I studied day and night for this unit, dedicating extra hours to reading relevant studies and attending lectures and tutorials. I worked hard and sacrificed my work-life balance to do well. Yet here he goes, setting an exam that focuses on the most trivial, meaningless, and unrelated content to what we’ve learned, making up half of the final. I’m not here for criticising the unit just because I got a low mark (in fact, I received a decent grade), but this is just a sad reality where a good psychologist isn't necessarily a good educator. He is probably a lovely gentleman, but he is not competent as a unit convenor, unfortunately (He breached B.1 -competence)

Please don't make the same mistake we made. You guys need to take some action to change the way they do final exam otherwise, it will result in another wasted semester for everyone.

Words can barely describe how egregious this unit is. It almost entirely consists of useless “filler” content that the unit convenor *thinks* is important, simply because it is of personal significance to *HIM*. The extent of Wayne’s arrogance knows no bounds, and the way in which he attempts to examine the content is by having 50% of the questions on the final exam being about “basic facts and figures” or in other words: “memorise this random statistic that appeared for 2 seconds on a lecture slide that holds no actual significance!!!” The final exam, as others have said, is absolutely BONKERS. No detail is too small, and the stuff he tests you on is absurdly pedantic. Examples include “which philosopher said this quote”, “what did your tutor say to you in tutorial x?”, “which study authors reported results x and y?” and “how many people watch porn?” (Yes I’m serious) which he rationalises by saying it’s because the lectures are only 1 hour long. Best believe you will need to memorise EVERY SINGLE WORD of those lectures!!! To their credit, the guest lecturers were a bit more engaging and less biased in the way they presented their topics. Aside from being examinable, the tutorials are completely useless due to no fault of the tutors themselves (at least in my opinion) but simply due to the structure of the unit. They completely lack cohesion and throw a bunch of random topics together - one minute you’re talking about family and domestic violence, next you’re doing deep breathing exercises- oh wait now we’re talking about eating disorders! Obviously the final exam is the worst part of this unit, but the written assessments don’t fare much better either. The literature review marking seemed very strict. Fortunately I did decently well with mine but other people weren’t so lucky! The project report was such a drag and marked pretty poorly too but definitely easier to pick up marks on, which is nice considering it's worth as much as the final exam. Overall, this unit is a stinker. The assessments are (largely) pointless and the final exam is the most unfair and ridiculous piece of trash I’ve ever encountered. It is possible to do well, but the odds are stacked against you. Wayne should be ashamed as he clearly hasn’t taken feedback from previous years into consideration in order to improve the unit, given the obvious grievances from previous students.

Greeting’s future/current students of PSYU3399, My overall thoughts of this unit is that it’s pretty challenging overall. Therefore, I rate it a 6/10, here is why. Good: The placement is a pretty cool experience, getting practical experience in a field you are interested in. Just make sure you apply to one you want so you don’t get allocated to one you do not want. I also quite liked the tutorials and my tutor was very friendly and helpful. I agree that the lecture content was quite unconnected, but the topics were pretty interesting. Bad: We were specially instructed to know certain things for the final exam that weren’t tested at all, I didn’t appreciate that. Marking for the hand in tasks was also pretty harsh. Ugly: The final exam was quite silly, good luck. Finally, I think people are rating this whole subject as just the final exam, that is not a fair indicator of what to expect of the subject as a whole. Furthermore, people complaining that the convenor is trying to push ideas on people is a little shallow. He is passionate on his areas of research and is highly educated on these topics. Yours truly, The Superego Surfer.

Agree wholeheartedly with the other reviews here. Apart from the opportunity to go on placement, this unit was really disappointing. Majority of the content was so disjointed, it covered such broad topics that seemed to be taught based more on the interests of the lecturers than usefulness for students. Didn’t help that many of the weeks’ content was jumbled around last minute. Extremely pedantic and niche topics were asked about in the exam- it felt more like rote learning than preparation for using our qualifications in the real world. I fear that this will significantly negatively impact the WAM of myself and the rest of the cohort aiming for honours. Additionally, the project review and reflections required us to write in an entirely different style than we have been taught before. It felt disempowering to feel back at square 1, rather than building on what we can already do. We did cover career pathways which was helpful, however I am really frustrated that this topic was not explicitly covered earlier on in the degree. Students should not have to wait until their 3rd year to get definitive answers. Left a bad taste in my mouth as I prepare to head out into the real world, like many others. I really hope MQ considers all our feedback for the next cohort.

Out of my entire degree, this was by far the worst unit. Legitimately made me want to change careers. The unit convenor and head tutor should be ashamed. There was literally a question in the exam asking "who said this quote?". This is the education we pay for?! What exactly is that testing? The Macquarie Uni Psych team have lost my respect entirely.

Absolute WAM destroyer. Despite being told how to do the literature reviews and project report, many people received different accounts from their tutors as to what was required, however the teaching staff would deny this. Everything was marked harshly. we also received marks for both the project report and literature review late, the project review grades were given 4 days after the final exam. As previous posts have stated, the final exam is ridiculous.

Final exam was absolutely bonkers. Very, very bizarre unit. Memorise EVERYTHING. Not just the concepts themselves... but things like "what anecdote/joke did the lecturer use when he was explaining X concept". Not even kidding, they will ask you stuff like that. I got an HD but only because I put all of the lectures on my phone and listened to them around the house on repeat and memorised every tiny little comment that he made. NO DETAIL IS TOO SMALL. What picture did he use on the slide? What celebrity was mentioned? What colour shirt was the lecturer wearing? (I'm kidding about that last one but it's seriously not far from the truth).

What a surprise, another 1 star review for this subject. WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN!? First things first: this subject is an absolute mess! It's a subject that doesn't even know what it wants to be! The lectures for each week have no coherency at all! One week is on the effects of media. The other on aggression. The next on psychological literacy. The next on APHRA guidelines. WHAT THE HELL MQU UNI? To top it off, the lectures are not even engaging! It's literally Wayne trying to persuade you of things he thinks is important. He tries to convince you that his side is the right side, despite covering very controversial topics e.g does media cause violence. On one line, he says 'you need to make your own judgement' and the text he says 'the evidence continually says media causes violence, and individuals who disagree are not relevant in the field.' What a disgrace! The tutorials are completely wack and have NO relevance to the lecture material at all! But do you need to learn them? YES! Because they literally have questions in the final exam about 'what was the statistic of this infographic in this tutorial' and 'what did this person say in this tutorial' and the worst yet: in the discussion forum, you were told to start your reflections with? ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Tutorials are also random. You go from covering obesity one minute, to drugs the next, to how to breathe properly. Yep, this is a subject. Let's get to the tutors. The tutors are absolutely disgusting. And I say this because everyone got DESTROYED in their assessments. We first had a literature review. If you have ONE thing that the tutor didn't like, you could be dropped from, a HD to a P. This is not even a joke. Each tutor is SO pedantic on what they want. If you don't fulfil their kinky desires, then you will pay the price. And the reflection you have to do which is worth 40%? EVEN WORSE! The tutors left a couple of comments on 'elaborate on this more' and 'good' and then you would finish with a P or C! No rubric given back. Also the tutors are threatening. If you want a re-mark they HIGHLIGHT that 'it is not common to receive a lower mark if you apply for a re-mark' which is disgusting, completely dissuading students to challenge why they received a mark in the first place. How dare they. And to top it off, they are Phd students which is a good thing right? WRONG! How about waiting 10 days to get a response via email? Or even worse, sending 2 emails with NO follow up. This is the only unit that also has a discussion forum that is NOT MONITORED BY THE TUTORS OR CONVENOR! The laziness of this unit astounds me. Furthermore, Mr Wayne emphasises NOT TO CONTACT him and always go to your tutors first. Yet, tutors won't respond and if they do, it's always something vague and leaves you with MORE questions. Imagine getting a 40% assessment back with a couple of comments, NO RUBRIC and NO NUMERIC MARK! And this is the one thing about psych that needs to be changed. You are paying 4k a year, only to receive grade and not a numeric mark? How dare you. How dare you when students who are trying so hard to make it into honours can't even see their mark. So many of us are on the cusp of making it or not, so knowing if we got a 75 or an 84 makes a huge difference, especially with an assessment task worth 40%! And the final exam? It's literally just rote learning. It is rote learning stats, quotes from tutorials, the specific conclusion for an abstract in the reading. That's it. Absolute WAM destroyer I love how Wayne get's paid 200k a year just to use pre-recorded lectures and emphasise that we shouldn't contact him in anyway. I am sure the tutors are all laughing with the limited amount of work they put in whilst being paid to fund their Phd projects. How dare you MQU uni for tolerating this. How dare you make it policy to say that we don't get rubrics back, comprehensive feedback, actual numeric grades and being threatened to get a lower mark if you ask for one.

Shocking