Category Archives: Blog Prompts

Week 11 First Impression Prompts – Stress

Hand writing on a notebook 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 ...

Week 10 First Impression Prompt – Personality

Hand writing on a notebook 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

Hand writing on a notebook 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 ...

Week 9 First Impression Prompt – Sleep

Hand writing on a notebook   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 ...

Spring Break First Impression Prompt – Sensation & Perception

Hand writing on a notebook 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 ...

Week 7 First Impression Prompts: Psychoactive Drugs

Hand writing on a notebook   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 ...

Week 6 First Impression Prompt – Memory

Hand writing on a notebook 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 ...

Week 5 First Impression Prompt – Learning

Hand writing on a notebook Here are the two prompts for this week. Regardless of which prompt you choose, please use the tag "Learning." The first impression posts will be due by the beginning of class on Wednesday, 2/14. The refinement posts will be due at 5pm on Tuesday, 2/20. Option 1: BF Skinner passionately believed in the power of operant conditioning. He thought it was such a powerful influence that it proved free will is an illusion. See Skinner make this claim here. Respond to Skinner’s assertion that there is no such thing as free will. Do you agree or disagree? Why? Option 2: Violence in the media has been controversial for decades, but over the last 20 years there has been increasing attention to the amount of violence in video games. The rise ...

Week 4 First Impression Prompt – Neuroscience

Hand writing on a notebook Regardless of which prompt you choose, please use the Tag “Neuroscience” on your post. For your blog prompt this week, you are to choose one of the following TED talks:

Week 3 First Impression Prompts – Development

Hand writing on a notebook Regardless of which prompt you choose, please use the tag “Development” on your post. Here are the prompts for this week: Option 1 Tiger moms, jellyfish dads, and helicopter parents. These terms all refer to various parenting styles and each has been both promoted as an ideal and criticized as “the problem with kids these days.” We will discuss parenting this week, but I'm curious what you think is the “best” way to parent. By “best” I mean most likely to produce children who grow up to be happy, healthy, and productive members of society. Write your post about the ideal way parents should raise their kids. Option 2 While most developmental psychologists have focused on how we grow and change from birth to early adulthood, Erik Erikson was one of the first ...