Dr. Javier Gomez-Lavin
jglavin@yorku.ca

This capstone seminar for students in their final year of the COGS Honours BA program aims to deepen students’ understanding of important issues in cognitive science and the interdisciplinary methods that are used to address them. We will approach this end in two ways. First, as a class we will discuss a range of readings that address important and controversial issues in contemporary cognitive science. These discussions will be integrated with this year's Cognitive Science Speaker Series, which features prominent cognitive scientists from around the world. In the week prior to each talk, we will read and discuss relevant background for the upcoming talk. In the hour before a talk, the visiting speakers will meet with our seminar to discuss their research and answer your questions, giving the class a unique opportunity to interact with leading experts in the cognitive sciences.

Second, over the course of the year each student will pursue an original research project, focusing on a specific controversy of his or her own choosing. This project will culminate in a substantial, original, interdisciplinary research paper that attempts to make progress on the controversy. The projects are expected to engage with relevant literature and make empirically informed arguments (though students are not expected to conduct original experimental research). At the end of each semester, our classroom will transform into a mini-conference, where students present their work to the rest of the class.

Given this year's unique learning environment, we aim to be flexible and accommodating given student needs, while also taking the opportunity to create an exciting and intellectually compelling capstone experience to the Cognitive Science degree program.

Technical requirements for taking the course: This course will have a mixture of in-person (on-campus) and online components. We expect most meetings to take place in-person and on-campus throughout the Fall and Winter semesters. Students are expected to attend all talks in the Cognitive Science Speaker Series. These talks, which will occur during scheduled class hours, will be hosted virtually on Zoom in the Fall semester and will be in-person in the Winter semester (in-person talks will also be recorded and/or telecast to Zoom). Students should be prepared for the possibility that the some or all meetings in the course become fully remote, with meetings being hosted on Zoom, as circumstances require. In order to fully participate in Zoom meetings, students should ensure that they have access to a stable, higher-speed internet connection, as well as a computer with a webcam and microphone, and/or a smart device with these features.

All assignments, the schedule of readings and seminar meetings, course announcements, and course policies will be posted to the eClass site for this course. All assignments will either be submitted via eClass or completed within the eClass interface (e.g. posting on discussion forums). The instructors will also use eClass as their primary way of communicating with students.

Here are some useful links for student computing information, resources and help:

Student Guide to Moodle

Zoom@YorkU Best Practices 

Zoom@YorkU User Reference Guide

Computing for Students Website

Student Guide to eLearning at York University

To determine Internet connection and speed, there are online tests, such as Speedtest, that can be run.

Times and locations:

Except where otherwise noted, meetings will be held in-person and on-campus on Wednesdays 11:30am–2:30pm EST at Accolade West Building (ACW) 008.

Students are expected to follow the most up-to-date safety protocols laid out by the Province and by York University. For more information, see: https://www.yorku.ca/bettertogether/students/. Students should be prepared for the possibility that class be held fully remotely, via Zoom, depending on the evolving circumstances of the COVID-19 crisis.  (Students who do not expect to be able to participate in-person should inquire about enrolling instead in Section B of this course, which will be conducted fully remotely.)

Around four meetings per semester will be tied in with the Cognitive Science Speaker Series. In the Fall, all or most these talks will be held virtually through Zoom. For these Zoom meetings, students are not required to be physically present in the classroom, although they may use the classroom should they need a space on campus to log into the Zoom meeting. In the Winter semester, we expect all meetings and talks to be in-person.

Office hours: During the Fall term, the instructor will be available for to meet with students for a virtual office hour held on Zoom. At present, the time scheduled to meet will be between 2pm-3pm Eastern Time on the Tuesday prior to our class session. This time may change depending on need and other factors during the course. The recurring zoom link and password will be shared on the first day of class. A hybrid model may be instituted in the Winter term. All students are encouraged to attend, individually or as a group, and discuss assignments and, more generally, topics related to the course that are of interest to the students.

Readings will be made available online through the eClass website.

1. Attendance, participation, and weekly short writing responses                         30%
2. Research preparation assignments                         10%
3. Research Paper 20%
4. Revised Research Paper (including preparation assignments) 25%
5. Presentations 15%

(Specific breakdown and weighting of assignments is tentative and subject to change.)

Weekly seminar meetings (3 hours, with breaks). Most class meetings will be conducted in-person and on-campus at the designated classroom. Some exceptions  will be explicitly noted, including several meetings that coincide with the Cognitive Science Speaker Series in the Fall term and which will be held virtually via Zoom. All meetings will be conducted synchronously. Materials, assignments, and assessments will all be delivered through the eClass website.

Please note that some of these details may be specific to Section C of the course. For details about Sections B (which will be fully remote) and A, please consult the appropriate course outlines.

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

1. Understand and evaluate some of the major contemporary controversies within cognitive science and critically analyze them.
2. Understand the main methodologies and approaches adopted by the disciplines of cognitive science, and be able to relate them to one another and compare their results.
3. Conduct a literature review concerning some topic in current cognitive science research involving two or more disciplines within cognitive science.
4. Conduct their own original research in cognitive science and present the results of their research.

Course policies

Grading

The grading scheme for the course conforms to the 9-point grading system used in undergraduate programs at York (e.g., A+ = 9, A = 8, B+ - 7, C+ = 5, etc.). Assignments and tests* will bear either a letter grade designation or a corresponding number grade (e.g.  A+ = 90 to 100, A = 80 to 90, B+ = 75 to 79, etc.). Final course grades may be adjusted to conform to Program or Faculty grades distribution profiles.

Assignment Submissions

Assignments will be submitted via eClass. Additionally, I will request that you print out and hand in hardcopies of your first and revised papers at the relevant points in the semester. As the short written responses will help form the content of the seminar meetings, no late responses are accepted for any reason. Students are permitted to drop the lowest mark on short responses for each term. If you need an extension on a paper or paper planning assignment, please make the request before the due date. Reasonable extensions will be granted.

Contacting instructors

You should contact the instructor via email or the eClass direct message function. Please note that we will be responding to messages within 24 hours during working days (i.e. not on weekends or holidays).

Video policy

We understand that some of you might have privacy concerns about using your video during Zoom classes, and that others might have limited internet bandwidth that might make live-streaming difficult. We are therefore not requiring students to have their videos on during the few online meetings of the Seminar. That being said, having video cameras on can make a big difference in terms of creating a sense of community within our seminar, so that we feel more like a normal, in-person classroom. For this reason, we do very sincerely encourage you to use your video as much as possible if privacy or tech issues are not preventing you from doing otherwise. If you do need to keep your video off, please be sure to put a profile photo on your Zoom account, so that your classmates feel like they are talking to a person, rather than a black box with a name in it.

Zoom Chat policy

For the meetings that will be held on Zoom, the option to privately message other students in the chat will be disabled. Messages in the public chat should be respectful and stay on point.

Course recordings:

Any recordings for this course should be used for educational purposes only and as a means for enhancing accessibility. Students do not have permission to duplicate, copy and/or distribute the recordings outside of the class (these acts can violate not only copyright laws but also FIPPA).

Academic honesty and integrity

In this course, we strive to maintain academic integrity to the highest extent possible. All submitted coursework must be an expression of the student’s own understanding and ideas. Please familiarize yourself with the meaning of academic integrity by completing SPARK’s Academic Integrity module at the beginning of the course. Breaches of academic integrity range from cheating to plagiarism (i.e., the improper crediting of another’s work, the representation of another’s ideas as your own, etc.). All instances of academic dishonesty in this course will be reported to the appropriate university authorities, and can be punishable according to the Senate Policy on Academic Honesty.

Student Accommodations

We are committed to fairly accommodating students with disabilities. Please contact the instructors and Student Accessibility Services (https://accessibility.students.yorku.ca/) as soon as possible, and we will all work together to find a fair accommodation. Note that in addition to sending the letter, accommodations for individual assignments must specifically be requested well ahead of the assignment's deadline.