Hello everyone, welcome to Psychology of Learning,
Psychology 390. My name is Steve Meier and I will be the instructor for this
class. First of all, I would like click on the home button if you have not
already done so. This first page is the home page. You will see a little
button right in the middle of the page. New students start here. What I’d
like you to do before you go any further is to click on this button and
answer the questions that are there. This questionnaire is designed
basically to provide us with information regarding the technology that you
have in your facility. Rest assured you will not be sent spam or other types
of miscellaneous stuff out there.
Once you’ve completed that, come back to this page.
Now that you are back at this page, what I’d like you to do is look at the
buttons that are on the left hand side of the page. The first button you see
is the home page. That’s the one where you have the new students start here
button. There are also several other buttons there, one is related to the
syllabus which we’ll talk about in a few minutes, a schedule button and some
contact sites, and help. Finally there’s a couple of other buttons that you
can click e on. One is the Department of Psychology where the PSI symbol is.
If you click on that button, you will go to the Department of Psychology web
site. The other is the little star and circle where it says University of
Idaho up in the upper part of the left hand page. When you click on that,
that will take you to the University of Idaho’s home page and there you can
find a variety of other things there as well.
So let’s begin by discussing a couple of aspects within
this site and let’s start with the syllabus. As you can see, my office is in
Student Health 211, and office phone number is there. You can always call me
through the 800 number and hit the extension 7679. That of course is toll
free. My office also has a fax, and as you can see, I have an email address
at
smeier@uidaho.edu.
The learning course is basically designed to provide you
with an overview of different types of learning theories and I picked a
historical approach to this course. It also is designed to help you
understand the basic concepts that are related to classical, instrumental,
operant, and cognitive learning. You will see there’s a lot of overlap that
goes between the different concepts. Further, many concepts within these
fields basically repeat themselves. The course is designed to provide you
with an overview of the different learning theories with an emphasis on the
classical, operant and cognitive approaches. I also will provide you some
information from other areas as well.
Finally another objective is to help you do some research
and to increase your writing proficiency. Within the syllabus, you will see
the required textbook which is by Kline, Learning Principles and
Applications; and a second book is called Sniffy, The Virtual Rat. In the
schedule you will see there are different types of materials you will need
to accomplish and we will talk about those in a little bit. There is a
variety of optional learning texts as well, one is by Malone which kind of
takes a historical approach as well. All texts can be obtained from the
University of Idaho Bookstore and the information for doing that is listed
there.
Now most of you are wondering well how, what am I looking
for in grading requirements. What you will see first of all are exams. There
are three exams in the course. All exams will be open book, open note, and
open person. That is you can use any information you can help yourself. I
don’t care how you learn the information, but the key is if you work in
teams or whatever, the write-ups must be your own. You can work together to
gather information, but you must write your own papers and your own exams.
Each exam is worth 100 points.
A second major requirement will be a term paper on any
learning topic of your choice. You must use at least 10 references from
journals, books or articles. Popular press such as Time Magazine, Scientific
America, newspapers, etc., and non-governmental web sites do not count
toward your total. So you must have a minimum of 10. You can only also use a
maximum of 4 web sites in your count when you’re doing the paper.
And finally you will be required to complete a series of
exercises in the book called Sniffy The Virtual Rat. Sniffy is a computer
generated rat. What you will do is go through chapters one through seven and
complete the exercises in Sniffy. Sniffy is also worth 100 points.
So, these are the requirements for the class. Now once
I’ve talked to you about the requirements, what about grading Grading is
straightforward. I use a 90, 80, 70, 60 schedule.
Now that we’ve talked about the syllabus, let’s click on
the next button called the schedule. When you get on the schedule, you will
see that there are a variety of different lessons. And, in fact, there are
basically five different lesson areas. Within each lesson there are a
variety of different things that you will need to do, so let’s click on
lesson one, the overview of history and learning. Basically in each lesson
there is an overview of the different chapters and materials. You will also
see on the right hand side the to-do list. There you will see the chapters
that you will need to read for this particular lesson. Within that, you can
see that there are some important terms and what you should be able to do.
Now the most important part is on the right. These are the
lectures that go along with the particular lesson. You will see two things,
the first is an audio button which is what you’re viewing and listening to
now. The other thing will be a series of PowerPoint slides. The PowerPoint
slides is a lecture that I give for the particular aspect. So, for example,
if you click on the first set of PowerPoint slides, it provides you with an
overview of learning. You will have an initial page, and then a variety of
different things. My suggestion is that you print off the PowerPoint slides.
Once you have done that, listen to the audio lecture that goes with them.
That way you can use the PowerPoint slides as notes to help you as you go
through the material. Each audio goes through that. Now there will also be
in the future some other things that go with these things, but we will talk
about those at a later time.
You will see in this module, in lesson one that there are
five topics. You will need to know and go through each of those different
lectures. So, for lesson one, there are five lectures that go with that
section. Each lecture is of various lengths. Some are relatively short,
others are longer. So now that we’ve kind of looked at our first lesson,
let’s go back to the schedule again. You will see that there’s a variety of
different lessons. For the first two lessons, lesson one covers an overview
of history and learning, and then the second one covers classical
conditioning. Then you need to take exam one. Exam one will only cover
lessons one and two. Once completed, you need to then complete lesson three
which relates to instrumental conditioning and lesson four which is on
operant conditioning. Then complete exam two. Then finally finish lesson
five and then take exam three.
Make sure that you don’t put all of this stuff off until
the last minute. The information is thorough and since everything is open
book, open notes, I will be relatively picky when I am grading the exam
questions. Being thorough is very, very important and being complete is
important as well.
The last thing, button here that you can do is click on is
the contact button. The contact button, again, provides a little bit of an
overview of who I am and it also provides how to get to my office.
And finally there’s a variety of different help that you
can get when you are having problems. One place to get help is from the Help
Desk at the University of Idaho. Their number is 208 885-2725. The other
places that you can get help is CTI at 885-2121. Of course you can contact
myself. If you are having computer problems, you will need to contact the
Help Desk for them to help you.
So, this is the overview of Psychology of Learning. What
we will begin talking about in the next section, is an overview of history
and learning.
Now there’s one final thing that I have not discussed yet
so far in detail and that is Sniffy, The Virtual Rat. Sniffy is a computer
generated rat that does a variety of different exercises. Sniffy is placed
between each lesson that is appropriate. For example, lesson one for Sniffy
might fall after lesson one, an overview of history and learning, and on and
on. So, these will be placed appropriately where you should be taking them
and using them within the class.
So, I hope you have yourself a good class here. If you
have questions or comments, problems or whatever, please contact me. You
have my numbers and I will look forward to talking with you. Have yourself a
wonderful day, and we will talk to you soon.
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