Author Archives: Ian

Week 13 First Impression Prompts – Intelligence

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Here are the two prompts for this week. Regardless of which prompt you choose, please use the tag “Intelligence.” The first impression posts will be due by the beginning of class on Monday, 4/9. The refinement posts will be due at 5pm on Sunday, 4/15.

Option 1:

Many people consider intelligence to be largely determined by genetics, but there is substantial evidence that the environment and social processes play a large role as well. Since schools are a place where children try to determine how smart they really are, it is important for educators to understand the impacts of their subtle or not-so-subtle interactions with students. In your blog post, reflect on your interactions with educators throughout your school career, and discuss what changes to the school system could improve students’ performance in the classroom.

Option 2:

In 1998, the Governor of Georgia, Zell Miller, proposed spending $105,000 of the state’s budget to distribute a cassette or CD of classical music to the parents of each new child born in Georgia (see the NY Times article). Governor Miller was a staunch believer in the Mozart effect, a theory that listening to Mozart can increase intelligence. Discuss whether or not you think Governor Miller’s decision was a good one.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

Week 12 Blog Prompt – Motivation

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Here are the two prompts for this week. Regardless of which prompt you choose, please use the tag “Motivation.” The first impression posts will be due by the start of class on Wednesday, 4/4. The refinement posts will be due at noon on Tuesday, 4/10.

Option 1

America is currently facing an obesity epidemic that some experts have labeled the biggest public health threat we have today. We have all heard the recommendations to eat healthier and get regular exercise. Some people, however, are taking the message of healthy eating too far. A new mental health disorder called orthorexia nervosa has been proposed, in which eating healthy food becomes an obsession. One set of proposed criteria are available here. Look over the criteria and comment on whether or not you think this is a good way to define the boundary between eating healthy and having a mental disorder.

Option 2

Motivation is not a stable force, but often waxes and wanes. Throughout your time at Elizabethtown College, your motivation for school will undoubtedly be higher at some times and lower at others. I want you to discuss why you chose to come to Elizabethtown College originally and what you do to motivate yourself to do well in your classes currently. I also want you to plan an intervention for yourself for how you can maintain motivation to succeed until graduation.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

Johari Window Bonus Blog Prompt

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As part of our exploration of personality, each of you completed an online Johari Window. This process helps you learn how similar your self-perceptions are to how others see you. For this bonus blog post, I want you to discuss what that process was like for you, how similar your self-description was to what others selected, how valid of a measure of personality do you think this is, and what, if anything, you learned about yourself in this process. Include a link to your Johari window in your post. This bonus post is due Tuesday, 3/27, at 8pm and is worth 1.5 points of extra credit. The post must be at least 250 words long to receive credit. Be sure to use the tags “Bonus Posts” and “Personality.” I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

Week 11 First Impression Prompts – Stress

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Here are the two prompts for this week. Regardless of which prompt you choose, please use the tag “Stress.” The first impression posts will be due by the beginning of class on Monday, 3/26. The refinement posts will be due at 5pm on Monday, 4/2.

Option 1:

Stress permeates American society, and college is a very stressful environment for everyone involved. Stress management is a critical component of academic success in college. Describe your current stress management strategies, assess how well they work, and discuss what other stress management activities you could realistically incorporate into your routine to help you deal with stress more effectively.

Option 2:

Stress is something all too common in college students’ lives, but what if you could change your relationship with stress? Kelly McGonigal discusses doing just that in her TED talk “Making Stress Your Friend.” Watch the video, share your reactions, comment on the speaker’s credibility, discuss how reasonable you find its message to be, and discuss how you could implement some of the ideas into your life.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

Week 10 First Impression Prompt – Personality

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We all want to know more about our ourselves, and psychological tests are one way to explore our personalities. While the full psychological tests are often long and require a fee to take, there are an abundance of free versions online. Take the four personality tests linked below, discuss how accurately they describe your perception of your personality, and discuss the credibility of each test. Make sure to use the tag “Personality” on your post. The first impression posts will be due by noon on Thursday, 3/22. The refinement posts will be due at noon on Wednesday, 3/28.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

Week 9 First Impression Prompt #2: Emotion

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Here are the two prompts for this week. Regardless of which one you choose, please use the tag “Emotion.” The first impression post will be due Friday, 3/16, at the start of class. Refinement posts for these prompts will be due Thursday, 3/22, at 7pm.

Option 1:

We all want to enjoy life and seek ways to make ourselves happy. Indeed, we spend much of our lives chasing the goal of happiness. But how good are we at actually finding it? Dan Gilbert discusses the ways in which we sabotage our own happiness in his TED talk. Watch the video, share your reactions, comment on the speaker’s credibility, discuss how reasonable you find its message to be, and discuss ways in which you can incorporate more synthetic happiness into your life.

Option 2:

A large portion of communication is non-verbal, including a lot of clues about people’s emotional states. Effective communication involves being able to read others’ emotions and take them into consideration. People express a lot of emotions through their faces. How well do are you able to read these emotional expressions? Take this test to find out.  Discuss whether or not your score reflects how well you thought you would do, how credible you find the test, which emotions were the easiest and hardest to tell apart, and how you could use this information in your daily life.

Option 3:

Many works of art inspire a variety of emotions in people, often quite different from what the artist intended. Music in particular tends to hold very strong emotional resonance with people, but that doesn’t mean people are receiving what the artist is sending. A classic example is the song Every Breath You Take by the Police (lyrics available here). This song came out in 1983 and was instantly a hit. Many people called it a classic love ballad and it was played repeatedly at weddings, but what they didn’t realize is the band wrote the song about a fanatical stalker. What was meant to be a haunting song about the lengths stalkers go was instead immortalized as a beautiful expression of devotion. For your post I want you to think about a song you are familiar with that on the surface seems to be above love, but when you look closer at it maybe isn’t such a great example of healthy relationships. Post a link to the lyrics and music video (or some other way for us to hear the song), and explain what is problematic with the messages in the song.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

Week 9 First Impression Prompt – Sleep

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Regardless of which option you choose, please use the tag “Sleep” on your post. The first impression post will be due at the start of class on Monday, 3/12, and the refinement post will be due at noon on Sunday, 3/18.

Option 1:

In this TED talk, Russell Foster outlines 3 prominent theories about why we sleep. Watch the talk and argue for the theory you find the most convincing. Make sure to explain your thoughts about the credibility of each of the three theories.

Option 2:

College students are often heavily sleep deprived as they sacrifice sleep in order to study, work, and/or have a social life in addition to their academic commitments. Assess your current sleep habits and how healthy you think they are. What is a realistic goal for amount of sleep per night for a college student and how can you improve your sleep habits?

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

Spring Break First Impression Prompt – Sensation & Perception

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The first impression post for this prompt is due Wednesday, 3/7, at 7pm. The refinement post is due Sunday, 3/11, at 5pm. Regardless of which prompt you choose, please use the tag “Sensation & Perception” on your post.

Option 1:

Synesthesia is a condition in which people’s perceptions of one sense activates another (for example hearing colors or seeing sounds). Watch Daniel Tammet explain his experience of synesthesia in a TED Talk entitled “Different Ways of Knowing.” Share your reactions to this video and discuss how you think this condition would affect someone’s day-to-day life.

Option 2:

Can we use magic to help people on the autism spectrum? This is actually a serious question. There is some evidence that people on the autism spectrum are less likely to be fooled by the slight of hand on which magicians rely. For this post, watch this video from the PBS show NOVA where neuroscientists work with magicians to understand how the way the brain processes visual information plays into magic. Then watch this brief clip also from NOVA about the potential for magic to give insight into or potential serve as treatment for autism and read this article from the LA Times about a new theory of autism as a “magical world” (the journal article upon which this story is about is available here). Share your reactions to these materials and discuss whether or not magic could be used to help those with autism.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

 

Week 7 First Impression Prompts: Psychoactive Drugs

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The first impression posts for this prompt will be due by the beginning of class on Monday, 2/26. The refinement posts for this prompt will be due Sunday, 3/4, at 5pm. Here are the two prompts for this week. Regardless of which prompt you choose, use the tag “Drugs.”

Option 1:

Recently, several states have legalized recreational use of marijuana and even more are considering it. This has lead to both celebration and condemnation depending on who you ask. Medicinal use of marijuana is still controversial as well. In your blog post, take a position on both medical and recreational use of marijuana. Should they be legal or not? Make sure to point out pros and cons to both arguments.

Option 2:

When it comes to treating addiction, two prominent approaches are the abstinence model and the harm reduction model. Most people are more familiar with the abstinence model, which seeks to completely eliminate all use of the problematic substance and prioritizes sobriety (an example would be 12-step programs like AA). The harm reduction model prioritizes things differently, in that the primary concern is preventing negative consequences of substance use (an example would be needle-swapping programs that provide clean needles for drug users to prevent the spread of diseases like HIV and Hepatitis). This is an over-simplification of the models, but you can find a little more background on each approach here. Which approach seems like the better idea to you? Explain which you would recommend if a loved one needed help with an addiction.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

Week 6 First Impression Prompt – Memory

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We’re back to the normal schedule for blog posts, so this first impression post will be due by the beginning of class on Monday, 2/19. The refinement posts for this prompt will be due Sunday, 2/25, at 5pm. Regardless of which prompt you choose, please use the Tag “Memory” on your post:

Option 1:

One of the topics we will discuss related to memory is study habits. For this post, critique your current study habits. Discuss what do you do well and what do you need to improve. In particular, I want you to discuss how you studied for the first exam in this class and share any changes you might make for the second exam to improve your preparation. We will see how closely your ideas reflect what the research says about improving your memory for learned information.

Option 2:

Not all memories are created equal. Some seem to be so powerfully etched in our minds that we can recall them almost perfectly later in life. For example, many people from my parents’ generation know exactly what they were doing when President Kennedy was assassinated. A more recent example would be what you were doing when you heard of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 in 2001. Then there are all the personal life events we remember “like they were yesterday.” Why do you think some memories are so much stronger than others? Explain your theory and propose a way to study how accurate these powerful memories really are.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator