Good morning/afternoon/whatever everyone,
Perhaps it is just me but this whole thing is new to me and somewhat frustrating, but at the same time interesting. At first it seems to be coercion into structured social interaction that some people might just not want to engage in for personal reasons (But you can see the advantage to the Psych Society for example). Putting aside the obvious anonymity of the internet and the confidence that tends to give people, shyness or reservation of comment should in my view not have a 25% impact in our academic pursuit. As morally ambiguous as this may be I do appreciate the usefulness of encouraging a "learning space", as it was put in the first lecture, that demonstrates and forces students into social observation/interaction. If we are studying the premises that all human behaviour can be seen in a social context then creating one obviously helps.
Another point would be – how does encouraging students to view each others drafts of essays and exchanging ideas sit with the universities plagiarism policy? Especially for the first Blog in which we are all drawing from the same pool of questions. I found it interesting the comment about referencing each other’s Blogs! What a concept. Worth discussion? Perhaps. And here we are in the perfect "space" to do so.
That all being said, I say hip hip hooray to anything that allows me to criticise the unit and get credit for it, in such a simple and direct way. So bring on the posts, bring on the discussion. I intend to have my Social Psychology say. ;) Student driven education... what an interesting thought I guess we’ll see if it works.
TTFN
-*-WP-*-
P.S. I am assuming that this is what we are supposed to use this space for, at least until we get into full essay mode and I am planning to raise questions about some general psychology issues I would love to hear other students opinions on. Cheers,
WP.
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6 comments:
Wow! Post of the day - and you're off to a great start, embracing this (somewhat coerced) foray into online collaborative learning.
It's very helpful for me as the convener to read this and get your initial reactions - and most encouraging to see you embracing the possibilities with an open, critical, curious mind.
You also start raising some of the issues we will run into, e.g,. plagiarism. Just to clarify re the comment about plagiarism - the bottom line is that there no problem with making appropropriate use of another's work, as long as it is acknowledged as such.
And your blog looks nicely set up. Woo-hoo!
BTW - you might enjoy this blog posting from a student at another uni: 5 O'clock Charlie
O good, glad to see this is the idea. :)
So whats the go here, do we get course credit for writing on this discussion board? Is it graded for quality? Or is it just some sort of reward for participating?
Hey Mike,
From what I could gather from the first lecture it is not marked on quality, but instead on both quantity and relevance (e.g. saying hi to everyone doesn't count). Its 25% of both essay marks, the criteria being "online participation". So I am guessing that discussion outside of the essay topics but still relevant to social psych adds to our marks for the closest essay. But even if that is not the case I am sure we will all do better if we have some broader discussions. Any comments anyone?
Hope that helps,
-*-WP-*-.
WP's description is spot on for online engagement.
Please also see the Online Engagement Guidelines
WP - congrats - your blog has been highlighted as "highly active" on the List of all blogs
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