Welcome – again – and happy new year!

If you are new to this blog you’ll notice that it’s been going for a while. I started it last semester for my online psyc100 class and have decided to repurpose it as my ongoing intro psyc blog that will reflect whatever content I happen to be covering in either class. If there’s anything you’d like to see, please let me know.

In the meantime, you might be preparing to celebrate New Year’s Eve in a few days. December 31 is also the next full moon – will this convergence of events cause you to act strangely? Will you feel the urge to howl as you sing Auld Lang Syne? To learn the answer to this and other psychological questions check out Michael Britt’s latest podcast at the psych files on 50 Great Myths in Popular Psychology. the psych files are always full of humour and information – enjoy!

Get the most out of Google

Here’s a nifty site I found at Online Colleges: 

100+ Google Tricks That Will Save You Time in School

Enjoy!

Learning APA Style

Learning APA style is a bugbear for psychology students, unless you are someone who enjoys the minutiae of editing and proofreading. Even the editors at APA itself are challenged by the rigid requirements of their own style – the first print run of the new 6th edition of the Publication Manual contained over 80 errors. The first edition (which only came out at the end of last summer) is now being replaced by a second printing.

Does this mean we should stop expecting psychology undergraduates to master APA style? I don’t think so – learning APA style should improve all aspects of your writing. APA style provides concrete advice on clarity, structure, and organization of writing. It helps the writer to understand how to integrate other sources effectively and without plagiarism. Once learned, it removes the onus off the writer to make stylistic decisions like how to format citations and references, thereby freeing him or her to focus on content.

A final excellent resource on APA style this week is The OWL at Purdue University.

Build it and they will come . . .

One of the great things about the Internet is its ability to deliver information to you in an automated way. We all have favourite sites that we visit regularly: blogs, social networking, podcasts, the news, and so on. Did you know that you can subscribe to the RSS feeds provided by your favourite sites, and then have all of the new content delivered automatically to your desktop or email? To subscribe to a site, and receive content as it is updated, find the RSS icon on the site.

Click on it and then choose where you want the content delivered to. The easiest way is to use an RSS Reader – these collect updated info from everything you have subscribed to and then deliver it to you. There are readers that work with your Internet browser, like FeedDemon 3.0 for Windows, Safari, and Firefox. There are also online readers like Google Reader, My Yahoo!, Bloglines, Pageflakes, and Netvibes. All of them do basically the same thing, although their appearances are different – check out a couple to see what format you prefer.

Once you have your Reader set up, start adding feeds from your favourite sites. You will only get content as it is updated – nothing new = no update. You don’t need to check the original website.

You can also have content delivered to your email if you prefer. Whatever method you choose, using a feed reader is a good time management technique – instead of visiting every web site separately, let the content come to you. I used RSS to deliver photos from Flickr to this blog.

Feeds are also available where you might not expect – you can subscribe to a Google search for something and then receive new hits as they appear online, using Google alerts. iTunes offers thousands of audio and video podcasts – each with its own feed.

If you have your own blog or website, you can publish your own RSS feed that lets people subscribe to your site and get content as you update it. This blog is written using WordPress which automatically generates an RSS feed.

Are you managing your time or is it managing you?

Around this point in the semester many students realize that their time management skills are not serving them as well as they could be – balancing the demands of courses, work, families, and other aspects of life can be very challenging. Time management is one of the key ingredients to success as a student. Yet many of us have no training in this area, and we flounder along trying to get everything done without having a plan to make it happen.

If this is where you are what are you going to do?

CapilanoU offers services to support learners. If you want something online, a great place to start is Study Guides and Strategies .

Having fun with the brain – hypo the llamas . . .

Learning the parts of the brain is challenging. This video by Michael Britt of the psych files podcast is both funny and informative – Michael shows you how to use mnemonics to remember what part of the brain is responsible for what. Hypothalamus? Hypo the llamas – you’ll have to watch the video to see how memorizing hypothalamus involves spraying hot and sweaty llamas with water . . .

I highly recommend watching this – and checking out the rest of the psych files. And if you have another idea for a mnemonic, post it here!

Welcome – START HERE!

Welcome to the blog for Psyc100 section 06, Fall 2009. We’ll use this space to communicate, share and collaborate. Hopefully you have all enrolled yourselves in the course Moodle. That’s the other important place on the web. Moodle is where all the administration of the course takes place, and that’s where you’ll find all the details about assignments, exams, the course outline and so on. So for course admin – check Moodle. For commentary from the instructor, communicating, and discussing – come to the blog.

If you have any questions about the course or anything you see on Moodle, please check out the FAQs. If you can’t find an answer, please post your question on the blog. And if you have the answer to someone else’s question – you know what to do!

Some of you may be completely new to e-learning, and are wondering what you’re letting yourself in for. Well, e-learning IS different from traditional F2F (face-to-face) learning – there are a lot more acronyms for a start. However, there are some similarities. This course is equivalent in credit to the F2F versions, so it transfers to other institutions the same way and is a prerequisite for most upper-level Psyc courses. The big difference lies in the respective roles of student and instructor. In F2F university learning, the instructor often takes the role of the “sage on the stage”, and delivers content that the student is meant to absorb, and hopefully reflect upon and evaluate.

the sage on the stage

 In e-learning, this model doesn’t work very well. Translating an F2F course into the online environment necessitates a new way of looking at learning. In e-learning, the instructor steps back from the content somewhat, and adopts the role of a “guide on the side”. Rather than giving students a pile of content such as a document to read (boring!) or a set of PowerPoint slides to watch by themselves (even more boring!), e-learning requires students to uncover the content for themselves. As well, students collaborate with their peers to create knowledge – a powerful tool for taking ownership of a topic and really learning what it’s all about. The instructor’s role is to provide a narrative that connects the dots – the big picture in other words. The course blog will be used for this purpose and you will see the blog feed on our course Moodle so you can check it out there or here.

You may feel apprehensive about this different way of learning, and that’s normal. But don’t worry – you’re in the same boat as about 35 other students in the class. This is my second time teaching a fully-online course (I’ve taught lots of mixed-mode classes) and the learning curve is steep and fast. Just take it one week at a time, and if you feel bogged down there is lots of help available.

What about e-learning will be a challenge for you?