Welcome to the world of psychology! We hope you learn much useful information over the next two terms. The field of psychology is relatively young, compared to other sciences, such as physics and biology. As you’ll discover, the official beginning of psychology as a science did not occur until the late 1800s. Even so, the popularity of psychology as a career path, in various forms, has increased astronomically, since then. As an illustration of psychology’s popularity, departments of psychology frequently host more faculty members than any other department on university campuses. Moreover, vastly more students enrol in Introduction to Psychology classes than almost any other introductory course. In other words, your decision to register in this Introduction to Psychology course is part of a broader trend that has increasingly placed the science of psychology as among the most popular disciplines offered by institutions of higher education. We are very glad to welcome you to PSYC 1200 and hope that you find the topics interesting and informative. We will be discussing issues related to human thought and behaviour. Your best strategy for effectively learning the content of this course is to turn the material that we discuss, as much as possible, into developing a better understanding of yourself and other people that you know. That strategy should definitely help you perform well on examinations and the other components of the course and, more importantly, the knowledge that you accumulate in this course may also help you perform better in life.
With this post, we'd like to introduce you to some novel aspects of our course. Your course's design is often called "blended" because some of the learning occurs in class, but most of the information that you must learn to succeed on exams will be delivered through web-based resources. Although you will have one class per week as you proceed through our course, the lecture material that many exam questions will be based on must be accessed online through our course's Desire2Learn web pages. That is where you will access video recordings of lecture slides overlaid with our voices discussing the essential concepts that you will need to master to do well in PSYC 1200.
You'll hear us on your lecture recordings, but your in-class activities will be led by a knowledgeable and helpful Section Instructor. These classes are not meant to provide you with detailed instruction on the information and concepts that you will find in the online lectures and in the textbook. Instead, they are an opportunity for you to ask questions and for your Section Instructor to demonstrate some important concepts in a way that puts them into a broader context. Since classes are less often for this course, we have designed the classes so that there is plenty of time for students to have their questions answered by a live person. That means the material that they want to cover may not fill a full 50-minute timeslot. You will get the most out of these classes if you listen to the relevant online lectures and read the relevant textbook chapters ahead of time. Then, you can identify details that you find confusing or unclear ahead of time. That would allow you to ask your Section Instructor for explanations and clarifications during the class time.
THE CLASSES ARE ALSO VERY IMPORTANT BECAUSE THAT IS WHERE YOUR EXAMS WILL TAKE
PLACE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR
*It should be noted that Tuesday sections are scheduled in 75 minute timeslots, but the classes are designed to fill only a 50-minute timeslot, including some time set aside for students to ask their questions. We designed classes this way to ensure that the content presented in Tuesday sections match the content provided to students registered in Wednesday sections of the course. That means, Tuesday classes will usually be shorter than the official amount of time assigned to those classes, by about 25 minutes.
The university just happens to schedule Tuesday classes in 75-minute timeslots, because almost all other classes occur either twice per week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or three times per week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So, those classes would either have two 75-minute timeslots or three 50-minute timeslots, which all works out just perfectly for those courses. It doesn't work that way for our course, since we only have one scheduled class per week.)
Don't worry, we aren't getting away with anything. The lead instructor's absence from your class is simply the role that has been assigned to them by our Department. This year, Dr. Launa Leboe-McGowan will be responsible for coordinating 10 sections of PSYC 1200, consisting of more than 2,500 students. That means you must rely primarily on your very competent Section Instructor to respond to your questions about the course material, as well as about exams and assignments. There are simply too many students for one person to serve as your main contact regarding information about the course. If problems arise, Dr. Leboe-McGowan is in regular contact with Section Instructors. She will be able to ensure things go smoothly by working closely with them, but please do not seek her out as your main source of information about PSYC 1200. Details about your Section Instructors contact information and when and where you can meet with them can be found in the course syllabus. It is essential that you get a syllabus for our course as early in the term as possible and that you read it very carefully. Nearly all of the information that you need to complete PSYC 1200 successfully will be in there.
Please do not take Dr. Leboe-McGowan's absence as a live instructor for your Section of PSYC 1200 personally. Us professors do very much enjoy lecturing in a live format and find it very rewarding to interact with students, like yourself. The thing is that the role of overseeing PSYC 1200 requires presenting the course content electronically. At the moment, doing things this way is our only option. Otherwise, we would not be able to accommodate the large number of students that either want or need to complete PSYC 1200. In other words, absence of the lead instructor from your class is not a sign of laziness. Supervising a course that serves hundreds upon hundreds of students, each year, is quite challenging and time-consuming. It is simply the role of the instructor of this course is to act as coordinator of the 10 sections and to leave the classroom activities in the hands of our very competent Section Instructors. Since they are responsible only for a much smaller number of PSYC 1200 students, they are in the best position to provide you with the information that you need.
We hope you get useful information out of this class and wish you all the best in your studies this year!
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