This will be the last course blog assignment. Starting next week, you'll be posting comments to one another's individual blogs, but there won't be a common assignment for the entire group.
So let's do a little looking back as well as some looking forward.
Blog Assignment 7 | Due Wednesday May 19 | 3:00 pm
GOALS: 1) Reflecting on your learning, 2) Offering advice to future students
What's been your favorite assignment from another course you've taken? Give the course name and briefly describe the assignment. What made it a good assignment, and what did you learn from doing it?
What advice would you give future students for the first half of this course?
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ReplyDeletePSYC 340 Psychology of Gender: Writing a short essay in which students try to connect readings for the next week to the past readings. It is a good practice in writing and a good way to remember the class contents.
PSYC 230 Psychology of Religion: Replying to others’ comments on the discussion board on Angel. I can remember classmates’ names easily and people can equally speak up.
2)I would recommend future students in this class to try to speak up early in the course so that people will notice them easily; once people notice you speak up, I think they would even notice your saddle hand movements when they or the instructor look around somebody who may speak up. I don’t know how to explain… But I think speaking up in the beginning of the course will make the rest of your participation in the course easier.
1) History 121; Writing an essay connecting the novel Damien with the history surrounding World War I. I enjoyed it not only because it was literary analysis but because it was so multi-faceted. All of the prompts in this class, especially this one, excelled at being both directive and open to interpretation.
ReplyDelete2) For students taking this class in the future, I would recommend keeping notes of the reasoning errors both as we go over them in class and on one's own time. It really helps separate them and makes them easier to refer to later in the few assignments related.
1) English 120 with Dr. Aguirre: During the class times when we were reading American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, he had us watch this film on how women are portrayed in the media and advertisements. I really enjoyed the film and what Jean Kilbourne has to say about how pop culture has perfected the idea of what a woman should be. As my assignment, I had to look through various magazines and tear out any advertisements that portrayed women in a derogatory way. I was really surprised at how many I found in just one magazine.
ReplyDelete2) My advice for students taking this course in the future is to keep up with the reading as well as taking not on each reasoning error like Emily said. That has been probably th biggest difficulty I have had in this course.
1) My favorite assignment from another course was in my Psychology 120, Intro to Psychology class. In this class, we would find a journal article weekly and analyze it from a psychologist's perspective. There was much room for creativity and expression in this assignment. I learned to focus my ideas and find articles that were relevant to real life.
ReplyDeleteMy advice for students taking this course is to keep organized. It is important to write down everything that may be of importance, to keep an agenda of assignments, and to even color coordinate your notes. These strategies have made my class experience so much easier.
My favourite assignment from another course was in my Psychology 322. Growth and Development. In this class, it required us to do a project like designing a game, or writng a book for children and the parents about how to grow in better way. I designed a game for kids to reinforce their memory. It was really interesting.
ReplyDeleteMy advice for future students is reading on time because readings are really helpful to the projects and the assignments. Moreover, group dicussion is really helpful to make every single of us get involved into this class. :)
* The assignment I did in Psych322 do really help me to know more about the efficient way to raise the kids. This projects also required researches, so we can also know different aspects through the researches such as the different ways to make memory better.
ReplyDeleteThis assignment required creativity. It seemed to have much more fun, and also you can really have try your own game once you are done with your project.
My favorite assignment from another course was in 352 Health Care Ethics. We had to write paper about what the most important qualification was for moral status. This was a good assignment because it made me really think. I thought it would be easy when choosing the human property, but actually found it a little difficult to argue that the human species should be valued over others. I learned new ways to view situations n the health system regarding life support and determining if a person with brain damage is still considered to have a higher quality of life than something of non-human species.
ReplyDeleteMy advice to future students for this class would be to keep up with the reading. Not only because it helps a lot to know what is going on in class, but also because the myths are interesting and it’s an easy read.
My favorite assignment was in my Psych 322 class Growth and Development. It was a daily journal that we had to complete in class and a few times out of class. I really liked it because it helped me reflect a lot on my life and it relaxed me. It was really interesting because we were able to share about what we wrote in class when it related, and many people had interesting things to say. I liked this assignment because it was stress free and and I got a lot out of it.
ReplyDeleteMy advice to people who take this class in the future is to make sure they keep up with readings so that you can participate in class, because participation is an important component of this class apparently.
HJ
In my Theology: God In Human Experience class I recall working on a reflection essay about an event I attended on the social injustices inflicted upon impoverished Chiapas in Mexico. I poured my heart and soul into this paper. It wasn't terribly long - less than 10 pages, but I genuinely labored over that paper.
ReplyDeleteTen days later I was handed my paper back and my teacher had given me a D on it. To say the least, I was quite confused so I went to her later that day in her office looking to find out where I had gone so wrong. Her reasons were hurtful, harsh, unreasonable, unwarranted, and not at all constructive. I begged for a chance to redeem my grade by rewriting the paper and she finally, begrudgingly, accepted but on different grounds. I was to analyze my own paper, determine where and why in the paper I had gone wrong, and, if I was able, criticize her grading and prove my claims that I had been graded unfairly.
After the first paper that I received a D on, my grade in the class had fallen to a C+.
After my re-write I had an A- in the class, but she certainly never spoke to me again. I can only assume she feared for her job after my flaming criticism of her bigoted grading techniques that I angrily laid out in my re-write.
And so my favorite assignment was one in which I had to stand my grounds, support my opinion, and defend my academic career - the ideal assignment indeed!
For advice to students incoming to this class, I would suggest challenging everything the teacher says that doesn't fit right with you, or feels in some way intuitively troublesome - for you will learn so much more (and apparently the professor likes objections), respectfully speak up in class as much as possible while generally adhering to a directional objective, commit yourself to following the readings - they will prove worthwhile, and actively apply what you learn in class to your observations outside of class for this will result in a more complete learning process for you.
P.S. I apologize in advance for making your life more difficult, Dr. Huston!
1) PSYC322 - Action Learning Project; We had a service learning requirement and then had to create something that would specifically address the needs of the community from where we were placed. I enjoyed this project because it allowed me to apply the things I learned about development to the community. It allowed me to be creative and make something that could possibly be used with the kindergarten students I tutored. I made a pokemon reading board game that addressed the emerging literacy skills of bilingual students I tutored at Thurgood Marshall Elementary. All of my students basically had never experienced the American school education prior to the class so they missed the foundational emergent literacy skills (phonics, letter recognition, sounds). I created flashcards for the game board, with different pokemon tokens you can catch and gyms you could go to, etc. The tutor could customize the game (rhyme type and missing sounds) depending on the level of the student, and also add more rewards later. I found that tutoring individual kindergarteners was really fun but it was especially rewarding to create a motivational learning game inspired by their love of Pokemon memory games we played on breaks.
ReplyDelete2) Similar to the PSYC322, I would recommend future students to interact with the material in some way. What I mean is: find ways to apply the reasoning errors to your life, similar to what Rob was saying. In this way, you can come up with more concrete examples of how you've witnessed and committed reasoning errors so that you can understand the concepts better. Like Kaitlin and Emily said, the reasoning errors really need to be consistently studied and understood. Applying the reasoning errors to your own life would be helpful or developing a study strategy that works for you such as using flashcards, making maps, talking with friends, etc. With participation, I agree with Junichi by starting earlier in the quarter but also to not be discouraged along the way if you did not begin early. Everyone has their own pace and personal goals to reach, so hopefully, be mindful about your own personal participation goals and recognize strengths and areas for improvement early on to keep motivated.
1) French 135- we were regularly required to fill out worksheets that involved Q&A or self-description and were then required to move around the class conversing to different people to practice our french. I really enjoyed this exercise because it was a great way to get to know the others in the class very easily. A periodic ice-breaker.
ReplyDelete2) I would recommend that future students of PSYC 293, or any other discussion based course, try to get to know their peers within the classroom. This not only makes it easier for each individual to speak up without feeling embarrassed or shy but will also make it easier for others in the class to understand the individual's comments/speaking style (i.e. 'thinking out loud,' 'playing devil's advocate,' etc.)
1 My favorite assignment was from English 120 with Dr. Tadie. We had to take a story that we read for class, use the same background information of the characters and create a new scenario to put them in. It was a good assignment because it challenged me to think beyond my limitations, while also helping me to create a well written and worth reading story. From the assignment I learned how to accurate analyze characters in the story while also being able to modify the character in my own story I had to write.
ReplyDelete1. Read and take notes, especially when reading Gilovich. By reading and taking notes, it helped me to better understand the literature and the reasoning errors a little better. It also helps if you want to participate in class; you have information written from the readings as well as your own thoughts written down in your notes.
My favorite assignment so far this year was from my class on ancient literature. Dr. Tadie asked us to take one or two of the poems we had read and update it into a modern context. I enjoyed it because it forced me to take a closer look at what Catullus, one of the poets we studied, was really saying in a fun and interactive way.
ReplyDeleteMy advice to anybody taking this class is to keep up with the readings and participate in class discussions. It may sound simplistic, but as long as you do both these things, it is easy to know exactly where you stand with the material.
My favorite assignment was my final project for my english 110 class with Professor Tracy. The final project was to tackle a local political issue, and have a plan on how to go about doing it. People's projects ranged from problems with the homeless, to state budgets, to local issues on campus. I just thought it was really interesting to actually get off campus and see your work in the real word.
ReplyDelete2. Pay attention and take notes. The rest of the class will be much easier if you can master the first half
1a. History 121 with Dr. Adejumobi: He’s expertise is in Black Diaspora. The assignment I enjoyed most was the final essay we had to summit. He allowed the subject to be of our choice and he was very helpful throughout the quarter presented us with the history of the Black Diaspora through books, article, music, movies, and even youtube clips.
ReplyDeleteb. For future students especially the ones who like history, I recommend not to miss a single class because since this topic is not a prominent one at SU you might not be given the opportunity to learn this information again unless you do personal research.
2a. I have no idea of what the course number is for this second course I will
recommend; all I know is that it was a website designing class which main focus
was on the users. This class taught me how to create a good-user friendly website.
This class also provided me with service learning credit – we were assigned to create website for two non-profit organizations that didn’t have one.The class was split in half. To further understand our clients needs we got to visit the organizations.
b. For future students, I would recommend taking this class. What it teaches is
a very important topic that all students need to know in this highly technological-
internet based competitive country. Plus, you can also fulfill your service-learning requirement we all have to do to graduate.
3. For the first half of this course, I recommend students especially the quiet ones to interact in the discussion. They will help you for future classes. Also, make sure to understand the reasoning errors because they will come up again.
my favorite assignment has a little explaining to do. First it took place in europe in the summer for UCLA. Basically we travelled europe for a month learning the intricacies of political science system in various European countries. The assignment itself was a 10 page paper reflecting about the one month travel under a perspective in which we analyzed different countries government operations. Unlike the mundane assignments typical of most classes aka busy work homework, this assignment engaged my entire life, it allowed me to retrospectively look back upon my experiences and to really get a feel of my chosen subject rather than just dicate to one facet.
ReplyDeleteThe course name was "Political Science" abroad hosted by UCLA
As for future advice upon this course, I would recommend planning this class work out far in advance from it's due date. I failed to organize prior to the commencement of this course and suffered the consequences of turning in late assignments. DO NOT PROCRASTINATE. I really believe that even semi trying yet completing and assignment is more important than striving for perfection and failing to meet the deadline.
Good luck