Psychology of Development: Life Span

Psychology 200, section D1; Course Numbers 9580

Fall 2008

Arranged

Room: Online

                                                                                       

Instructor: Brian Holt

Office: IB 2425-A

Phone: (206) 528-4513 (e-mail is preferred and more reliable)

E-Mail: bholt@sccd.ctc.edu

 

Office Hours:  Tues:    10am - 11:50
                     Wed:   11:30am-12:20pm
                     Thurs:  11am- 11:50

                                2:30pm -3:30

 

Required Text: Berger K.S. (2006-8).  The Developing Person Through the Life Span (6th Ed. Or 7th Ed.) New York: Worth.  The 6th and 7th editions are different and it's possible that you will have to use the index in order to answer learning objectives easily.

 

Course Description:

 

In contrast to broad scope of Introductory Psychology, Development across the Life Span focuses on human changes across the life span in the areas of physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and moral development. 

 

Learning objectives

The course will mostly consist of reading and online discussions of assigned material.  There is a lot of material to read and to organize, and I will do my best to guide you in that organization. 

 

Specifically, you should expect to understand the essentials of major biosocial, cognitive, and psychosocial theories of developmental psychology, in addition to their major philosophical underpinnings.  You will also learn about the complexity of biological, individual, and social influences in development, and that individuals and their environment are coupled such that we really should not separate one from the other.

 

General outcomes include:

To value intellectual inquiry, personal responsibility and ethical behavior; Discover the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge; Demonstrate a willingness to learn from many cultures, persons, methods and viewpoints; Think critically in reading and writing; Work and communicate effectively in groups; Understand the nature of the individual and of the relationship between the self and the community.

 

Course Requirements:

Readings

Readings from the text (as well as occasional handouts) are assigned each week.  Please see the calendar in your WebCt account. 

 

Written Assignments

Each week you have a written assignment due.  Five will be Case Study assignments where you attempt to handle several issues of a scenario given by me.  Four of these will be group assignments.  The remaining written assignments (called Discussion assignments) will be shorter and non-group work, and will be based on a question that I will post.

 

Case studies will be between 1.5 and 3.5 pages long.

 

Discussion assignments are to be 200 to 400 words and well thought making appropriate and specific reference to the reading material.

 

The guidelines for preparing your Case Study papers can be found here. Please note that I do not accept or grade late papers.

 

Exams and quizzes

There will be five (5) non-cumulative exams on material covered in lecture notes, text, and handouts.  These exams will be mostly multiple-choice and short answer questions based mostly from the book.  They should be straightforward questions not designed to trip anyone up logically.  

 

Quizzes will also be used to help keep you current.  Your score on these quizzes will be tracked, but not graded.  You will get credit for doing them, however, at 2 points each.

 

Extra Credit

There are 5 extra credit assignments due at various times in the quarter, worth various points. Please see this page for their due dates and point possibilities.

 

Websites

You may wish to visit the text’s website (6th edition) or (7th edition) for tutorials and discussion questions/answers and links to related sites of interest.  You should also visit my Web-log (Blog) at http://www.developmentalpsych.blogspot.com for links related to this course as well.

 

Grades:

Final grades will be based on exams, weekly discussions, the written assignments, the quizzes, and any extra credit.  Each exam will be worth 100 points, the case studies worth 20, the discussions will be worth 10 points, and you will earn 2 points for completing a vocabulary quiz, regardless of that quiz score.   Therefore, the total points for the course will be around 692. This number will depend on how many discussion questions we get through.

 

Grades for the course will be assigned on a decimal grading scale. The scale is based upon a total of (about) 692 possible points to be earned in the class:

 

Grade  

 Decimal

%

Grade

Decimal

%

Grade      

Decimal

%

A

4.0

95%

B-

2.8

83%

C-

1.6

67%

A

3.9

94%

B-

2.7

82%

C-

1.5

66%

A

3.8

93%

B-

2.6

81%

D+

1.4

65%

A-

3.7

92%

B-

2.5

80%

D+

1.3

64%

A-

3.6

91%

C+

2.4

79%

D+

1.2

63%

A-

3.5

90%

C+

2.3

78%

D

1.1

62%

B+

3.4

89%

C+

2.2

77%

D

1.0

61%

B+

3.3

88%

C

2.1

75%

D

0.9

60%

B+

3.2

87%

C

2.0

73%

D-

0.8

59%

B

3.1

86%

C

1.9

71%

D-

0.7

58%

B

3.0

85%

C-

1.8

69%

F*

0.6

57%

B

2.9

84%

C-

1.7

68%

 

 

 

 

* Grades below 0.7 do not satisfy the minimum requirement for course credit.

 

Attendance:

Although you will be participating remotely, I expect that you be in contact with the course and the other participants weekly.  You will have your own schedules to keep and priorities to organize, but with any course it’s easy to get behind, and some of the assignments require group participation.

 

Academic Honesty:

Cases of cheating, plagiarism or other types of academic dishonesty are unacceptable in this course and are subject to disciplinary action.  Plagiarism is submitting a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work, or taking someone's words or ideas and using them as if they were your own without giving due credit.  Students may feel very threatened by writing a “perfect” written assignment and feel compelled to cheat by having others give significant help.  If you are concerned about your writing ability, there are several options for you.  You can see me outside of class where I can help, or even better would be to make an appointment in the Loft, which is a writing center located in the Library.  The Loft has trained professionals to help.

 

Accessibility:

If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a disability, or if you have emergency medical information to share with me, please provide me with the Letter of Accommodation you have received from the Office of Retention & Student Success Services.

 

Extra-Credit and their due dates

 

Folk Wisdom and Pregnancy ……………………………………... Saturday, 10pm, Sept 27 (5 points)
Toys for tots …………………………………………………….... Saturday, 10pm, Oct 11 (5 points)
Songs of adolescence and adolescent identity statuses.……………... Saturday, 10pm, Oct 25th (5 points)
Research article related to human development …………………….
Article must be approved by ……………………………………..... Saturday, 10pm, Nov 8th
Article must be submitted by ………………………………………. Saturday, 10pm, Nov 21 (25 points)
Media images of aging …………………………………………..… Saturday, 10pm, Nov 29 (10 points)

 

 

Online Course Guidelines:
Working online has its benefits, but there are some drawbacks. The first is that everything must be read. Instructions, assignments, and all correspondence. If you struggle with the written word, online courses may be difficult. You can't simply get a quick verbal clarification, either. If you work at 2am and you can't follow the instructions, you are going to have to wait a long time to get clarification. So, the following guidelines should make the online course experience better:

1. Read the instructions. If they are unclear, read them one more time. If they still seem confusing, ask a question of the class--either myself or another student may be able to explain. If it's a really unclear instruction, I'll probably re-write it.

2. Plagiarism is cheating, and I keep an eye out for it. With Wikipedia and other online sources, it's very easy to get sucked into copying and pasting text. Here is how to avoid plagiarism:

Instead of copying other people's work, use your own words, cite personal
examples that demonstrate the principle or point you are trying to make, and if (and only if) that is insufficient to make your point, either provide direct quotes or summaries of direct quotes with giving proper credit to the source. This usually includes providing a reference so that the reader can find the source his or herself.

From the course Syllabus: "... Plagiarism is submitting a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else
and presented as being your own work, or taking someone's words or ideas and using them as if they were your own without giving due credit. ..."

3. Discussion Guidelines: Understand and practice Miller's law.

Miller's Law comes in two parts:
"To understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true."

The second:
". . . try to imagine what [that truth] could be true of."

The first part gets you to listen to (or in our case read) what is being said. Most people don't listen as well as they could. They instead wait to pounce during a pause in speech and say what is on their minds instead of relating to what was just said. Assume (don't accept) what they say as truth, and you will naturally begin to really listen. This takes practice, but many arguments have been avoided by following this simple rule..

The 2nd part of Miller's law helps you understand what people are saying. In other words, think about the consequences of the the listener's 'truth.' Questions will naturally arise which will create more interesting and fruitful dialogue.

Regardless if the speaker seems wrong, "really listen to him, without judgment, and try to figure out how he could think that way," says George A. Miller, Princeton's James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, Emeritus.

4. Writing Guidelines: Generally I believe less is more. More enjoyable to read, and more likely to improve your thinking and writing.

5. When sending an email or posting a message, please use informative subject lines. It is easy to forget to update or change subject lines, but doing so does several things. For one, it provides context to the reader. For two, it helps searching for messages. For three, it makes it easier to organize the discussion threads.

6. Be sure that when you reply to an email or a message post that you include the material of that post. Most email programs, by default, include quoted material. WEBCT does NOT. It's a hassle, but it can be avoided easiy by hitting the 'quote' button when responding to messages.

7. Most correspondence ought to occur through webct. There may be a power outage at school which shuts down the webct server, but otherwise we should keep correspondence through webct.

8. Don't use attachments. Copy and paste your assignments into your message box. Attachments take up too much space and are cumbersome to use and grade. Of course, sometimes you won't have an option, for example, a PDF document that you want others to see.

 9. If you find a link that is "bad," let me know by actually copy the link and sending it to me. Otherwise, I have no idea where to begin looking.

10. You may not look at exams early.  When you ‘begin’ an exam, a timer starts and does not stop.  You must complete the exam in the allotted time, usually around 1.25 hours.  So, if you click on the exam on Tuesday to get a little ‘peek’ to study with the intention of taking the exam on Friday, you will get a zero for the exam.