The following sections describe activities and assignments for the course. They include Discussions, Exams, Practice Quizzes, Quizzes For Grade, PowerPoint Activities, Research Reports, and a comment about the Activities Book. Be sure to read and understand all of them.

Discussions

• This course requires ten to fifteen Discussions of topics selected by the Instructor and graded for participation. Each requires at least 100 words. One will be due per week or per Unit as assigned. See the Calendar for due dates. (Summer sessions have more than one per week.) You are expected to contribute significantly in these discussions. Never start a new discussion. Reply only to Mr. Payne's first post. Your responses must be at least 100 words long. The discussion is open for a week. Please do not sprint ahead and do them in bunches. Tie-ins with the text or Activities Book are expected. After each due date, the instructor will evaluate your participation on a scale from 0-10. Poor spelling, grammar and punctuation may affect your score. You must use the built in Spelling checker under the text box. Its icon looks like this:

• There are two ways to post your discussions. After logging in, look at the menus near the top of your screen. Click on either Lessons and then Message Boards or click on Communications. After arriving at the discussionn area, click on the scheduled module and then the discussion.

• Your computer may have a firewall for security or a block on pop-ups to cut down on advertisements. For example before or during a quiz, exam, or discussion, a little bar on the top of your screen pops up saying pop-up blocked. You must adjust your computer to allow pop-ups. This may require more attention and constant resetting if other people use your computer, like at work.

• Please remember your netiquette. Netiquette for discussion forums like ours are best described at this address: Netiquette. Grading may take a week or longer, especially at the start of the semester.

• The Cengage system runs on Eastern Time but we are on Pacific Time, a difference of three hours. When you post your discussions take quizzes or exams, you will see the Eastern Time and it may look like you are late. Just post before midnight, Tuesday, our time, and you will be fine.

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Exams

• This course has five exams but only your best four count. They cover anywhere from two to five text modules, the Activities Book and appropriate PowerPoint lectures. Access them through the Lessons area near the top of your screen. Observe the due and available dates on the Calendar because they may not be taken early or late. Make ups are not allowed unless there is a verifiable technical difficulty.

• Each exam is worth 100 points with 50 multiple-choice questions. Many won't have answers word for word in the textbook and require applying learned concepts to new situations. By their nature, Exams are open book but looking for answers to all questions takes a lot longer than the time limit. The limit is 60 minutes, including the submission process and starts as soon as you agree to take it. If you try looking everything up, you will run out of time and still not find direct answers to all questions.

• Cautions

• Before taking an exam or quiz, have only one Cengage screen on your desktop. Multiple screens might cause problems.

• Older versions of web browsers may have problems. Here is the recommended:

• Browser	Browser Configuration	Operating System	RAM
  Internet Explorer 7 or higher Firefox 3 or higher	Pop-Up Blocking disabled JavaScript Enabled AJAX Enabled	Windows XP Windows Vista Macintosh OS/X	At or above OS recommendations

• Cengage, your Internet provider and your browser may have time limits where you get kicked out after a certain amount of inactive time. Before taking an exam, it is best to log out and quit your browser, then restart your browser and log back into the class again for a fresh start. .

• Once in a while a quiz or exam may fail to submit properly. If this happens, email the instructor immediately so the date and time of day are recorded. A retake can be scheduled in these instances but the technical problem must be verifiable by the instructor. Your message must include your registered name and the specific quiz or exam number. You probably will not receive an immediate response unless your instructor is online at the same time. Most responses will come the next day. Always check your email no later than the next day.

• The fifth exam is the Final and is only optional if you took and are happy with the first four. In other words, only your four best scores count out of five. If you take the four midterm exams, you don't have to take the comprehensive final, (which covers the whole semester) unless you want to try beating one of your earlier scores. Taking Exam 5 cannot hurt your grade. It may or may not help it but cannot hurt. In any case, only the four best of the five tests shall count toward your grade.

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Practice Quizzes:

• All textbook modules have practice quizzes located in the Lessons area under both Quizzes and Exams and Course Documents. Their questions pertain to the Plotnik text only. These are just for practice and do not count for grade. Please do not send your scores to me.

• Take your time and repeat them as many times as you like.

Quizzes For Grade

• Each Module has a real quiz that counts for your grade. You may only take it once and you have 10 minutes to finish. Time starts as soon as you agree to take it. Always submit quizzes and exams well before the time limit, not after.

• There is one graded quiz per week or one per Unit as assigned. (There are several per week for summer sessions.) Each is worth 20 points. They are not easy and studying the textbook early in the week is strongly suggested. Also there are great study aide in the Course Documents area under each module number. There is no makeup if you miss the deadlines.

• The same cautions apply with these quizzes as for exams discussed above.

• Access quizzes through the Lessons tab at the top of your screen.

• Please remember that only one entry into a quiz is allowed.

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PowerPoint Activities

• What is PowerPoint? PowerPoint is a computer program that projects lecture information on a classroom's, or computer's screen, like a slide show.

• Where are they? Nearly every Module in this course is accompanied by at least one PowerPoint presentation. Access them through the Calendar tab at the top of your course screen. They are linked from the date boxes.

• How to do them: These presentations are lectures for which you record notes in your Activities Book. It is imperative that you complete this activity by viewing them and completing your notes as you watch.

• Take a look at your Activities Book, page 25. You will see a lecture outline for Introduction to Psychology. Notice the blanks in the outline. The PowerPoint presentation has a similar outline but with the blanks filled in. Your task in this activity is to view the PowerPoint presentation and fill in the blanks in your Activities Book. This is how your instructor conducts lectures on campus. Your work is not submitted or graded but there will be exam questions on these lectures.

• There are at least two problems with this.

• The PowerPoint presentation doesn't always have the same wording as the Activities Book. It is usually very close but sometimes blanks are switched. Occasionally, neither PowerPoint nor the Book has details that are filled in verbally in the classroom. These are almost always stories or classroom demonstrations illustrating a point.
• Some outlines correspond to films shown in class. It is not feasible to show lengthy films online so we will either skip those outlines altogether or use only a part of them. Pages or spaces we skip in the Activities Book will not be on quizzes or exams.

• Note: Many recent computers have Microsoft Office which has PowerPoint in it but if you do not already have it (or the free viewer) on your computer, then download the free viewer now from one of these two web sites:

• For Windows computers

• For Macintosh computers

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Research Reports

• What they are: Research Reports are summaries of articles or web sites reviewed by you. Four are required for this course. Three additional reports may be written for extra credit. Reports are due toward the semester's end but it's never too early to do them. Their due date is posted on the Calendar. All are worth ten points each for a total of 40 required and 30 extra credit. All summaries must be submitted through the Drop Box in one document. (See below for illustration.)

• The choice of web sites or articles to summarize is yours as long as they concern some aspect of Psychology directly and are academically sound. Please choose distinctly different topics.

• Reports from Wikipedia, news papers, blogs, social network sites, opinion pieces or similar sites are not acceptable. Articles or web sites must be academic and have more authority than personal opinion.

• Where to find sources: Generally, web sites or articles can be found two ways.

• You can use a search engine like Google. Just type in the topic of your interest like Schizophrenia or Attention Deficit Disorder for example. Other topics will come to mind as you progress through the class.

• Use Delta's Library. Go to Delta's Library web site. [You may need your student ID if doing this off campus.] Scroll to the bottom and click on GoText! > Choose Psychology on the left side and click your topic of interest from Assessment & Evaluation down to Social Psychology. Picking anything lower on the list may not be a suitable resource. You might try a shortcut by clicking this address.

• Occasionally, links go dead because sponsors no longer support them. Just pick another. In addition, the web sites may have a list of links pertinent to their topics. Feel free to explore and report on one or more of them if they meet the above requirements.

• Requirements. Articles must be full text, not just abstracts, and at least three pages long or 1000 words each, which ever is more.

• Read the article and write a 200+ word summary in your own words for each article.

• Reports from Wikipedia, news papers, blogs, social network sites, opinion pieces or similar sites are not acceptable. Articles or web sites must be academic and have more authority than personal opinion.

• Copying and pasting is plagerizing and will get zero points.

• Be sure to include all the bibliographic information like author, title, journal name, date of publication and URL address. That is the one that starts with http://www... and/or document number. There must be enough information so the reader can go to and see the site or document.

• Examples:

• Click Here for an Article Report example.

• Click Here for a Web Site Report example.

• A example of a web site is the Save the Gorilla Foundation. It is about Koko, the gorilla who communicates by sign language. There are stories and information but no long articles.
• Don't get fancy; just summarize in your own words what a site says. Your summary must be at least 200+ for each site you visit. Copying and pasting is plagerizing and will get zero points.
• Be sure to include the site address, i.e., the one that starts with http://www...

• How to submit reports: All reports must be in one submission to the Drop Box, located under the Lessons tab accross the top of the Course page, and sent from there.

• Post all, including extra credit reports, on one document. Click Here for an example.

• Reports must be in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx), text format, (.txt), or rich text format (.RTF). Do not submit a .wps file. Word Perfect is not compatible with my computer. Always use a spell checker before uploading to the Drop Box.

• Extra Credit. You may do up to three more summaries for extra credit. Include them with your required ones, i.e., on the same report document as seen above. They are worth as much as 10 points each. The topics are up to you but must be related directly to psychology. Use any web sites or articles you want as long as we have or will cover their topics as part of the course.

• Makeup work: There is no makeup if you miss this assignment's deadline. Since you have most of the semester to do it, the lowest score is not dropped. Missing the deadline, regardless of reason, means 0 points and will definitely hurt your grade.

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Activities Book

• You will quickly realize that this Activities book was designed for on-campus classes. There isn't enough time, at this point to completely customize it for this course, but it is still very useful. The most important content is the lecture outlines you complete with PowerPoint lectures. Some Exam questions come from your notes in the Activities Book. The three group activities at the back of the Book serve as examples in Module 2's PowerPoints and may appear on Exam 1 as questions.

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