Hello my
friends—
First, I
want to remind you that our class should NOT be your priority now. Focus on
taking care of yourself and those around you. Stay home as much as possible,
wash your hands, drink lots of water. And don’t forget the lessons from our
class: get enough sleep and pay attention to your mental health. Maybe now is a
chance to check out the meditation apps I talked about (HeadSpace, Waking up,
10% Happier). There’s also a great podcast called The Happiness Lab that I
find very helpful.
Second,
I hope you heard that
there will no more in-person, on campus classes for the rest of the semester. I
actually anticipated that decision, so what is described below will work for
the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester.
Third, I
want to tell you the results of the survey about ungrading: 40 of you responded
to the survey, and 75% of you want to switch to ungrading and 25% want to stay
with our class as it was. So we will do the ungrading thing.
Of
course the changes caused by COVID-19 complicates our plan. Our switch to
ungrading will actually make dealing with this mess a little easier. Here’s
why: traditional courses have requirements, but ungraded classes have opportunities.
So the overall plan is to lay out all the opportunities for you to learn about psychology,
and then you choose which ones you want to do. At the end of the semester you
will tell me what grade you deserve and explain why you think you deserve that
grade. The explanation can include many types of information from many sources.
*More on that below.
I think
there are two important things that we were accomplishing in our course up to
this point: 1) we were discovering the topics, ideas, and findings of
psychology, and 2) we were getting to know each other – you, me, each other. I
value both. Accomplishing the first goal will be pretty easy in our new format,
but the second goal is harder. Fortunately, this is something I have spent a
ton of time trying to figure out in my online courses. The answer is something
called Perusall, and it’s a way to both explore psychology and interact with
your classmates (and me and the TAs) at the same time.
The
text. Perusall is a (free) social annotation service that allows you to ask
questions
about and comment on electronic texts. Using Perusall is a mix
between a discussion board and social media. While looking at the text, you can
ask and answer questions and make comments (annotations) – and other people can
see your annotations. Essentially you can have a conversation with other people
while looking at a text. You can even target your comments at particular people
by using @ like in many social media sites. I have used Perusall in both online
and in-person courses, and students have mostly enjoyed and benefitted from
Perusall. Students find the interface very familiar and intuitive. I have
arranged for us to be able to access our textbook on the Perusall platform, all
within Blackboard, for no additional cost (this was not easy to arrange). So I
can create links on Blackboard for each group of sections in the text that I
have listed in the schedule at the end of the syllabus, and when you click on
the link you will be taken to our text in the Perusall platform and then be
able to have a conversation with the other members of class while reading those
sections. A neat thing is that Perusall keeps track of your interactions with
the text and thus you would be able to use that information (if you wish) in
your explanation for your final grade.
So
essentially the interactions you have on Perusall take the place of the jigsaws
we did during class. Perusall accomplishes both of the goals I mentioned above:
- discover psychology
- interact with each other
I made a
demo/walkthru video about Perusall. It’s on Blackboard.
The
jigsaws. I don’t know of a way to do the jigsaws online, and I’ve really tried
to figure out a way to do them online. It just doesn’t work nearly as well as
in-person. But what I can do is give you all the jigsaw questions that we would
have worked on, and you can answer them if you wish, on your own. You can find
a document with all the jigsaw questions on Blackboard. I also created a
‘journal’ on Blackboard where you could paste all of your responses to the
jigsaw questions.
The quizzes. I also believe in the benefit of taking the quizzes. As I’ve said many times in class, the quizzes are not about finding out how well you know the material, they are really about helping you learn the material. So I will keep the quizzes on Blackboard, with a few modifications. I will open them ALL up and take the passwords off them, that way you can take them as you wish, in any order, and you can still repeat them as many times as you want. No late penalties. The two short answer questions will be changed to apply to the content of the quizzes, not the content of our class sessions.
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The quizzes. I also believe in the benefit of taking the quizzes. As I’ve said many times in class, the quizzes are not about finding out how well you know the material, they are really about helping you learn the material. So I will keep the quizzes on Blackboard, with a few modifications. I will open them ALL up and take the passwords off them, that way you can take them as you wish, in any order, and you can still repeat them as many times as you want. No late penalties. The two short answer questions will be changed to apply to the content of the quizzes, not the content of our class sessions.
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So here
are the opportunities to learn about psychology I have set up for you:
- Engage with the text and your classmates on Perusall
- Solidify your knowledge by answering the jigsaw questions
- Solidify your knowledge with the quizzes
I
strongly believe that knowing more about psychology will improve your life, and
the more you know the more improvement you will achieve. There’s a lot of great
stuff ahead of us, including chapters on intelligence, personality, human
development, and best of all, social psychology! Reading the text and
interacting with your classmates on Perusall, answering the jigsaw questions,
and taking the quizzes will help you learn more about psychology and thus improve
your life.
*Final
grade. You have to submit to me at the end of the semester a grade
declaration and explanation for that grade. Your explanation could contain any
combination of the following information:
- attendance and quiz scores from before spring break, available on Blackboard
- your engagement with the text on Perusall, either time spent on Perusall, number of annotations you make, and/or score Perusall gives you based on your annotations
- quiz scores from now on
- any work you do on the jigsaw questions
- factors outside our course that affected your engagement in our class, like your mental and physical health, jobs, family obligations, stress from COVID-19, etc.
And most
importantly – and I really mean this is the most important thing –
- How this class has improved your life. All the other things are less important to me than this last thing.
You can
determine your final grade in any way you think is appropriate. If you want to
use just the points, go ahead. If you want to focus mostly on the way this
class has improved your life, that’s great too. Any combination that you think
is appropriate is acceptable. From this moment on, I want this to be your
primary, all-consuming focus in our class: how can I improve my life by
engaging in this class.
How many
and which things you do is up to you, especially during this pandemic crisis.
I regret that COVID-19 will almost certainly mean you will get less benefit out
of this class because of all the stress and disruption the virus is causing.
But that’s not your fault and I don’t want to punish you for it by requiring
you to do a bunch of work, no matter how beneficial I think that work is. I am
trying to lay out the rest of the topics in our class before you, buffet style.
You can pick and choose which ideas/topics you want to explore, and pause or
stop when you’ve had enough. I leave that decision entirely up to you.
- You don’t have to read all the sections of the text on Perusall
- You don’t have to answer all the jigsaw
- You don’t have to take all the quizzes
What you
do is up to you.
I’m
going to miss seeing you all on Mondays and Wednesdays! But I’m very grateful
that we had the face-to-face time that we did, and especially that we had that
conversation on the Wednesday before spring break. Of course I am still
available on email. I can even arrange to talk to you via phone or video call
if you wish – I would love that! Let me know.
Stay
safe, take this pandemic seriously, and take care of each other. We’ll get
through this and
get back to normal before too long. Hang in there.
Dr.
Winslow
TA Team:
Shelby Baker, Cara Copeland, Merhan Elramahi, Gabriel Gomez, Maya Gulliford, Katelyn
Hamblin, Haley Ingram
P.S.
We’re still working out the details on the Outside Activity Credits. Stay
tuned.
P.P.S.
You don’t need to do anything until March 23, but you can if you want to.
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