In this episode Yale psychology professor Laurie Santos talks to us about what it’s like to lecture about Sex, Evolution, and Human Nature to almost 600 undergraduates in a chapel.

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Show Notes

0:00 ⏯ Intro

1:28 ⏯ Lori’s research on the evolutionary origin of human thought. Sometimes we’re less rational than monkeys (or slime mold).

2:57 ⏯ “Sex, Evolution and Human Nature” aka ‘Sexy Psych’ aka PSYC 171.

3:45 ⏯ Almost 600 students and how the course grew so big.

5:25 ⏯ An interdisciplinary course, stupid cat videos, and anthropomorphism.

7:31 ⏯ Subjectivity and mating strategies.

8:12 ⏯ Why do students take the course? Human nature as a fundamental problem.

9:32 ⏯ “Use your hymnal as a surface on which to write your quiz.”

12:55 ⏯ Does the room where the exam takes place affect student performance? Maybe

15:14 ⏯ Yale’s coming expansions, and its possible impacts.

17:00 ⏯ Lecture attendance, open courses, copyright challenges. Who owns open course and MOOC content?

22:15 ⏯ When a video lecture that’s free becomes a part of someone else’s paid course. Who owns the video lecture?

24:25 ⏯ Since others are sharing content, students don’t need to come to class.

26:51 ⏯ Students share content with others, and they don’t see themselves as facilitating cheating.

29:08 ⏯ Why sharing resources short-circuits many assignments–and how assessment will have to change.

33:36 ⏯ Students design their own experiments using public data.

37:00 ⏯ Grading 500+ students: each teaching fellow grades a single quiz or assignment.

39:11 ⏯ Why is a live lecture preferable to a video? “The theater of being there.”

41:17 ⏯ The psychology of the live lecture–and the liveness of online chatting.

• Software that tracks student understanding during lecture: Learning Catalytics

45:09 ⏯ Offending others, slips of the tongue, mating strategies, and trigger warnings.

49:15 ⏯ Is the professor the master of her own teaching?

53:16 ⏯ Is student sensitivity a new thing?

56:40 ⏯ Inspiring teachers, the lecture as a social interaction, using psychological expertise and Transcranial magnetic stimulation to lecture.

1:03:40 ⏯ Teaching mistakes and apologizing to the horseshoe crab (and to reality).