Below is a selection of courses that I have recently taught at VU Amsterdam. I also serve as primary thesis advisor and mentor for between four and eight students annually, and I supervise other student research projects, including Ph.D. projects. All of my classes are taught in English.
Advanced Research Methods
This is one of the core skill courses in the VU Amsterdam Social Psychology Research Master program. The course is designed to give students an overview of some of the critical issues facing social psychology researchers. These include: (1) how to conduct research on human subjects in an ethical manner, (2) how to ethically and precisely report research findings, (3) how to interpret results under the Null Hypothesis Significance Testing framework, (4) how to compute and report effect sizes, (5) how to conduct power analysis, (6) how to assess and interpret the reliability and validity of research instruments. Course activities include 13 lectures, quizzes on assigned readings at the beginning of each class, a paper and a class presentation on a method or instrument frequently used by social psychologists, and a homework portfolio of analyses on an example data set.
Evolutionary Social Psychology
The course addresses the foundations of evolutionary approaches to human behavior, including the theories underlying most of animal behavior research, our knowledge of the human ancestral past, the varied evolutionary approaches to studying humans (including human behavioral ecology, cultural evolution, and evolutionary psychology), and the information processing mechanisms that underlie psychological adaptations. Course activities include 14 meetings with a mix of lectures and discussions, discussion questions that students prepare before class, and a class paper.