PsychoPy in undergraduate modules
I’m trying to track down the depts/modules/conveners that are using PsychoPy in their teaching. Is it being used by you and, if so, to what extent? Or are you wondering about it but not decided? Could you pass me the name/email of the convener in any modules that use it substantially? (feel free to private message me or send a direct email).
We have a new book on Building Experiments in PsychoPy due for release in May, which module conveners might be interested in reviewing.
PsychoPy is being introduced to 3rd year undergraduates in an honours seminar at the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. We have one session on the basics of the Builder mode and then students are encouraged to use it to collect data for group research projects.
I just started using psychopy myself a few months ago. One of the projects in my Human Neuroscience Research Practicum course has deployed a verbal memory task in psychopy.
I am a new professor at a Mexican University. I first came in contact with Psychopy in a student workshop at Washington University in St. Louis. Since then I have started to code all my new projects in Psychopy (will hopefully start piloting next semester) and have teaching one session on the basics of the Builder mode in a undergradute and graduate course. A manual would be extremely helpful.
I teach coder and the core API in my teaching of methods to the MRes Psychology students at Northumbria University. Essentially i take them from no python experience to coding an experiment and using ioHub. I have messaged you my email.
Psychopy is a well-known software here in Iran and among psychology students due to its power and simplicity. However, we have a problem with it, because it does not support Persian, and we have to use images with the written words instead of text. I think solving this problem, besides providing a good amount of educational material can help Psychopy to spread further across Iranian universities. Nevertheless, I should inform you that your new book may not improve the situation here due to sanctions and the hard access of international books for Iranian students.
I am using Psychopy to teach ‘Psycholinguistics’ and ‘Cognitive Processes’ at the University of Campinas (Sao Paulo-Brazil) since mid-2016. As I had a good feedback from the students, I am also using it in workshops on psycholinguistics and on experimental methods in other universities/institutes.
Roughly, I use the builder view to avoid talking so much about programming and to focus on the experiments. Anyway, I try to introduce the coder view at the end of the courses.
Hi Omid, this is a longstanding-issue which we’ve discussed but not properly addressed. There are ways to avoid having to use images to display Persian text. I’ve opened a separate thread here about it: PsychoPy presenting text in Persian/Arabic
We could do with some help from Farsi/Arabic readers to address this problem within PsychoPy.
Hi Jon,
I am personally using PsychoPy for teaching. I am co-teaching a methodological class in which master students create and conduct an experiment. The best way I found so far is to use Python with PsychoPy.
Yes, indeed, (but how did you know?) I am planning to give a lecture
about scientific experiments on monitors/beamers, including accuracy
testing and want to use psychopy. Either in summer 2018 or the latest
beginning in 2019.
The decission will be, if psychopy not only runs quite well (being able
to program, test and solve issues; of course not 100% timing) under a
typical student’s windows laptop but as well on a here also typical
linux laptop or dual screen desktop.
I plan a two hour introduction to psychopy, some home work, and then to
use psychopy in subsequent lessons as stimulus presenting program for
timing, contrast, and spatial resolution tasks. So it is an (important)
part but not a complete lecture course about psychopy itself.
So: yes of course I would be interested in reviewing and hope to be able
to spend a fair amount of time. What is your expected time-frame for that?
Thanks a lot and steady good luck with further developments…
Hi
Yes I use it in my teaching but I quite nervous about a couple of things. First I have experienced several catastrophic and unpredictable incidents with the support for text. Fonts not supported properly or text simply not being presented - I have been unable to work out why. Also I have tried and given up on using psydat files. I managed to save them but then have never been able to read them. All of the these problems arise when I have been using the PC version of the software. There are mutterings about the bindings but I have no idea what this means.
So I do allow the students to play around with a script I have written but I am having doubts about fully embracing the package when simpler experimenter generator are available.
Philip.
PsychoPy has always been developed very part-time by volunteers, alongside their ‘real’ jobs. I’m afraid that has necessarily meant that things haven’t always been as well-tested as they could be. Right now, due to an injection of funds from Wellcome, we are in the process of hiring a full-time programmer for the first time ever (and hopefully we will be able to make that full-time programmer a permanent feature of the package/team).
So, hopefully, we will also be much more robust, resilient and bug-free in the future! But that’s sort of independent of the book and just happens to be a happy co-alignment of developments.
hi Dr jon
i am trying to use Psychopy for a self paced reading experiment in a multilingual environment…but because psychopy doesnt support Persian language…i put the sentences in images…in this experiment…i have code switched sentences in 3 languages:Persian, English and Turkish…that i aim to measure the amount of time students spend on understanding code switched words…at the end of each sentence i have a comprehension yes/no question that they must answer to it by pressing a key…either ‘Y’ for yes or ‘N’ for No…but when i define two response keys in allowed keys…the experiment doesnt run without any Error…just stop!i dont know what should i do! because really i need this part to measure the comprehension of sentences with the effect of other languages(code-switched sentences) …please help me…if it is possible give ur email to me.
Regards
I’m trying to role it out slowly in the next year or two at the University of Chester, replacing E-prime for our undergraduate labs. It will all be builder based. We already have MSc, MRes and PhD students using it.
As far as I know I am the only person who is using (or “is learning”, just to be more specific) PsychoPy in my department. My lab has been using e-prime, but I have been exploring the possibility of shifting to PsychoPy as it would be easier for my students and research assistants to work on their own computers. I would be very interested in receiving information when the new book is released. Thank you so much for making PsychoPy available to everyone.
In a part of one course at the Psychological department at the University of Iceland we introduce the basics of experimental programming to our students. Initially E-Prime was used but I began using PsychoPy-Builder in the autumn semester 2015. E-Prime is OK but it was much easier to teach the student to use Builder (we can even use the “strange” Icelandic letters!). To make the students’ live a little easier I wrote a small pamphlet in Icelandic and used in my teaching. The main benefits of using Builder, besides it was easier to teach, was that the students could install it on their own computers — and they did like it! Later on when the students needed to program their own experiments they used Builder for programming their experiments. Several of the students, while programming their experiments, asked me for assistance but it was very pleasant to see how little help they needed, especially given how few lessons they were given during the course.
For the last two years, or so, everyone in our lab is using PsychoPy. Some are using Builder but others are using Coder, including me. We have been running experiments in various fields like visual search, tactile perception, auditory perception, tactile and auditory perception in combination with EEG and in dyslexia studies. Currently I’m expanding our usage of PsychoPy to eyetracking experiments using EyeLink 1000 plus.
Hi,
I used to teach a Psycholinguistics course which included a module in which students created their own experiment in PscyhoPy. I’ve moved jobs and at my new university I teach (once in a while) a methods class with a similar component.