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Took this class with Dr. Ostovich in Fall 2010.

This course introduce you to rese arch and theory in developmental psychology, covering the years  from birth to the beg innings of adolescenc e. Surveys a variety of topics including; perception, social, moral and cognitive development. As well as discussing various parenting styles and their effect on children development and their future.

The textbook "Children and their d evelopment, Canadian  Ed." This is a custom edi tion that the professor have put together in order  to save you money. T his book is a must in this class as it supplements the lectures and are tested on the MC part of the midterm and the exam. There were an average of 30 MC questions on the test and exam, which tested your knowledge of the readings from the textbook ONLY. They were VERY simple, usually students scored very near to perfect if not perfect. The short answers required you to understand the research that was presented in class and provide one experiment to back up the research...the short answers were directly from lecture, if you're the type to write things down word for word you'll breeze through the course. However, it does however require understanding. The SA marking was pretty tough and very through and required you to define every key term you used and discuss everything you think would help your answer.

The prof can be really mean or nice sometimes, her mood is very unpredictable and found this a big problem when approaching her as she would make you feel sometimes like you are stupid ...

The test and the exam are non-cumulative, Its very important to attend each lecture, and if you do its easy to score an 11 or 12 in this course.

There were review sessions before each test which helped alot to prepare for the test. They show you typical question styles and ask you to discuss the answer and then tell you the best way to answer. So this way they make sure you are prepared for Dr. Ostovich's question style.

Course Breakdown:
40% Midterm (or 60%)*
60% Final (or 40%)*
Depends on individual marks, meaning if you do good on the midterm but bad on the exam then your midterm is worth 60% and your exam is worth only 40%

Overall, I found this course to be very interesting and not that hard, but you need to work hard and read the assigned chapters and take through notes in class as she posts skeleton lecture notes AFTER class which are useless anyways

I only recommend this course if you are interested in learning about children and the best way of upbringing and learning about the methods of effective parenting. It's amazing how much I learned about how to punish effectively, raise moral children and be a good effective parent If you are not interested then you might find this class boring and not for you

Good luck

Took this class in Fall 2011 with Dr. Ostovich (even though she can be moody, I think she's one of the best lecturers I've had). It wasn't a hard course (the material was pretty straight forward) but I definitely recommend going to all of your classes and doing the assigned readings. For anyone who has taken a class with Dr. O before, she has a discussion folder on avenue2learn specifically for notes exchange with other students in case you miss class. This definitely helped me out when I was unable to go to class, because missing even just one class of Dr. O's classes would mean missing very critical and testable material.

We had two midterms (both non-cumulative) and one final (cumulative with more focus on material after midterm #2) which were all multiple choice. I didn't find the midterms hard, but I did find the final exam a bit challenging because I felt there was just so much important stages/details needed to know since it was cumulative (or it could have just been my brain shutting down since the exam was on the last day of the exam period at 4PM!).

I definitely recommend taking this course but only if you are actually interested in learning about child development!

Study Tips:
I found that when studying for this course it was useful to describe each experiment by stating:
Independent Variable:
Dependent Variable:
Description of experiment:
Results:
Significance of results:-how does this prove or disprove the theory this experiment is trying test

Are the midterms still all MC? I'm thinking of taking this because I want to take Adolescent Psych :(.

I took the course in Fall 2011, it was the first year she decided to use all MC evaluation, I think she said she was going to see how it turned out and decide whether or not to keep it that way, so your best bet is to find out on the first day of classes if you're still interested in taking it.

Originally Posted by cramargr

I took the course in Fall 2011, it was the first year she decided to use all MC evaluation, I think she said she was going to see how it turned out and decide whether or not to keep it that way, so your best bet is to find out on the first day of classes if you're still interested in taking it.

She is actually doing all MCs this year as well. How did it go with you?

Has anyone taken the anitreq course for this? Psych 3GG3 with Dr. Rutherford? There aren't much forums (only found one) that discuss her course nor can I can a course review! Any insight is appreciated

Very interested in taking this course.

Can someone go into a little more detail of what kind of things you learnt, what topics were covered, and what the lecture material is like (mostly experiments?, research studies?, case studies?, some graphs?, etc.)

Thank

For those that took it last school year, was this course all multiple choice? any idea about the testing style the upcoming school year?

I took this class with Dr. Landry, which I believe is currently teaching the class, and it was a breeze. Her lectures are really basic. The textbook complements the class very well and her tests are really easy.

Great course.

Had Dr. Ostovich and she was a wonderful prof. She was so passionate and so energetic about what she was teaching. She is very organized and had a FAQ page about how to do well on her course.

The course was divided into 3 parts.
Part 1 was research methods, behavioural genetics, some neuroscience, and sensation and perception.
Part 2 was about Piaget's cognitive development, information processing, and intelligence.
Part 3 was about parenting, moral development, temperament, and the media.

There were 2 midterms and 1 exam and the midterms were all MC. The questions were like Dr. Day's questions but I would say more difficult just because Dr. Day has a question bank for some of his courses. I was really interested in the last part of the course and not so much a big fan of the beginning. There was so much reading involved and it's very similar to the amount of reading for Dr. Day but I would argue a bit more. She tested both the lectures and readings. The online study tool you get with the new textbook was pretty useless but is useful to learn terms in the textbook. But it's not worth it. I recommend getting a trial version to see how it's like and to see if you could benefit from the online study tool. If you are getting a new textbook, you will receive the study tool anyways but if you are buying a used one, then consider if you want the online study tool.

I had to put in a lot of effort with taking notes. She does not post her notes before hand and even if she did, you would still have to take A LOT of notes. My housemate recorded her lectures and that helped when I missed info here and there. It's a course with a lot of work involved but it was worth the ride for me.

Has anyone taken this course in the summer? How is it like compared to taking it in a normal school term?

I took this course in fall 2014 with Dr. Ostovich. This is an interesting course, and Ostovich is an exceptional lecturer. The lectures and videos shown in lecture are interesting, but take good notes and don't miss classes because it is all testable.

This course does require an intense amount of memorization. One example is the 10 stages of development. She would give an explanation of a child with only minor details differing between one stage and the next, and you must know which stage the child is in. Another example are the several tests of conservation (ie. conservation of number) which will be tested in detail.

Overall, it is possible to do well, but this course requires HARD WORK. There is a lot of reading and memorization. I enjoyed this course despite such heavy memorization however.