166 Course Learning Activities

Course Learning Activities

The course is organized into Learning Modules. The “Experience Psychology” module will engage you in a psychology laboratory experiment.  This activity extends over the first half of the term, and full participation in it, and compliance with the directions, will earn you up to 10% extra credit in the course.  The 5 numbered modules each contain a website assignment folder, a chapter assignment folder and a knowledge audit folder. The various learning activities are located within these folders and are detailed below. 

Experience Psychology:

You are requested to participate in an online psychology experiment so you can experience what it is like to be a research subject.  In most university settings, the Intro Psych students are required to participate as subjects in 1 or more actual experiments.

Website Assignments: 

Each module includes a website review and a website discussion forum. The website assignments are designed to introduce you to some of the psychological resources available on the web. You must locate a relevant and authentic website, write a brief, original summary/analysis paper which includes a link to the website, then lead a discussion about the website contents. Before submitting your review to the class for discussion, you must submit it to a turnitin dropbox, which will detect, and help you avoid, plagiarism. After editing your essay (as needed to meet the originality requirements) you resubmit it to the turnitin dropbox for my evaluation and to the website forum for class discussion.  This assignment requires that you lead the discussion on your own website and also participate in the discussions of at least 2 websites reviewed by other students.

Textbook Assignments: 

In each module you will find some textbook resources and several Student-led roundtable discussion forums. The forums are the way we cover the content of the textbook, and it is the main learning activity in each module. For each chapter you will post a “critical thinking” question about some topic in the chapter. Other students respond to your question, and you reply back to them. In addition you lead the discussion threads on the questions you post, you answer some of the questions posted by other students, and they reply to you. You keep up these “virtual discussions” as long as they are productive. The purpose of the roundtable discussion forum is for each student to facilitate the discussion of a few topics and participate in several others. A large percentage of your course grade is determined by your participation in these discussions.

Knowledge Audit Assignments:

In each module your appreciation for and understanding of the important content issues and concepts will be assessed three ways:

Quizzes: 
There is a quiz on the textbook chapters for each module. You may take the quiz whenever you want while the module is active – and as many times as you want. Each quiz attempt will consist of randomly selected items from the test pool, so you will probably get a different set of questions each time you take it.  Your grade book score on the quiz will be the highest score you obtain of all of your attempts. Although you may use your textbook, the quiz has a time limit.

Exams: 
There is an objective exam on the textbook chapters for each module. You may take each exam up to 3 times – but each exam will consist of a different (randomly selected) question set. Your score on the exam will be the highest of all of your attempts. Although you may use your textbook, the exams have a time limit.

Reflective Blogs:
You are asked to write about the most important things that you have learned in each module, and how the knowledge you have gained from the module will impact your values, attitudes, beliefs and behavior. After submitting your own blog, you are asked to respong to the blogs submitted by a few other students.

Student Contributed Content:

When you encounter interesting information / fun facts etc. related to what we are studying – feel free to post and discuss in this ungraded, voluntary forum.

“Talk with the Professor” Forums:

In each module there is a “Talk with the Professor” area. In this area I may ask discussion questions about issues which I feel haven’t been fully explored in the Student Led discussion area. Also, in this area you may ask me questions, which I will respond to. Most often, I expect these questions (mine and yours) will be related to the discussions or the textbook – but no relevant topic is “off-limits.” You should check this area each time you log on and participate in these discussion threads.

Extra Credit / Make-up Work / Incomplete Grades

• The major requirement in this course is to discuss, with other students, the contents of each chapter in the text. There is no substitute for this requirement, and I do not permit “extra credit” or “alternative credit” assignments.
• Also, there is no way to “go back” after a module has ended and “make-up” missed discussion activity, because there are no other students left to learn from your posts and discuss the content with you.
• Finally, an incomplete in the course is not appropriate, as there is no way to complete the course once it has ended and all of the other students are gone.