Instructions for AB1501 Experiment Sessions

Pre-registration

You have been assigned to a specific student research group. The Excel file indicating
your Student Research Group will be added to “Lecture Notes, Supplementary Lecture
Videos, and Course Documents” tab on your AB1501 NTULearn lecture page in the
folder called “Experiments”. Please use the search function in the spreadsheet to find
your registered name within the file.

Please check which group you are in. Students in each student research group are
allocated 3 experiments. You are to sign up for a session for the allocated experiment
that you will be required to attend in person. In total, everyone should sign up for 1
physical session. 2 other online experiments will be sent out to you directly when
they are ready. You have about 1 week to complete the online experiments on your own
time. Please do the online experiments in 1 sitting (around 20 mins).

If you are under 21 years of age, we must ascertain that you have parental consent for
attending the marketing experiments. Please make sure that you have completed the
form for parental/guardian consent before attending the experiments. See link below:

https://ntusingapore.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eG486mOk6XTqr4O

Please furnish your parent/guardian the following information:

Your Registered Name with NTU
Your Matriculation Number
Your NTU Email Address
Your Tutorial Class Group (not index. The number should be between 1 to 25)

For those who are 21 years and above, you can complete the consent form by
yourself.

Login into the SONA system for Signing Up for F2F session

The signing up of the offline experiment session will be done through the NTU/NBS
experiment management system (SONA system). The URL is as follows:

http://ntu-nbs.sona-systems.com

For students who do not have an account on the SONA system, you need to look out
for an email sent to your NTU student email account informing you that your SONA
account has been create. There is no need for you to sign up for a new account, as you
will be preregistered. The email’s subject title is “External Experimental Research
Signup System Login Information”, sent from ntu-nbs-admin@sona-systems.net. The
email may go to your junk mail folder, please check. If you do not receive such an email,
please inform me (boonchong@ntu.edu.sg). After which, you will need to log into the
SONA system to go through the pre-screening questions. Please note that the pre-
screen online is NOT included as the 3 sessions you should attend. As some of you are
taking AB1601, the same account will be used for experiments in both courses.

You are supposed to select the course you are assigning your credit to when you first
get your account. If you are taking AB1601 (this semester or in the coming semesters),
please assign your credits to AB1601 instead of AB1501. You will get 0 credit for
AB1501 experiments, as your attendance is tracked and accounted for in the
sign-up sheets.

If you have an existing SONA account (using your official student ID), you will not
receive such an email. You should log in with your existing account. If you do not
remember your password for your existing SONA account, please go onto the system to
request to retrieve your password. If you used your personal email address to register
your SONA account, the SONA reset password email will be sent to your personal email
address and NOT the NTU student email address.

Administration

Please go to the “My Profile” page to change your email address and phone number to
the ones that you are most likely to check and use, as the researchers will be contacting
you through these to send you reminders and updates.

Please also change the password to something you can remember. This can be done
through the “My Profile” page as well.

Please check that you have been assigned to the right Student Research Group in the
SONA system. You will be able to check by viewing the course code under “My Profile”
page. The course code for your assigned group (e.g., AB1501_Group1_AY23S2 for
Student Research Group 1) can be found in the “Student Research Group Allocation”
excel file.

Please note that your SONA account can be used to sign up for studies unrelated to
AB1501 coursework, and you may receive emails inviting you to take part in these
studies. These studies usually pay you a token sum of money for your effort. At the end
of the semester (after the AB1501 experiments are over), if you do not wish to receive
such emails, you can email the SONA administrator (nbsresearch@ntu.edu.sg) to take
your SONA account out of the mailing list.

If you run into any technical problems, please email me (boonchong@ntu.edu.sg).

Signing Up for the F2F Experiment Session

When the studies are available for you to sign up, I will make an announcement through
the NTULearn to all to start the signing up process. Before the studies are active, you
will not be able to see them. The signing up of sessions will start during Teaching
Week 04.

F2F experiment sessions will be conducted sometime between start of Teaching

Week 06 and end of Teaching Week 11. Online experiments will be emailed to you
when they are available. Not all experiments will be running throughout this period.

As there are many other studies that are currently running on the SONA system, you
should take care to sign up right experiments meant for this course (specifically those
you are assigned to). All the experiments for this course will be named as:

AB1501 (23S2) - Experiment X* - Name of experiment

*X is number designated to each experiment. Please check with the allocation excel file
for the right experiments to sign up for.

All experiments for this course are password-protected, as they are meant for students
of this course only. The password/invitation code is ab1501exp for all the experiments.

Please take note of the following:

1. You need to sign up for sessions 48 hrs before the start of the session.
2. If you are not able to find sessions that do not clash with your timetable, please
contact the researcher directly (Contact details of the researcher can be found
on the SONA system) to make alternative arrangements. But please understand
that the researchers have limited resources and will not be able to meet all
possible timings, so please try to be flexible as well. If the schedule cannot be
sorted out, I will intervene and help you find an alternative.
3. If you wish to cancel any session, you must cancel 24 hrs before the start of the
session. If you have an emergency (within 24 hrs), you should contact the
researcher directly. If you do not do so, you will be marked as absent. If you are
absent once, you will be able to sign up for another session for the same
experiment.
4. If you are marked absent twice in the SONA system, your SONA account will be
deactivated. Once deactivated, you will not sign up for any more sessions. You
will have to contact me (boonchong@ntu.edu.sg) to reactivate the account.
5. There is no need to sign up for the sessions assigned to you in any particular
order. The experiment numbers are arbitrary and just there to identify the
experiments.
6. You are only given marks for attending AB1501 experiments that are assigned to
you. If you attend other experiments (e.g., experiments for AB1601 and paid
experiments), there is no mark given to you for this AB1501 course.
If you have problems signing up for the sessions:

1. Check that it is the right experiment you are trying to sign up for. Refer to the file
with your assigned experiments.
2. Check that you have entered password/invitation code correctly.
3. If there is nothing wrong with the first two steps, please contact me
(boonchong@ntu.edu.sg).

Attending the F2F Sessions

Please check the locations of the experiment sessions using the online campus map
(http://maps.ntu.edu.sg/maps). Arrive at the locations 5-10 minutes beforehand for
administrative purposes.

You have to sign for your attendance and provide a PHOTO IDENTIFICATION bearing
your name (preferably the matriculation card or NRIC card). If you are not able to do
so, you can be turned away and asked to sign up for another session.

Even though your responses for any of your experiments will not be assessed, please
help the researchers by following their instructions carefully. If you have valid reasons to
do so (e.g., feeling uncomfortable with questions asking sensitive questions) , you can
withdraw from any of the experiments at any time without any penalty (that is, you will
still get the relevant mark). But please inform the respective researcher of the reason(s).
Regardless, you must stay there for the entire session and will not be able to leave until
the respective researcher allows you to do so.

*** After the session, please do NOT discuss your experience in the experiment with
your fellow AB1501 students who may not have attended their sessions yet. Any
knowledge about the experiment before their sessions may unnecessarily influence
their responses. This influence can lead to a bias in the outcome of the research. The
same goes for the online experiments as well.