Overall Class Experience, Class Structure, Lecture, and Professor Quality

If I were to rate this class on a scale of one to ten, with one being the lowest and ten being the highest, I have to say that my overall experience is about a nine and a half. There are three reasons why I rated it this high, and the first reason is the canvas page. The modules were exceptionally constructed and neatly organized. This might seem more like common sense, but it is actually a super important factor that is often understated. Students such as myself appreciate professors with excellent organizational skills and transparency, especially with due dates and grades.

The second reason is the frequent and open communications with students through announcements. For instance, I enjoyed that personalized mid-term progress report through the canvas messaging system. It shows that the professors genuinely care about their student’s successes. Quite frankly speaking, this level of personable personality is very lacking in our current educational systems. Unfortunately, some professors, especially a few tenured professors, seem to have just given up on teaching in general with no ambitions to improve. Their patience and passion have completely plateaued, and their motivations are sharply declining due to the number of irresponsible students they encounter over their educational careers. It is unfair to blame those professors for that; however, there should be more recognition for those professors who continue to show passion for teaching and strive to improve their curriculum.

The third reason has to be the level of original content. For example, I initially enrolled for developmental psychology honors with Professor Sabet. However, after reviewing the course material modules, it seems like there is a lack of original content. The only content from the professor is, quite frankly, the syllabus, exams, and discussion forum prompts. To be clear, this is in no way discrediting how talented of a professor she is, but as a student with tremendous experience in the workforce. I have developed a preference to learn from people with more practical experiences. Because psychology, philosophy, and sociology are all subjects that revolve around different intricate concepts. These concepts will be very challenging to learn just simply by reading the book. The best way to convey concepts to a student population, in my opinion, is to speak from personal experiences to attract and allure the student’s interest in the subject.

For this reason, when I was making my audio-visual presentation, I focused on making connections with my fellow peers through verbal communications of relatable scenarios for all. In a similar analogy, everything in history has a story behind it. Therefore, in order to successfully allure the students’ attention and focus, you will have to convey the stories behind the historical events to the student and relate them back to our modern society and how it relates to them. Otherwise, everything that you say to them is basically just noise. The student would just be daydreaming and hating the class because they are unable to connect the dots of how it relates to them. So long story short, I value original content, which is why this class is perfect for me because of those audio lectures.

Discussion Boards, Papers, and Presentation

As I have previously stated, in my previous winter enrollment in developmental psychology class, the professor placed an obsessed emphasis on discussion forums, that is, sixteen in total, three of them a week with a very harsh word count minimum. Although I can understand where she comes from and that she wants her students to engage in more critical thinking, I cannot entirely agree with her teaching style. In my opinion, discussion forums should be used to engage in thoughtful analysis and act as a medium to share opinions. Therefore, I do not necessarily believe that more is good. The quality of the posts is way more important, in my opinion than word count, frequency of discussion, and discussion topics combined. Therefore, this class’s six discussion forums are actually a very healthy amount—nothing excessive and nothing short of quality. My personal favorites have the week three and four discussion topics. But in general, all of them are actually very good because they are all reflections of the students themselves. Nothing is about the book, and it is all about your personal opinion, which I enjoyed quite a lot.

As for the disorders paper, I also thought it was a fairly interesting assignment. Although, I have to say that I was quite disappointed in the available empirical research studies on my topic of antisocial personality disorder. As I have stated in the forum, there are just not many preventative measures in those studies. For the presentation, however, I did notice as I watched my peer’s presentation videos that most of them were still confused as to what constitutes empirical research. Objectively speaking, we cannot really blame them because they are not used to reading medical research. Even though the instructions clearly said empirical research must include an abstract, methods, and results section, I still believe that there should have been a separate lecture video teaching them precisely what peer-reviewed medical research really is.

For example, if I was teaching this class, I probably would have recorded a video of me clicking into the Mt. SAC database. Then I would search for a few empirical medical studies on some of the most common disorders and make a short comparison side by side to show them exactly what they should look out for and what they should be taking away from those studies. An excellent example is one of the studies that I have included in my presentation video. For that research, I specifically pointed out the limitations and sample space because I thought those were vital information to convey when doing a medical-related presentation. However, a fresh high school graduate or new college student may not know how to distinguish those, so it might be helpful to give them an extra helping hand. Of course, this is just some of my two cents, and feel free to use my presentation as an example to showcase empirical research if that helps.

Student Self Reflection and Future Advice

This winter intersession has been particularly challenging for me due to the amount of workload I had. I am enrolled in both this psychology class and music appreciation class, and I never thought that a music class would have been such a demanding course with three modules every week. However, just as I have mentioned earlier, original content is my most sought-after quality in all courses. Therefore, although that course is demanding, the professor also provided much original content: the lecture videos and interactive reading based on the textbook that she wrote, which is the very definition of originality. Also, while it is a great honor that the professors ask for the student’s opinion on their own grades, I, however, do not particularly feel that it is appropriate for a student to propose a grade simply because I believe the professors should know precisely where each student’s level of effort lies. Therefore, I believe that the quality of work from each student speaks for itself, thereby making it self-evident and self-explanatory as to what grades the students should be earning. Lastly, the best advice I can give to future students is not to study hard but studying smart. Divert your time wisely among your classes and treat assignments not as a task at hand but as a fun experiment and activity.