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I have been told by many, many students in my Psych 101 class that the course is very different from any other course they have ever taken. So apparently students who enroll in my course without knowing anything about it will not be getting what they expected. Therefore I felt ethically obligated to create this website to let students know what my Psych 101 course is about: the site is intended for two groups of students:
The first group is students who either haven't decided whether to take a basic psych course or who have decided to take one but haven't yet decided which section to enroll in: You probably wouldn't go to a movie that you knew nothing about, even though that would take just a few hours of your time and cost just a few dollars. Enrolling in a course is a commitment to spend more than one hundred hours (in class and out) and costs considerably more than a movie. So I believe that you should know something about a course before you make such a commitment, and this site provides you with information about the Psych 101 course that I teach.
The second group is students who are already enrolled in one of my Psych 101 classes: Although I can guarantee that each student who does the required assignments will pass the course, in recent semesters a significant percentage of students in my course have not been willing to spend the time required to do the assignments, so this site spells out just what the course requires (and why) and is intended to help you decide right now whether you are willing and able to spend the time required, so that if you are not you can withdraw from the class while there is still time to transfer to a different course.
To allow students in both of those groups to make an informed decision, this page contains information about:
Many (perhaps even most) of the students entering my course still think that "learning" means "memorizing". Memorizing is one kind of learning, but it is the lowest of six types of learning recognized by educators (and it is also the least useful type and requires more time than most of the others.) This Psych 101 course requires several higher-level types of learning, and the course materials are designed to make those types of learning as easy as possible.
The first reading assignment in the course, the Preface to the textbook, explains the goal of the course in very simple terms. It should make it clear why understanding the information in the course is more useful than just memorizing a bunch of facts.
For each Lesson in the course there is a reading assignment in the Textbook and a list of Objectives specifying everything you need to "know" (be able to do) when you have finished the reading. There is also a written assignment, in the Workbook, which consists of doing what each Objective says you should be able to do after the reading.
The assignment for each Lesson is due on the day we begin discussing the Lesson (help is available for any problems you encounter while doing the assignment), and soon after the in-class Lesson begins there is a ten-question multiple-choice Quiz on the Objectives in the Lesson.
If you have completed the Workbook Assignment (which consists of doing the Objectives) then I guarantee that you will pass the Quiz: if you get a failing score on the Quiz, just turn in your Workbook and I'll grade the assignment, and if it's passing then your score on the assignment will replace your score on the Quiz. If you pass the Quiz I won't need to look at your assignment.
On average the assignments require between six and seven-and-a-half hours per week, although some weeks the total is less (which means that some weeks it's more.) If that seems like a lot of time to you, I want you to know that it is the amount of time that "Middle States," the association which decides whether our college should be "accredited" (whether our courses will transfer to other colleges) says a student should spend in order to pass a three-credit course.
Despite that fact, each semester I have many students who, having enrolled in my course without knowing anything about it, withdraw early in the semester, telling me that none of their other courses requires nearly that much time. And, unfortunately, I also have quite a few students who fail the course because they did not do the assignments, and many of them say that they didn't believe me when I announced at the first class meeting how much time the course would take, and that although they stayed in the class they "didn't have time" to do the assignments.
Literally no one has ever claimed that the assignments took longer than the amount of time I have stated.
The requirements described above are not arbitrary. That is, they're not there because I'm "strict" or because I "believe in hard work."
Rather, the requirements are a natural part of the way the course is structured. And the course structure is designed to enable everyone to achieve the goal of learning to understand why we and others do what we do.
That understanding requires a number of complex ideas. But complex ideas are just simpler ideas, put together in a certain way, via a certain structure. And the structure of this course mirrors the structure of those concepts.
I believe that almost all of my students are brighter than they think they are (especially those who think that they "can't do math or science.") The human mind wants to learn - it's what it was designed to do: in his first two years a newborn learns to grab things, to walk, to talk, and even to manipulate family members, and all this learning occurs naturally, without anyone "teaching" him.
But by the time they reach high school many students don't think they enjoy learning (even though almost everyone is interested in learning something, whether it's about their favorite team, or a celebrity, or cars or music or whatever), and they underestimate their own intelligence. And the reason for those wrong beliefs is that so many teachers don't understand the implications of the fact that complex ideas are built from simpler ideas.
If you're interested in why that lack of understanding by most teachers leads to students' underestimating their own ability (and perhaps feeling bored with "school learning,") here's a link to an article, Why This Course Is Structured As It Is, which I believe will make it very clear.
The primary basis for final grades is the students' score on eight of the ten Quizzes (each student's two lowest Quiz scores are dropped) and the two Tests. Every question on every Quiz and every Test is based on one of the course Objectives.
As explained in the "Why This Course is Structured the Way It Is" article above, until we have developed a number of simpler concepts we will not be able to learn a more complex concept which is constructed from those simpler ones. So to show which low-level ideas are required in order to master a higher-level idea, the list of course Objectives is arranged in outline form, so that each higher-level Objective (let's say, objective II.A.) has all the lower-level Objectives needed to achieve it, directly below it in the outline (e.g., as II.A.1., II.A.2. and II.A.3.).
A copy of the Objectives Outline for the entire course is available online (use Internet Explorer to enable its interactive feature!) I suggest that anyone reading this who intends to take my Psych 101 course save the address of that page as a "favorite" (or "bookmark," or whatever your browesr calls saved site addresses.) At one of our early class meetings I'll discuss how to use the outline while you're working on each Lesson's assignment to help you understand the Lesson as a whole.
I'm aware that from what is written above you will realized that my Psych 101 course is rather different from other courses you have taken. And I know that some readers will be thinking that it requires "a lot of work."
But is it worth it? Obviously I think so or I wouldn't have built the course this way. But I believe you're entitled to know what students who have taken the course have had to say about it. So I include a link to What People are Saying About Prof. Cohen's Psych 101 Course.