Hi Miguel,I've taught Intro online several times - just beginning a new term today. The key is to have a great course designer who can set up your course as seamlessly as possible. We are lucky to have a terrific guy who knows his stuff and a wonderful staff at Granite State College.
I give a weekly test online, require participation on the Discussion Board (at least two academic, scholarly posts; I make it very clear from the beginning that posting something like "I agree" or "that's interesting," etc. doesn't count). I have one thread on the Discussion Board that I call "What's New?" and students can look for something in the current news or an interesting article they've found and post it. All can post a new thread or respond with further information and thoughts to someone else's post. Four times throughout the term, they must also post an answer to an "Essential Question" on the Discussion Board. For each of these questions, I offer four or five possible choices, which they must answer in about 150 words. Here are the questions for Week 2: 1. Give some examples of why psychology is more than just “intuition and common sense.” 2. If you wanted to perform an experiment to determine whether drinking coffee helps your memory, how might you go about setting up your experiment? 3. Here are some examples of correlational research. If the correlations are true (and they are!), then why can’t you say they prove a cause? a. Research has shown that children with larger feet reason better than children with smaller feet. (So does shoe size predict reasoning?) b. A study showed that the best predictor of whether a couple practiced birth control was the number of electrical appliances in their homes. (If you want to limit the population of a country, can you just buy everybody a toaster?) c. Beer-drinking nations suffer more assaults than countries where the people prefer wine. (Should we outlaw beer to cut down on crime?) d. And here’s a thought-provoking one: A study conducted in Tacoma, Washington found that juvenile delinquents consumed almost ten times the amount of milk that was drunk by the control group. The juvenile offenders ate less fruit, nuts and vegetables. (To cut down on juvenile delinquency, should we ban milk? Is there some aggression-causing chemical in milk?) 4. In our textbook, Michael Gazzaniga, a famed researcher in split-brain research, is quoted as saying “You wouldn’t want to have a date with the right hemisphere.” What do you think he meant by that? 5. Is it true, as people often say, that you are either “right-brained” or “left-brained”? I also require all learners in my classes to take the plagiarism test from Indiana University, so they can't claim they didn't realize what plagiarism was. When they pass (it's pretty hard!) they get an online certificate, and they must cut and paste it and send it to me. Here's what I have posted for the course with information about the plagiarism test: Plagiarism Article and Certificate Click on the link below to access the article on plagiarism: http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml After you have finished reading the article, click on this link and select "test" in the menu on the left. Complete the test, and when you receive your certificate for correctly recognizing plagiarism, cut and paste it into the body of a Word document entitled "Plagiarism certificate," and send it to me in the body of a Message in the Message section, or as an attachment. http://www.indiana.edu/~istd/ Finally, they must hand in a paper near the end of the term, where they find a topic in the news and search for research from peer-reviewed journals to address the topic in more depth than the news story provides. I grade their participation on the Discussion Board every week for the first two weeks, and then for two weeks at a time after that. On the Discussion Board, I also try to post something appropriate to that week's topic. For example, for the week we'll be considering memory, I posted this (I got the link from the cartoon from TIPS - I think it was from Chris Green!): Here's a fun little cartoon, with memorable message: http://vodpod.com/watch/705748-yesbutnobutyes-chris-wares-american-life Hope this helps, Beth Benoit Granite State College Plymouth State University New Hampshire On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 8:46 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi everyone, I am scheduled to teach Introductory Psychology online for the > first time this summer and I am looking for class exercises and examples of > grading strategies so that I can construct my own. I already have some ideas > for exercises and forum discussion questions, but I am interested in > plagiarizing -- I mean, seeing, borrowing with proper attribution, etc. -- > what others are doing. ;-) > > > > Miguel > > > > > --- > To make changes to your subscription contact: > > Bill Southerly ([email protected]) > > --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
