I rewatched each lectures more than 3 times. It was very time consuming on my end because I wanted to make sure I got an A! Engage with the material and you will do well. Dodson is AMAZING and super funny and interesting. Stay active and do not procrasinate lectures!! #tCF2020

Chad is great. He is super pumped about psychology and whenever someone asks a question, he always says "that's a GREAT question", which makes you feel good. This class was synchronous online this semester. It's a giant lecture hall, with around 300-400 people, so at first, it was a little unexpected that the class was synchronous. Personally, I preferred the class being synchronous because it allowed students to ask questions in real-time. However, all the lectures were recorded and uploaded to COLLAB so sometimes if I was working on something for another class, I would skip the synchronous lecture and watch the async recording afterward, which was really, really helpful. This course is basic psych, you don't get too deep, but Chad always suggests other courses within the psych department if you express interest in a certain unit covered in the intro to psych. There are no papers, but there are three required exams throughout the semester (you can take the fourth and they will drop your lowest exam grade- highly recommend taking the fourth), and then a mandatory final exam. Sometimes the class was boring, in regards to the neuroscience unit we covered, but generally, it's pretty interesting because you get to see how the mind works. Be aware that if this is your first psych class at UVA, you will need to fulfill 6 Participant Research Credits (3 due halfway through, other three due at end of the semester). This just means you have to participate in psychological studies with the UVA research center. There are a lot of cool studies, but start working on them early in the semester bc you don't want to be rushing to do them with concluding assignments toward the end of the semester. The only thing that takes a long time is taking notes on the parts of textbook that correspond to the lecture notes. But that is only reading you will need to do in his class.

Being my first introduction to the subject, PSYC 1010 was a great course. Although it was online due to COVID, Professor Dodson was a very enthusiastic and comprehensible lecturer. As long as you pay 100% attention during class and take detailed notes, there is no need to read the textbook. You take five exams including the final, all of which are equally weighted, and the lowest of the first four is dropped. The exams can have fairly tricky conceptual questions, so make sure you grasp what he talks about in class. Otherwise, it wasn't a particularly difficult course, and the content was very interesting... it actually got me really interested in psychology as a possible major, but we'll see where that goes. #tCF2020

The course was overall extremely interesting and easy to follow along. Lectures kept me entertained and there was not much work to do outside of studying. I would highly recommend attending the review sessions that he mentions in the beginning of the semester because those instructors were super helpful all year! The exams were a little bit more difficult than I had expected, but overall solid class! Highly recommend.

So, I started the semester assuming the class would be much easier than it is. There is no homework, and the only thing that is graded is your top 4/5 exams. Frankly, I found all but the first exam to be difficult; the exams probably felt difficult this semester since the course was online. The exams were open book, but I assume Prof. Dodson counter-balanced this by making them longer and more heavily focused on the textbook readings. The issue is that it can be fairly time-consuming to locate the answer from the textbook if the exam is on 140 pages of reading. Prof. Dodson is pretty nice and tries to make his lectures fun and interesting. My only issue with him was that I thought he organized the powerpoints poorly, which made note-taking more frustrating.

I didn't think this was a super easy class. There was no homework, but the exams I thought were really hard. Chad is super enthusiastic which made me excited to take the class, but I wouldn't take it if I didn't have to. Also, don't buy the textbook. We never once did anything with it and the content is nicely displayed through his powerpoints

Prof. Dodson is an amazing lecturer and is always well-dressed. You can tell he is very passionate about teaching and he makes lectures very interactive. Almost every class, he would demonstrate a concept by using volunteers from the class or having us experience the phenomenon ourselves. Chad does speak fairly quickly as there is a lot of content to cover, but he posts the slides before class so I always printed them out. The textbook is by no means necessary to succeed in the class, but I found it helpful for reviewing for the exams. I would only read over concepts that overlapped with lecture and found that I was almost over prepared for exams. There are definitely questions on the exam that require you to build and combine multiple concepts, but these are manageable if you focus on understanding concepts versus memorizing them. Attendance is not required for this class, but there are usually two or three questions on the exam about case studies/videos that we covered in class that are not available in the slides. Also, Dodson will always answer your questions in OHs or in class and is very responsive to emails. Intro psych is definitely not an easy course, but you can get an A if you are willing to put in the work. I spent an avg of 6 hours studying for each exam, attended every lecture, and ended with a 95%. I highly recommend this course if you are even remotely interested in psychology. It will introduce you to content you will need for higher level psych courses, and it's overall just a great class.

DON'T BUY THE BOOK! Study his powerpoint slides for the exam!! I didnt buy the book and no one really buys it. For the exam i studied his lecture power points and also take notes on the videos he shows in class, he puts like a question or 2 on the exam about them!

Some test questions are designed to trick you, just like in any other introductory course. Prof. Dodson is a cool, approachable guy who passionately lectures about the course material, but the tests can be frustrating. The only reason I succeeded was because I went to office hours a lot to fill in the gaps. Don't buy the textbook as his slides are sufficient. Overall, definitely recommend the course for a taste of psychology, not for a GPA boost

Would NOT take this course again. For an intro class, the test questions are written incredibly difficultly. I had an A- before the final exam, and now I have a B. He literally teaches the surface level of the material and on the test expects complete application. This is literally an INTRODUCTORY course which he has seem to have forgotten. Would NOT recommend taking this class- you will completely regret it as I have- this was literally the worst decision I made this semester. He should not be teaching this course.