I can't wait to take more of her classes, and if opportunity comes up, I would love to TA for her in some capacity. Of course, this semester is weird because of the coronavirus situation, but Katherine actually made online classes as fun as her in-person classes. She has really good memes in her slides, can always keep you engaged, and actually tries to learn students' names in a huge lecture hall (those who sit in the front few rows anyways). She is very helpful and explains concepts very clearly. This class goes through a lot of material very fast and doesn't necessarily goes very in-depth, but Katherine explains all of the experiments extremely well and uses iClicker/Zoom polling questions to make sure we understand. Honestly, given the abnormal situation of teaching online, she is the professor who is taking the most advantage of the online environment of all my 6 classes, and is able to engage the class despite of its difficulties. Also her kids are extremely cute and she took the time to introduce them to us when we went online. She makes herself very available for office hours by appointment outside of her normal office hours. And she really incorporates current events into this class. We had an extra session to talk about just how people's decision-making in th…

attendance, problem sets, decision diary, midterm, final

mixed feelings. while the material is somehow interesting, it feels like she goes on and on and on and on... not to mention that the exams are graded by undergrad TA's who just make it harder for everyone. I went to her to discuss some of my answers (they were all correct in the text book) but she said she wasn't looking for those so she took off points because I didn't mentally guess her answer. wait, what???? the problem sets are annoying and so is the decision diary