Getting started

Course Layout

Throughout the quarter you will Read/watch some things, do/write some things. You will save these written bits of work in a single document as a google doc (more on this below)] and share the document with the class on Slack where you will participate in helping one another get better at critical thinking and meta-cognition.

Why a Google doc and not some other cloud-based service? Simply there’s too much variation in how each software program manages share and edit settings. In an effort to cut down on the need for me to troubleshoot different student software issues, I’m requiring that we use Google Docs.

If you want to draft and write your work on a home computer where you’re saving a word like file on your computer, that’s fine.

The key thing to remember, though, is that you will have just 1 document for the whole quarter. As you start a new assignment, you’ll just add pages to the document, title the new page, add a date, and keep going.

This means you’ll only need to share more on how to do that later the document once and you’ll have a record of your progress for the whole quarter.

Ungrading and self reflections

You will be giving yourself a grade. This is different from earning points through assignments and tests. Could it be that “point chasing” is harmful? Or maybe it doesn’t foster good thinking and education or learning? Could chasing grades and points simply reduce anxiety in the instructor and student because it is easier to make distinctions between point totals at the end of the quarter versus distinctions about human development in learning?

Within the #ungrading movement there is an emphasis placed on self-reflection and I would argue meta-cognition, which is a systematic and thoughtful activity of thinking about your own thinking.

An overview video on self reflection.

This is not a detailed set of instructions but a gentle intro. Instructor Brian Video on self refleciton overveiw

maybe give doc about an educated person in psych

Grades

Grades will be based on your own assessment of what you’ve learned. You are giving yourself a grade. I have the right to overrule your assessment, but I anticipate people are going to be fair to themselves and to this class. Feedback will be given to many of your weekly writings. However I do not promise to give feedback to all papers every week.

I will occasionally provide my own writing and reflections for you to witness. If I do give you feedback on a weekly writing, my intention for it is to push for you to consider deeper issues that is aligned with your wants for the class but especially development of critical thinking. If I give you feedback on a weekly assignment, the feedback will be embedded in your document. This is why your google document must have edit permissions for “anyone with the link” More on how to do that below. My hope is to just put comments right into your doc.

At least twice this quarter I will ask you to provide me a short sample of your writing from the previous weeks and a self-reflection on your progress. I will read all of these and give feedback on all of them.

The reason you’re writing every week is to provide yourself a track record of writings from which you can reflect. If you do not do this, you won’t have enough content to reflect upon.

More on ungrading

Most students appreciate this approach and not because it gives them an easy A. A few students, however, may think that they should get an ‘A for effort’ when that doesn’t capture the intention of the system.

Effort is necessary but it doesn’t necessarily lead to growth. We are looking for growth. You may naturally then wonder how this looks in practice.

I invite you to consider your development on several abilities. The most obvious is critical thinking. The 9 standards of Critical thinking (in the syllabus)

But development in using logic, meta-cognition, reading, writing, self-reflection, time management, workflow, these are also important.

If you merely go through the book and try to memorize facts, you shouldn’t be thinking you’ve done enough to earn an ‘A.’ That is as simple as I can say it.

Communication

Canvas will not be used

However, some videos have been made available in Panopto, which requires logging into canvas. And this will probably not change because some video content shouldn’t be made public for reasons of copyright (e.g., if I discuss at length a chapter out of a privately owned book).

Don’t use Canvas email

Canvas creates a fire hose of messages and I simply can’t be bothered anymore to manage it.

Use Slack or real email

In slack, if there is a post you’d like me to see, simply write @brian.holt your message, and then hit enter, and I’ll get a notification. That will be a public exchange. If you want to talk with my privately, you can send me an email or a direct message (DM) in slack by typing /DM in any message box followed by ‘enter.’ You will see the direct message ‘area’ and you can type my name and send me a note.

You may have some questions about Slack

It’s basically a social media platform where you can participate in teams by having threaded chats or sharing of documents. It can be used synchronously or asynchronously.

More instructions for using slack can be found in this document

How to Videos: How to Log into and using Google drive

How to share a google drive doc – A video stored in canvas

If Uploading a .doc(x) to google

If you upload a word document into google docs, google will not convert it to a google doc format; instead it will maintain it as a .doc(x) file type because some users are just using google drive as a repository to share word docx.

But I can’t leave feedback on those formats.

  • So, after uploading the docx file,

  • right click the file and choose to ‘open as a google doc.’

  • Then, share that file with edit capabilities.

Required Software tools

All classes

  • Google docs –not OneDrive, not dropbox
  • Slack –You can download a desktop app or simply use it in a web browser
  • access to canvas, though only to be able to watch previous videos stored in panopto.
  • access to Youtube

Research Methods

  • Zotero or other bibliography program (If not Zotero, you will be responsible for all trouble shooting)
  • Spreadsheet (google sheets will be sufficient)
  • Optional: R stats or Python (really won’t be necessary)

Using Slack

The main reason I’m using slack is simply that canvas is not as intuitive or easy to use. Canvas also requires a lot more work for me as the teacher to manage. Slack appears to be a little bit easier in that respect.

Communicating in slack

  • Easily contact your instructor by using a Direct message or by tagging them using the ‘@’ symbol
  • Post questions or documents in “Channels”
    • Channels are like public chat rooms
    • You can create a threaded conversation on top of a post by hovering over the main post, a ‘threaded reply’ icon will show up. Here is what the thread will look like.

How to sign up for slack?

I will invite each of my classes to the slack workspaces via email and maybe in canvas, just because I know everyone uses canvas at first.

Once you have signed up for slack, spend some time filling out your profile and make sure to make your profile picture and actual picture of you.

  • Your may make your profile name as you like, but your email address must match the email address that the College has on file for you.

The last thing about slack is that when it comes to sharing documents, you may need to add permissions for slack to interact with your word processing program. For instance I use Google Docs a lot and I have already added Google Docs as an app that is recognized by Slack.

Tips for using Slack

Slack has a pretty thorough set of instructions to help new users. Don’t try to learn slack all in one go. For now, make a profile and introduce yourself.

3 minute video of Slack tips, will need to sign in to canvas for this video

Adding yourself to a hidden slack channel

In Fall 2020, slack had a bug preventing the instructor from adding everyone to a channel with a single click. This mean each person had to be added individually, which is very time consuming. This is a simple list of instructions with pictures showing how to search then add yourself to a channel.

Using google Doc

One document to rule them all

Logistically, you will put all of your assignments into one google doc. This way you only need to set up the share settings once. Its link (URL) will never change, so you can keep pointing back to it by sharing the same URL.

Educationally, having a single document for the majority of your writing will also give you a history of your progress. This could very much serve as a portfolio showing development.

Sharing a Google Doc

If Uploading a .doc(x) to google

If you upload a word document into google docs, google will not convert it to a google doc format; instead it will maintain it as a .doc(x) file type because some users are just using google drive as a repository to share word docx.

But I can’t leave feedback on those formats.

  • So, after uploading the docx file,

  • right click the file and choose to ‘open as a google doc.’

  • Then, share that file with edit capabilities.

Google Doc leaving comments

Using Zotero (Psych 209 Research Methods)

Why use Zotero?

Simply, using a program to manage your bibliography is a convenience. Not only does it store citation information, but it can also manage the formatting of your in-text citations as well as your reference page. Zotero is also a free, open-source program.

When I was in graduate school in the 90’s my thesis had 50 pages of references that I had to type out by hand. Think and be afraid of typos. And it took hours of time to make sure that everything was in its correct order and correctly typed.

And if a supervisor wanted to change some language in your document that shifted you’re in-text citations around, or inserted a new citation, then that would require you to go in to your reference pages and insert a new reference which would then shift the remaining 20 pages of references down. Granted, we had Microsoft Word so it was easier than typing with a typewriter. It still took hours of time for these fixes, but I would say just formatting my thesis with 50 pages of references took months. Easily (because I was still also teaching and taking classes and doing other research work).

With bibliography software you don’t have to worry about that.

But there’s also a reason to use this software and that is you can begin to have a conversation not just with other people, but with yourself, and with the content in the journals. The reason is you can use Zotero to actually make notes about the article you found. It seems to be a little bit time-consuming up front, but when you’re writing a research paper it will save hours of time if you have little annotated comments about an article stored in the database that keeps track of your citation data. In other words, you don’t have to reread the article.

Installing Zotero

This introduces how to install zotero, a free, open-source bibliography program.

Broad view

There are two parts for zotero to work:

  1. Download the Zotero desktop application
  2. Install the zotero plugin for your preferred browser

Basically you need both of these programs because they work together. The desktop application has the most functionality and options, it’s really the ‘thing’ of zotero.

The plugin for your browser is a program that helps interface whatever it is that you’re looking at and the zotero application. For example, if you’re looking at a journal article with your chrome internet browser, it’s the zotero plugin for that browser that will export the information into your Zotero desktop application. (you can use Firefox, too, but it has it’s own ‘add-on’ plugin).

Here is a drawing showing these ‘parts.’

Drawing of Zotero parts

Go to Zotero

So to begin, we need to go to the Zotero webpage and download the necessary software.

Zotero Download page

Because I’m using a Linux machine, I believe Zotero’s website presents me the most logical software combination needed to run zotero. It should do the same for you, too. But notice I circled other operating system options.

Zotero Image of linux offering

But at this point, it should be simple enough for you to download and install the software. If you have troubles, let’s chat about the snags.

Heads up

The process for installing these programs are dependent on your computer operating system and your chosen browser, but it should be similar for most operating systems and browsers.

Integrating Zotero with other word processing programs

You can set it up to work with MS word, libreOffice Writer, probably oneDrive as well. I’ve gotten it to work on libreOffice, but for the others you’ll need to DIY

Workflow

More to come

meta comments

Under construction ### software

Expecting things to work

EVERYTHING BREAKS.

That’s what the light in. Cohen (2009)

Appendix

Using the library

The library has set up a simple library guide for our class.

For general psychology

For Research Methods in Psychology library guide

Note: Don’t pay for articles

One important word of advice is to never pay for a scholarly article. If you go online and use Google, or even Google Scholar to find online sources, you may be directed to the publication that will charge you a large amount of money to access just one article. So don’t do that.

Generally there are ways to get articles through our library, so don’t pay for articles.

To get started with some of our readings, you’ll need to use our Library (online, of course) to obtain many of the articles.

Finding journal articles is a skill that gets better with practice. This happens to be why Librarians are so helpful. They’ve actually been trained so if you can’t find an article, it’s okay to ask librarians for help.

In fact, here is how you can get help from North Seattle’s library staff.

Relationship of an article to its Journal

Using hierarchies helps us organize information. Journal articles, or for that matter the file directories on your computer, work somewhat like an address for a person’s home. There are several different parts that give us information to track down and locate whatever it is we’re looking for, be it a computer file, or Journal article. Basically, a journal article has the following components, some of which may be familiar to you :

  Database (of periodicals)
    Periodical (eg., magazine, newspaper, scholarly journal)
     Year (of publication)
       Volume Number
        Volumne Issue number
         Page Number (optional, often unnecessary)
           Article Title
              Author

So, to find an article, you’ll need to know the parts above. When you are given a list of references, or citations, nearly all of the information needed above is given to you. What is not given, or at least is done implicitly with web searches, is access to the top part, a database. These databases are proprietary and their owners will lease you access. Our Library pays a service fee to access these databases; that is how you can access them for ‘free.’again, not really free because of the fees you pay to come to this college.

Here is a typical citation:

Author(s). (year of pub). “Article Title.” Periodical title. Volume Number (issue number).

The information in a citation isn’t presented in the same hierarchy as above, but all of the necessary parts are there.

Here is an example citation (reference) for something we may read. Can you identify the periodical?

Jay Efran, Michael Lukens, Mitchell Greene. 2007. “Defining Psychotherapy: The Last 25 Years Have Taught Us That It’s Neither Art nor Science.” Psychotherapy Networker 31 (2).

Most of the items in the list above are self-explanatory. I want to focus a bit about periodicals.

Note on formatting citations: underlining publication titles

In print, publication titles are italicized. I have a very hard time noticing that subtle font.

When you submit a written manuscript for printing, publication titles are underlined because traditionally manuscripts were typed with typewriters, and to be able to type italicized words required an entire additional alphabet represented in the hammers. So, underlining was how you could emphasize a word, and the printer–a physical person–could notice the author’s formatting intent and correctly publish the final product in italics.

It’s a bit different now with our computers, obviously. Still, I have a hard time seeing italicized words and will occasionally use underline.

So, sometimes I’ll underline pub titles, sometimes I’ll italicize. I have no rule on this. I am chaos manifested. Beware.

Periodicals

These are just the names of the major publication. The New York Times, is colloquially known as a newspaper but technically it is a periodical. The Journal of Abnormal Psychology is also a periodical.

When we search for articles, we have to first know which journal, or periodical, owns that article. So it is a little counter intuitive but once we have identified an article we would like to read, we have to first find out whether or not our College has access to that periodical.

To do that, we have to use our colleges periodical locator.

Finding a journal using Periodical locator

Periodical locator

Notice the first link within North’s Article page. It should say “Periodical Locator”

There are many databases, inside of these databases are pages of journals, and inside those journals are articles.

We need to use the periodical locator to determine which database houses which periodical. With that, we can then open up that periodical and get the article

Note on ‘free’ articles and tuition/fees

Part of the fees that you pay as a student are used to pay subscriptions for these periodical databases. We have a small, but pretty good selection. Major universities have much larger collections due to their size and tuition/fee structure.

So in a way, you are not actually getting this for free because you are paying for library access. That’s the benefit of taking classes from a college. If you were not an active student, you would not be able to see many of these articles.

So, download them all!

Here’s the main point:

I’ve given you a list of Articles to read. To read them, you must first find them; some will be out in the internet, some will be in our schools’ databases. So, use the information I’ve given you to find out which location (database, Wikipedia, Google, Google scholar) you’ll need to search to obtain the full article. You will start by using the periodicals locator tool.

Let’s use that Efran, Lukens, and Greene (2007) article.

  1. Go to North’s Article page and click on the periodical locator.

  2. Type in the periodical for Efran’s piece.

You will see a link with the periodical’s name. Go ahead and click on this but beware of the next instruction:

  1. Once you have clicked on that link you may want to start searching within that publication. But do not do that. Instead, notice a little bit further down the search box you should see something that says “View online” and beneath that you should see something that says “proquest research library.” It’s this piece we need.

That Proquest research library is the database that you’ve all paid fees to access. So you need to remember that database name.

  1. While remembering that database name, you need to go back to North’s Article page.

  2. Notice what is presented here. You can see Periodical locator, but notice “A to Z” list of databases. (You might also notice just below two links; one to academic search and the other to Proquest).

North’s Find Periodicals

  1. Click on “A to Z”

  2. You might notice that there are 67 databases that North Seattle has premium access to. In our case we’re going to be looking for the proquest direct database. And we can either click on the letter “P” or we can just type in proquest direct.

Note on Popular sources

You may also notice the little tag “popular” next to proquest link. That’s an indicator that the articles are not peer reviewed and so aren’t exactly cutting edge science. Even though this particular journal we are looking for, Psychotherapy Networker, is flagged as a popular type, it is a place for therapists to share their thoughts on the profession so there is a lot of value in it.

For help in distinguishing the different types of sources, the library has some guides:

  1. Opening Proquest from your home, or remotely, you will need to validate your credentials. In other words, you need to prove that your are in fact students of North Seattle before you can continue, which is why you’ve been prompted to give your last name and student ID number. Once you do that you’ll then be able to see inside of the proquest database. Then you can now search for the article.

  2. You should see you simple search box, where you can enter in important bits of information. I often start with the author’s last name, in this case, Efran,and then some unique identifying feature of the article. A few key words of the article title, or perhaps the full article title will be useful.

But notice that next to the text boxes there are drop down menus. You need to use those, otherwise the search engine will just search for your terms anywhere in the document and will provide too many ‘hits.’ Instead, you should indicate ‘Efran’ as author, and “defining” in the document title. (of course, you could search any way you like).

When you search for those two terms in their respective fields, you will get two hits and one of them is the article we need. You should notice that it is a full text, not all databases provide full text documents. But in this case it’s a full text. You can either print it or read it online.

Yay. Now you can find the other articles.

A quick video of the process

Anatomy of a journal article

Title

Abstract

Introduction

Lit review
hypothesis

Methods

Participants
Materials
Procedure

Results

Discussion

References

References

Cohen, Leonard. 2009. “Leonard Cohen Live in London.”

Efran, Jay S, Michael Lukens, and Mitchell Greene. 2007. “Defining Psychotherapy: The Last 25 Years Have Taught Us That It’s Neither Art nor Science.” Psychotherapy Networker 31 (2).