PSYCHOLOGY 236 PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY ONLINE SUMMER, 2013

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1 PSYCHOLOGY 236 PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY ONLINE SUMMER, 2013 Semester: Summer Session One, May 13 th - June 27 th Section: 730 Location: Instructor: Jessica Wortman (wortmanj@msu.edu) Office Hours: Wednesday, 1:30-3:30, 244C Psychology Building Required Text: The Personality Puzzle, 5th Ed., by David C. Funder, published by Norton Note: This is NOT Pieces of the Personality Puzzle, which is a useful companion website to your textbook. This website features learning aids and exercises, practice quizzes, and activities relevant to each of the chapters in the text. It's a really good way to help you learn the material and to find out about the newest research on a particular area of interest: Problems with ANGEL? CALL MSU HELP LINE: or (517) ****Keep the ANGEL help numbers by your computer in case there is a problem.**** Course Purpose This online survey course is designed to introduce students to the field of personality psychology. Personality psychology is a broad area of research that addresses basic questions about why people differ from one another and why they exhibit their characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Students are expected to achieve a broad understanding of the important concepts of personality psychology, including basic questions about how personality can be studied, the basic units of personality that exist, and the processes by which personalities develop and affect behavior and outcomes. Throughout the course, we will try to make links between personality theories and other areas of psychology. Online Nature of the Course This course will be held entirely online through the ANGEL course management system here at MSU. There will be no face-to-face classes or tests. All assignments will be submitted via ANGEL and all exams will be administered via ANGEL. Since this course is completely online, you will need to make sure that you will have consistent access to the Internet throughout the course. Vacations don't fit in well with accelerated summer courses, face-to-face or online. Remember each week of an accelerated session is equivalent to two weeks of a regular semester! If your internet plans fall through during a vacation then you may miss turning in an assignment or taking a test. This course is NOT self-paced. There ARE due dates for various assignments. Other than the fact that this course is online, it is structured much like a face-to-face class. Study Abroad programs may or may not fit in with Summer Session courses depending on their departure dates. MSU has over 250 programs! The Study Abroad faculty cannot take responsibility for ensuring that students have reliable internet connections in order to take exams and finals for online classes. In addition, the timing of our final exam is NOT changed to accommodate various departure dates for Study Abroad. Study Abroad faculty members are unlikely to allow a change in your departure time to accommodate the final exam schedule established by the registrar's office. Whether Summer Session courses fit with a particular Study Abroad program depends on the timing of the program and the availability of high-speed internet at the program site. As with face-to-face classes, there will be no accommodations for exams or assignments due to conflicts with vacations and travel.

2 This course requires a high-speed internet connection. It also requires various software programs to see/hear all the course material. You need to be on a computer that allows downloads of free browser plug ins so that you can watch movies and listen to lectures. This means that many public library computers are not appropriate unless you have verified that they have the necessary software. In addition, you MUST use either Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer or higher in this course as these two browsers are the only browsers that are fully compatible with ANGEL. Google Chrome is not well supported by ANGEL, so I suggest you use Firefox. Any further questions regarding browser requirements can be directed to the MSU ANGEL help line. If there is a problem during a test or activity report it as soon as possible to the 24 hour MSU HELP LINE at or (517) They will log the problem and in turn, report it to us. These technical problems should be reported immediately (maximum within 6 hours). You may also report the problem to us (although we are not available 24/7 like the Help Line) If there is a system problem, hearing about what happens from more than one student helps them discover what has gone wrong. If it is just a problem with your computer then they can help troubleshoot that issue, too. If we find out a day or two later that there was a problem with a connection, then it is difficult to resolve the issue in regard to a particular exam or activity. ****Keep the ANGEL help numbers by your computer in case there is a problem. **** Learn how to clear the cache and cookies on your browser - that resolves many problems! During a test NEVER have ANGEL open in another browser - ANGEL may register you as "YOU" in one browser and as a "GUEST" in the other. This can cause significant problems for you. Questions? You may want to post a question in the Class Lounge because another student may see it and happen to know the answer (especially if it is 2:00 a.m.!) I will go into the Class Lounge now and then but if you want an answer from me then send an to "Faculty" from the ANGEL Communicate Tab. You will practice doing this in the "Day One Orientation". The Class Lounge is a place to let each other know interesting information that relates to Personality Psychology. For example, if you read something in the newspaper about the way personality influences outcomes, it is great to let other students know about it. If you want to know an answer that involves technical aspects of the course or you are concerned about your grade then contact me through an in ANGEL. When contacting me: CONTACT ME THROUGH ANGEL, NOT THROUGH MSU MAIL. Put PSY 236 in the Subject Line of your . Given the large number of s that I receive, this allows me to give my online students first priority. Of course, you will receive a quicker answer during online office hours (which are the same as in-person office hours listed at the top of this syllabus). Any concerns regarding the Angel system should be directed to the MSU Help-Line (517) or (24 hours, 7 days a week) Put these numbers in your cell phone and have them on a paper by your computer. If they are only in ANGEL and you can't get into ANGEL then you have a problem. Timeline for the Course The course begins on Monday, May 13th and ends on Thursday, June 27th. All summer session courses have their finals on the last day of class. Please make a note of this and plan for a day off work or other activities since the last day of class is a Thursday. MSU policy states: "No student should be required to take more than two examinations during any one day of the final examination period." In order to avoid this problem, the final is scheduled to begin on Wednesday night. MSU policy also states: "A student absent from a final examination without a satisfactory explanation will receive a grade of 0.0 on the numerical system, NC on the CR-NC system, or an N in the case of a course

3 authorized for grading on the P-N system. Students unable to take a final examination because of illness or other reason over which they have no control should notify the assistant deans of their colleges immediately." Exams and grading There will be four exams (each worth 100 points toward your total grade) spread throughout the seven weeks of the course. Each exam will be open for 24 hours starting at 6PM and closing at 6PM the following evening. The final exam will be no different from the other three exams, other than the day on which it occurs. It will not be cumulative, and will cover only the material from the last week of the course. EXAM TIMES ARE EASTERN DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME (East Lansing, MI time). BE SURE TO CONVERT TO YOUR TIME ZONE CORRECTLY! Each exam will be open book and consist of 45 questions. These questions will be multiple choice or other objective questions. These exams include all information covered in that part of the course: reading assignments from the textbook, lectures, reading assignments posted on ANGEL, videos, and so on. You will have 45 minutes to answer the 45 questions, so you must know the material very well even though it is open book. You may use your book but all work must be completed on your own. In addition, you must stay in the exam and not exit it at all. Do not go to folders in the course or different folders in ANGEL because that can cause technical problems. You can have notes from these other sites. During a test NEVER have ANGEL open in another browser - ANGEL may register you as "YOU" in one browser and as a "GUEST" in the other. This can cause significant problems for you. ANGEL will automatically time the exams. ANGEL will close you out after 45 minutes or at the end of the scheduled time for the exam, whichever comes first. Example: The exam ends Friday at 6 pm. You realize at 5:30 pm on Friday that you never took the exam. Unfortunately, to have the 45 minutes that are available for the exam you DO have to log in by 5:15 p.m. If you log in at 5:30 p.m. then you will have only 30 minutes to take the exam. ANGEL will close the exam at 6:00, even if you aren't done and even though you didn't get 45 minutes. Bottom line: the exam is over at 6 pm, regardless of when you logged on to take the exam. That's why it is important that you convert the time to your own time zone! Assessment Method for your Exams The exam method used in PSY 236 is one that enhances exam security during online testing. It is called "Single-question, no backtrack." In this type of exam only one question is delivered at a time. A student makes a decision about that question, answers the question and submits it. Then the next question is presented. It is not possible to go back to previous questions. This allows instructors to ask questions knowing that a question may give away the answer to a previous question. This method requires a different strategy for test taking. You may have learned to answer all the questions that you know and then go back to the others. This strategy is not possible in a single-question, no backtrack testing method. On the other hand, since this course uses open-book testing many students find that those questions about which they had doubts are the ones that they want to look up in the book. A quick look to refresh their memories and they can proceed with confidence. If single-question no backtrack (open book testing) sounds like a method with which you will be comfortable then this online PSY 236 class is probably a good fit for your assessment style.

4 Exam Review You will have the chance to review your answers to each exam to see what you got wrong. Review will start two days after each exam at 5 pm. Exam review will end three days later at 5pm. After that, you will no longer be able to review your answers. Makeup Exam Policy Because students are able to take exams at any time on the assigned day, make-up exams will not be given except under extreme circumstances. Make-up exams will be 45 min in length and entirely short answer essay format, and will be offered only to those who have a significant illness documented by a letter from a physician or those who have an extremely serious family problem (e.g., death of a family member) that precludes them from taking the exam on the scheduled day. This must be documented by faxing the appropriate documentation to to Ms. Wortman with the subject line "PSY 236 Missed Exam Documentation." If a makeup exam is permitted, it must be taken within three days after the close of the regularly scheduled exam. Therefore, documentation must be submitted within one day to allow enough time for the makeup exam to be prepared and scheduled. Students who miss an exam without satisfying these conditions will receive a grade of zero for that exam. Additional Assignments In addition to the exams (which will account for the bulk of your grade-100 points for each of the four exams), there are five other types of assignments in this class. First, before you do anything in this class, you should go through the Course Orientation and Student Contract assignment. This should be completed by Wednesday, May 15th, and it is worth 5 points towards your grade. Second, there are two short paper assignments that are worth 25 points each. These will usually require you to apply some principles to the class to phenomena that occur outside of the class. Third, you will have the opportunity to participate in course surveys. These will not be used for research purposes, rather they will be used as examples in lecture, to provide examples to you about research methods, or to provide information to the instructors on how the course is going. There will be four surveys throughout the course, and these will be worth 4 points each (for a total of 16 points). Fourth, this course has a research participation requirement. An important part of your education in psychology is to learn, first hand, how psychological research is carried out. In Psychology 236, this is accomplished through a research participation requirement. Students in Psychology 236 are required to participate in two and a half hours of research credit. The psychology subject pool allocates credits in half hour units. This means that you will need 5 half-hour credits to complete your research participation requirement. Each credit is worth 3 points towards your overall grade (for a maximum of 15 points). So completing your participation requirement is a very easy way to improve your grade in this course! By participating in research projects, you will provide an important service to psychologists who are trying to further knowledge in the field. As you read through your textbook, you may notice the names of some of the professors at Michigan State. In most cases, these professors' studies were carried out right here at MSU, using participants from classes like Psychology 236. So, at some point in the future, you may be able to point to a study that is being reported in a textbook or even in the news and say "I was a participant in that study, they're talking about me!" If you have any objections to participating in psychological research, alternative projects are available. These will involve reading and writing about published psychological studies. Details about these alternative projects will be posted on the course web site. An information sheet describing the psychology department participant pool is available on Angel. If you have any questions about the participant pool procedures, please contact the coordinator: Leslie Baldwin, 262 Psychology Building, lbaldwin@msu.edu. Please note that there will be a wide variety of "on-line" studies, so you can complete this research participation requirement, even if you are not physically on campus.

5 Finally, you can get "class participation" points by posting to your team discussion area. You can get points for posting or answering questions, by posting links to personality-related topics in the news, or by posting observations about how the ideas that we discuss in class apply to phenomena outside the class. If you post a question, it should be relatively detailed (about one paragraph), explaining why you are asking the question and how it is relevant to issues we discussed in class. Similarly, if you post to answer a question, it should be at least a paragraph in length. Finally, if you post a news item, you should explain how it is relevant to specific ideas that we discussed in class. Higher quality postings will get more points. You can get up to two points per week (higher quality posts get more points), for a total of 14 points. Grading scale In summary, your grades are based on the following assignments: Course Orientation (5 points) Exam 1 (100 points) Exam 2 (100 points) Exam 3 (100 points) Exam 4 (100 points) Paper 1 (25 points) Paper 2 (25 points) Course Surveys (16 points) Class Participation (14 points) Research Participation (15 points) The grading scale below is based on a maximum of 500 points. If you are.5 points away from the cutoff, your score will be rounded up, but no other adjustments will be made. The grading scale will be: Points Percent Grade % % % % % % % % 0 Study time estimate In general, the rule of thumb for college courses is to plan on spending 2-3 hours outside of class studying and working on assignments for every hour spent in class. Since this is an online course, we obviously do not meet in a classroom. However, it is reasonable for you to plan on spending between hours on coursework each week. As a summer course, we will follow a compressed schedule, making it all the more important that you stay on top of assignments-with two or more chapters covered per week, you can fall behind VERY quickly! Summer courses are intense but it is amazing what you are able to learn in a short period of time. Taking two online classes at the same time is basically equivalent to a full-time job! Students have done it successfully but it is an intense time commitment. By the way, the code word you will need to enter during your course orientation is correlation. Academic Integrity Every student is held responsible for knowing the academic integrity policy at MSU. The policy can be found at Here are some examples of academic dishonesty: Have another student provide academic assistance or coaching during an online quiz or test Have another person take a quiz or test for you Copy questions or answers from your online quiz or test and share them with another student Copy questions or answers from your online quiz or test and post them on a website for others to view

6 Get questions or answers from students who have already taken an exam or quiz you are scheduled to take Collaborate with other students on projects or assignments without your instructor's permission Information about cheating from the student's point of view can be found at: Unfortunately, as online courses have become more popular, online cheating has become more common. There are student-based websites that seem to foster and promote academic dishonesty. Please be advised that these sites are known to faculty members, who are updated on their contents on a regular basis by honest students and others concerned with academic integrity. You are not authorized to use the "all MSU" Web site or any other student-based website to complete any course work. Ignorance or misunderstanding of the honesty policy will not serve as an excuse for academic dishonesty. Scholastic dishonesty will be prosecuted to the fullest extent in this class. That means you get a 0.0 in the class and a letter is sent to the dean of your college and to the dean of the College of Social Sciences about the incident. ANGEL Tracking Please be aware that ANGEL tracks all student login information. For example, it tracks when you have logged into ANGEL and when you have logged out. It also tracks when you begin your exam is submitted. This is helpful for the instructors because it allows us to resolve issues if there is a problem with the ANGEL system in terms of logging on and/or gaining access to the various sections of the site. Tracking can also help us resolve disputes about exams and assignments, particularly those that are timed. ANGEL tracking also can reveal academic misconduct. Of course, professors cannot view the personal content of a student in the "My Content" area of ANGEL. Accommodations for Disabilities Students with disabilities should contact the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities to establish reasonable accommodations. For an appointment with a counselor, call ( (voice) or (517) (TTY). Visit the RCPD website at or send them an at rcpd@msu.edu

7 Schedule of lectures and exams This course is divided into four sections, each with an exam at the end. In ANGEL you will find a folder of PowerPoint presentations for each section. I list these below with one lecture per chapter, but I will break some of the longer chapters down into two or more lectures. You are encouraged to take breaks, complete assignments, or look up additional resources after viewing each PowerPoint presentation, rather than rushing through them all at once. The corresponding reading assignments from the textbook are listed in this schedule. Most exam questions will come directly from the lectures and corresponding text. However, some lectures also have supplemental materials; be sure to check ANGEL each week for folder with these materials. Sometimes these materials will be short news articles, and sometimes they will be short video clips. Either way, you should read or view them and expect to see a few questions based on these additional materials on the corresponding exam. Part 1, May 13-22: Research Methods and Basic Concepts Lecture 1. Introduction to personality psychology Chapter 1 Lecture 2. Sources of data Chapter 2 Lecture 3. Research methods Chapter 3 Lecture 4. The person-situation debate Chapter 4 Lecture 5. Personality testing and its consequences Chapter 5 Lecture 6. Personality judgments in everyday life Chapter 6 6 pm May 22-6 pm May 23 Exam 1 Part 2, May 23-30: Personality Traits and Biological Approaches 6 pm May 27 Paper 1 Due Lecture 7. Personality traits Chapter 7 Lecture 8. Anatomy and physiology of personality Chapter 8 Lecture 9. Behavioral genetics Chapter 9 6 pm May 30-6 pm May 31 Exam 2 Part 3, May 31- June 12: Psychoanalysis and Humanistic Theories Lecture 10. Basics of Psychoanalysis Chapter 10 Lecture 11. Defenses and slips Chapter 11 Lecture 12. Psychoanalysis after Freud Chapter 12 Lecture 13. Humanistic and positive psychology Chapter 13 Lecture 14. Cultural variation Chapter 14 6 pm June 12 6 pm June 13 Exam 3 Part 4, June 13-26: Behaviorism, Cognitive Approaches, and Disorders 6 pm June 17 Paper 2 Due Lecture 15. Behaviorism and Social Learning Chapter 15 Lecture 16. Perception, thought, motivation, and emotion Chapter 16 Lecture 17. The self Chapter 17 Lecture 18. Disorders of personality Chapter 18 Lecture 19. Wrap-up Chapter 19 6 pm June 26-6 pm June 27 Exam 4