GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY SYLLABUS - PSY 011
  Fall 2023 (2238)
Section 040: M W - 3:00 - 4:20 - AF 200

Professor: Dr. Robert S. Ryan
Office: 385 Old Main
Office hours: Mon. 10 - 12:30; Tues. 12 - 1:30; Wed. 12 - 1

Office Phone: 610-683-4457 (but email is best)
Home Phone: If you need to speak to me on the phone, email me first, and we'll arrange a call
E-mail: rryan@kutztown.edu
Website: http://faculty.kutztown.edu/rryan
Required Text:

Good news: your textbook for this class is available for FREE online! If you prefer, you can also get a print version at a very low cost.

Your book is available in web view and PDF for free. Be assured this free textbook is an excellent, peer reviewed, textbook. It is not free because it is inferior. It is provided by OpenStax.org, which is supported by Rice University and several philanthropic organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and others.

To view the text online, it is best to do it in the following way. Use a right click on the following link and open the “Psychology - OpenStax” website in a new tab: https://www.openstax.org/details/psychology . Don't worry if you get a message saying your browser may not be supported. Your browser may work just fine. If it doesn't, then try another browser. Also, if you get a page that looks like it's blank, try scrolling down.

Under “Book Details” you will see a list of ways to "Get this book." You can choose how to view the text. I recommend "View online". When you click on "View online"you will be taken to the textbook in a new tab (be patient if it loads slowly at first).

If you wish, in addition to getting the free textbook, as described above, there is also a way to buy access to commercial websites that use the same open source textbook as described above, but also provide additional resources. To see those resources, go back to the “Psychology OpenStax” website on which you started.  Click on “Instructor Resources”. Scroll down a little, and on the right you'll see "Technology Partners." You can click on any of the Technology Partners to get more information about them. However, before deciding to spend money on any of the commercial products, be sure to check out all of the resources available within the open source textbook alone.

You can also choose to purchase the book on iBooks, or get a Kindle version. If you choose to purchase any of those versions you should do so from the “Psychology - OpenStax” website so you get the official OpenStax print version. (Simple printouts sold by third parties on Amazon are not verifiable and not as high-quality). If you decide to look for a copy on your own, the title and ISBN's for the various formats are at the bottom of the "Psychology - OpenStax page.

Course Description: An introduction to the scientific study of behavior and thinking. It includes a summary of the history of psychology and careers in psychology, psychological research, biopsychology, sensation and perception, learning, thinking and intelligence, memory, lifespan development, personality, social psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, and psychological disorders.

Understanding an Online Course: See the "Instructions for the Course" in "Getting Started"

Attendance: All students should attend the face-to-face classes in order to do as well as possible on the tests. However, no points toward your grade are added due to attendance or subtracted due to missing classes.

Assessment: Your final grade in this course will be determined by the points you earn from the quizzes, the Midterm Exam, the Final Exam, from the Research Experience Requirement, by participating in discussions and by attendance.

Readings:

Each chapter will have an Introduction and several numbered sections. For example, Chapter 1 has an Introduction and sections 1.1 through 1.4. Each section will have a list of learning objectives at the top. Then will come the reading itself. The reading may be divided into sub-sections. There may also be "Links to Learning", which will take you to outside resources such as videos or news items.

After all of the sections for the chapter there will be a list of key terms, a summary, review questions, critical thinking questions, and personal application questions.

Weekly Quizzes and the two Exams:

You will have 10 online weekly quizzes (20 questions each - one point per question). The weekly quizzes will cover material from the chapter readings. The first quiz could have questions about this syllabus and about the instructions for the course. Quizzes on any given chapter may include a question or two from previous chapters to check your retention. A retention check question could be, but will not necessarily be, identical to one that you had seen previously. Quizzes may include multiple choice, matching, true/false, and fill-in questions.

The first five weekly quizzes (for the first half of the course before the Midterm Exam) will be open and available starting Monday, Aug. 28 at 5am. You can start any of those weekly quiz earlier than its assigned week, but you must finish it by the end of the assigned week. Once you open a quiz in D2L, you will have 20 minutes to complete it from the time you open it. If you stop taking the quiz, you will receive credit only for the questions you completed. You can take a quiz three times with the highest score counting for your grade. However, most of the questions will change each time you try the same quiz. Any questions on the learning objectives or from previous chapters will not change. Because of the "Drop two lowest quiz grades" (details below) policy, there are no make-up quizzes. The quizzes will be due on a Sunday at 11:59pm of the week in which they are assigned (see the Graded Assignments column in the Weekly Schedule below).

The Midterm Exam will be open about one week before it is due. It will cover Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7. It will have 48 questions and will be worth 48 points (about 8 questions per chapter - one point per question). Any question could be, but will not necessarily be, identical to one that you had seen previously. The questions may include multiple choice, matching, true/false, and fill-in questions. Once you open the Midterm Exam in D2L, you will have 60 minutes to complete it from the time you open it. If you stop taking the Exam, you will receive credit only for the questions you completed. You can take the Exam only once. It will be due by Sunday of the scheduled week at 11:59pm. You must take the Midterm Exam during the scheduled week.

The second five weekly quizzes (for the second half of the course before the Final Exam) will be open and available starting Monday, Oct. 16 at 5am. The policies for the second five weekly quizzes will be the same as for the first five.

The Final Exam will be open about one week before it is due (Open Thursday of Week 15 - due Friday of Exam Week). It will have 68 questions worth one point each. It will cover Chapters 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, and 15 as well as several questions covering some important concepts from the whole course. The policies regarding number and types of questions, for the Final Exam will be the same as for the Midterm Exam. You will have 90 minutes to complete it from the time you open it. If you stop taking the Exam, you will receive credit only for the questions you completed. You can take the Exam only once    It will be due by Friday of exam week at 11:59pm. You must take the Final Exam during the scheduled time.

Research Experience Requirement:

You are required to earn 3 "Research Participation Credits." Each participation credit is worth 5 points towards your course grade. You earn the participation credits in either of two ways, either by actual participation as a subject in a study, or by doing the "alternative." You can "mix and match", that is, earn some of the credits one way and some of them in the other.

The first way, by actual participation, is the best. Read the online instructions first, by right clicking on the link at the end of this paragraph to open it in a new tab. At the end of those instructions, don't click on the link to the KU Psychology Department subject pool run by sona-systems just yet. Instead, come back to this page and continue reading the instructions below. Read these instructions first: Instructions for research participation.

After you have read the online instructions, read the rest of these instructions before creating an account on the subject pool website. By creating such an account, you will be able to satisfy the research requirement by participating as a research subject in a study being conducted by faculty or students at Kutztown University (either by going to the KU campus, or by participating online). The amount of credit you will receive is based on the approximate amount of time required to complete the participation. Each full hour of participation is worth one full credit. The description of each study will tell you how much credit you will receive.

I strongly encourage you to actually participate as a research subject because it is the best learning experience. It is possible to actually participate even without having to go to the KU campus to do so. Some of the studies require you to make an appointment in a time slot for that study and to keep that appointment by coming to the appointed location on the KU campus at the appointed time. However, there are also studies that you can do online. The online studies are often surveys. There also may be some that involve other kinds of activities, but still activities that you can complete online.

To create your subject pool account, use a right click on the following link to open the Psychology Dept. Subject Pool website, provided by sona-systems, in a new tab: https://kutztown.sona-systems.com/. Click on "Request Account" and follow the instructions.

The second way to earn the Research Participation Credits is to do the "alternative." The alternative to actual in-person participation as a research subject is to read a peer reviewed journal article that reports a psychology study and to write a 5 page paper summarizing the study, with special emphasis on what the research subjects experienced. Each such paper will count as 1 "Research Participation Credit." If you wish to do the alternative, please contact me so that I can direct you to some appropriate peer reviewed journal articles and give you further instructions for how to write the paper.

The Research Experience Requirement is due by Sun. of the 14th week at 11:59pm.

Discussions:
There will be a discussion forum with a total of five topics. The discussions will be done in the third, sixth, ninth, twelfth, and fifteenth, week. Each topic will ask you to comment on something or answer some questions. The questions are about your thoughts on the topic. There is not a right or wrong answer. You are required to post at least one reply to each week's topic. There are 5 possible points for each discussion reply. I will read the replies, and as long as it is a thoughtful reply, not just something that was obviously posted just to get the points, I will give you all 5 points. You will either get all 5 points or none. There will be no partial credits. You will be able to check to see that you got the points by looking in Grades.

Each of the discussion topics will open at 5am on Monday and will close at 11:59pm on Sunday of the week for that discussion. You have the whole open period to read the topic and make your reply. If you miss the deadline there will be no make ups.

You will receive credit for making one thoughtful reply to the topic. After I have read it, approved it, and given you the grade, you will be able to see other replies. Once that happens, you will be able to make more replies if you wish, although you are not required to, and there will be no more credit given for additional replies. If you do make some additional replies, to keep it easy for everyone to read, it is best to reply to the topic itself, not to someone else's reply. However, if you do wish to reply to a specific other student, and get a conversation going with that student, then reply to that student. In any event, all posts to the forum must be civil, polite, and considerate of others' feelings.

I may reply to your discussion replies, or I may send the class an email about what I am seeing on the discussions. I sometimes do this because students' replies sometimes contain misconceptions or misunderstandings that I wish to clarify or correct.

Use of AI, such as ChatGPT:

If you wish to risk using Generative AI in your writing, you should be aware that you will be held personally responsible for the clarity and rationality of the writing. Consider the following example:

An author named Norman Solomon recently published a book entitled "War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine." It is about how the media report on war so as to make the general public accept it.

Generative AI was used to produce a summary of the book. The first sentence of the AI generated summary was, "The U.S. media coverage that makes it easier to sell wars to the public, as well as the often-hidden cost of civilian casualties from errant U.S. attacks, are all harshly criticized by journalist Solomon." Not bad. But the second sentence was, "He guarantees that when Russia designated Ukrainian communities during the new attack, the U.S. media was everyone available and jumping into action with compassionate, piercing revealing."

Your real capability, however imperfect you might think it is, might be preferable to so-called artificial intelligence.

"Drop two lowest quiz grades" policy: Your lowest two quiz grades will be dropped. Only quiz grades will be dropped. Any zeros for missed discussions will not be dropped. If you get a zero on one of the quizzes, even if it was due to something that you feel was not your fault, you will have to use up one of your drops for that quiz. Therefore, you should plan to do everything you can to make sure you take all of the quizzes and leave the drops for any unexpected emergency that may come up. If you purposely miss a quiz or two, thinking that you can always drop them, then you won't have the drops available to save you if something unexpected happens. The drops can either both come from the same half of the quizzes, or one from each half.

Your final grade is based on the percentage of the total points you earn (after your two lowest quiz grades are dropped):There are 10 quizzes to start, but after the 2 drops there will be 8. Those 8 quizzes, at 20 possible points each, will equal 160 possible points from quizzes. The Midterm Exam will have 48 points and the Final Exam will have 68 points, for a total of 116. The five discussions are worth 5 points each for another 25 points. The three research participation credits are worth 5 points each for another 15 points. That adds up to a total of 316 possible points for the entire course. Therefore, your grade will be the total number of points you earn from the 8 quizzes that are not dropped, plus however many points you earn from the Midterm and Final exams, from the discussions, and research participation, divided by 316, and then multiplied by 100 to give you your percentage grade. Your percentage grade will be converted to a letter grade as shown below. There will be no extra credit, and no curving of grades. The grades will be straight letters, with no pluses or minuses.

A = 90%     B = 80%    C = 70%    D = 60%    F < 60%

A percentage grade ending in anything less than five tenths of a point will be rounded down. A grade ending in five tenths of a point or greater will be rounded up. (For example an 89.499... is a B, but an 89.500... is an A).

Other Course Policies

A. Academic Dishonesty: Academic dishonesty involves any attempt to obtain academic credit or influence the grading process by means unauthorized by the course instructor."  Click here for Kutztown University's student conduct information and click here for the Academic Honesty Policy.


B. Disabilities: Student with disabilities who need special accommodations must make their requests and submit documentation to the Disability Services Office (215 Stratton Administration Building, 610- 683-4108, direct any emails to the Provider of Services to Students with Disabilities, Ms. Linda Lantaff, lantaff@kutztown.edu). The Disabilities Services office will then provide the student with a letter to the professor asking for appropriate accommodations. The letter should be sent to Dr. Ryan immediately.

Tentative Weekly Schedule
This is a tentative course syllabus and subject to change at the discretion of the instructor.