PSYCH 101 - 02: AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

Spring, 2002

Dr. David L. Carpenter

Rev. 4/17/02

Jump To:   GOALS    ASSIGNMENTS    EVALUATION   GRADING   ETIQUETTE   EER    

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WEB PAGE: http://web.sbu.edu/psychology/dcarp

Office:  D-13D                 Phone: x2499               Email: DCARP@SBU.EDU

Office Hours:        Tues.   2:30 - 5:00 PM               Wed. 9:30 - 11:00 AM         or by appointment

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COURSE GOALS

            The goals of this course are to give you a better understanding of the psychological concepts, relationships, and methods that have been developed by a scientific approach to the study of behavior.  Emphasis will be on biological and developmental processes, perception, learning, memory, motivation and emotion, personality, and social cognition.

TEXT - Matlin, M. W., 1999. PSYCHOLOGY (3 ^rd ed). Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, New York.

  Matlin, M. W., 1999. STUDY GUIDE TO ACCOMPANY PSYCHOLOGY (3 ^rd ed).
           Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, New York.

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ASSIGNMENTS, TOPICS AND EXAMS                                        

* = Mandatory Chapters

 (TBD) = To Be Determined

EVALUATION                                                                       To Top of Page

            Testing:

      The largest single contribution to your final grade in this course is your performance on the five unit exams.  These are 60 item multiple choice exams intended to measure your comprehension of the material covered in a topical unit in the text, class, and in-class audio-visual aids and demonstrations.  Doing well on these exams will require that you go beyond merely memorizing definitions to mastering the concepts and theories of psychology and their application.

      Generally make-up exams will be given only in cases where an official University excuse has been obtained.  In such cases, the exam is to be made up within a week of the regularly scheduled administration.  I reserve the option to give oral or essay make-up exams.

      You will also have the opportunity to earn up to 60 points from three short quizzes during the semester.  These will be 10 item multiple-choice quizzes that are drawn from the same set of questions as the exams.

      Any quizzes that are missed must be made up before the next class, or the possibility of earning any points from them is forfeited.

            Elaborated Experience Report:

      A smaller portion of your final grade can come from reports of course related experiences.  There are three types of experiences that can give you the opportunity to learn more about psychology as a natural science and to demonstrate that you can relate what you learn from the course to your own experiences.  (See How to Write an Elaborated Experience Report below.)

            Bonus Credit:

Research Participation.  From time to time faculty or students in the Psychology Department recruit students from class to participate on a voluntary basis in their research.  For such participation you will receive bonus credit toward your course grade of up to 4 points for each hour or part of an hour of participation, up to a maximum of 24 points for the course.  Research participation will give you an opportunity to find out more about psychological research from different perspectives, and you can also use these experiences as a basis for doing a Elaborated Experience Report as described below.

            Remember that when you sign up you accept responsibility for showing up, for it often prevents another volunteer from signing up and the researcher is counting on your participa­tion at the time specified.  If subsequent to signing up, you find that you are unable or unwilling to participate, your responsibility is to give the researcher maximum advanced notice.

Group Bonus Points.  Bonus points equal to 10% of possible points will be awarded to all members of a group if all members of the group score at 90% or better on any exams or quizzes.  If all members of a group score 85% or better on an exam, all group members will receive 5% of possible points as a bonus.

Bonus Questions.  If the inspiration hits me, I may call on people at random to answer questions verbally for bonus points.  The questions will be drawn from the reading mate­rial and material previously presented in class.

GRADING                                                                   To Top of Page

*  Elaborated Experience Reports will be graded 0, 10, 15 or 20 points, corresponding to F, C+, B+, A respectively.  Scores of 20 points will be given to papers which are superior in the description and the relating of the experience to course content.  You will not be rewarded for simply turning something in.  You are encouraged to do these reports, but only if you are ready to invest in them and can produce a worthwhile product, other­wise you are advised to use your time in other ways.

            Grading Curve:

            The "Approximate Equivalent" column below shows one way of earning these grades.  You can work out other variations.

CLASSROOM ETIQUETTE                           To Top of Page

If you come to class, I expect you to stay to the end.  Please schedule other commitments for times other than class time.  If on very rare occasion you must leave before the end of class, please inform me before class that you must leave and why, and then sit near the door so that your departure will not disrupt the whole class.

Please attend to your personal needs so as to not have to walk in and out of the room while class is in session.  If in spite of your best efforts you need a pit stop, catch my eye and indicate that you need to take a quick trip down the hall.

Above all be respectful of not only the instructor, but your fellow classmates as well.  We are trying to nurture a learning environment and unnecessary distractions detract from that.  Noisy food wrappers, side conversations, reading unrelated material, writing letters, cell phones or beepers going off. watches the chime, etc. are all examples of disrespectful and distracting behavior.  Be aware of unintentional signals that you might send to other students.  For instance, putting your coat on, packing up your books and papers, and marching out in the middle of class, may be interpreted by some as saying this class is boring beyond tolerance, and I am leaving.  While it may be truly boring, (we can’t all be star performers all the time, and sometimes learning is just plain hard work), or you may have a legitimate reason for leaving, it creates an awkward situation for the instructor and the rest of the class.

HOW TO WRITE AN ELABORATED EXPERIENCE REPORT (EER)          

 To Top of Page           Sample EER #1     #2

First - Get approval of your topic so you don't spend time on some thing you can't get credit for.  To get approval, submit a brief written or typed request to me specifying:

1. the nature of the experience,

2. a general statement about what in the course content you will relate the event to.

If approved, I will return this request with my signature to be attached to the back of the finished paper.

Second - have an experience that you can relate to the material in this course.  For example:

1. Experience a TV special, a speaker, movie, or a magazine article.  If you are getting this experience all or mostly to do an EER, check with me before hand to make certain that the topic is acceptable.

2. Volunteer to participate in research.  Sign-up sheets are placed on the hall table across from the Psychology Department office.

3. Read about a particularly interesting topic in the text that we are not covering in the course, and do some library research on it.

Third - Then, within a week for scheduled events such as talks or movies, write a brief report (not more than 3 pages, but not less than 2) using the following two headings:

Description - Under this heading describe concisely the aspects of the experience that particularly impressed you and that you found to be relevant to experimental psychology.  Use the terminology and concepts that you have learned in the course.

Relationship - Under this heading show how some topic or principle in the text or in class is related to the experience.  For example, the course material may make it easier to understand the experience or the experience may clarify course material, or demonstrate limitations of it.  Just explain this relationship.  If you are starting with a reading from the text, go the other way, i.e. explain how the text material relates to something in your life.

            Although not required, you are encouraged to use outside sources in addition to the text.  If you do so, be certain to give a complete reference (not doing so constitutes plagiarism, a form of academic dishonesty).  The report should indicate in your own words what stimulated you and the connections you see to course material.

            If your EER is based on research participation, do not write it up until you have been debriefed by the experimenter who will tell you how the experiment was designed, what questions they were trying to answer, and if available, some idea of what the results were.  Depending on the experiment, the debriefings may not occur until several weeks after you participate in the experiment.

REMEMBER - No more than 3 pages (but it can not receive full credit if it is less than two pages), excluding references.

Your EER must be typed or computer printed, double-spaced.  Pages beyond 3 will not be read.  Attach your topic approval page to the back.  EER's are due no later than ONE WEEK after the experience for scheduled events.  Note that no reports will be accepted after May 2^nd, even though that might give you less than one week to report on experiences during the last week of classes.

You can do up to 4 EER's.  You don't have to do any, if you don't want to.  They are optional, but recognize that you can not get enough points from exams alone to get above a B+ in the course.

Return to the top of the syllabus                                                          A Form for Recording Points

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Since 1/9/02