Is there a more fun teaching assignment? We spend the semester learning about the physiology of our sensory systems and how the brain uses context and past experience to interpret sensations and produce perceptions.
Over the years, I've offered this course in various formats -- a fully online course in 2021, a hybrid course in 2022, a flipped classroom 2011-2015, and a more traditional lecture format (with lots of breaks for discussion and active learning) in other years. I'm not teaching PSY 3031 in the 2022/2023 school year, but when I pick it up again in Spring 2024, I hope to embed a community-engaged learning component that lets our students get out into their communities and tell others about what they've learned.
In 2019 we experimented with creating an open-source textbook as a class project, and it was a great learning experience. We continue to refine this book as a class project each year, giving us an opportunity to incorporate more voices into the teaching of Sensation and Perception.
By the end of the semester, we're talking about Bayesian inference as a way of explaining why my dog interprets lawn art as potentially threatening animals.