Individual Learning Assessment Carrie Adams

What were some of the most significant or surprising things you learned in the seconded half of our course? Why were these things so significant or surprising?

Development of speech! How babies learn speech is one of the most significant things that I learned about in the second half of the course. Before this course I had never thought about how we learn to talk as children. The knowledge that we start to learn our native language before we even been to crawl show just how significant the ability to communicate is! This was so significant and surprising to me because I had never thought about how we learn to speak.

Having a speech impediment(an Articulation disorder from what I have looked at) I spent quite a lot of time when I was younger with speech therapist helping me to correct my speech. Despite this I have never really thought about how we learn to speak. After learning about our we learn to commutate I went and was better able to understand the nature of my problems with speech. Before I learned what exactly a Phonemes was I able to understand that my certain kind of speech impediment stems not from being able to hear those phonemes but from the muscles of my jaw not developing completely.

Freud… I am pretty sure that is all that needs to be said… but without people trying to negate how he thought the human mind developed psychology would not be were it is today. I suppose Freud’s theories were so significant to me because they are very out of the ordinary…and slight creepy. Even though his theories where more than strange they did encourage other psychologist to create their own theories. Freud outlandish theories lead others to create their own theories, which in turn lead to the theories that we have in psychology today.

Conformity! Conformity is significant to be because even thought the information was shocking it was not very surprising to be that people, including me, behave like this. We conform without realizing it, we get in line when waiting for something without thinking about. We sit in the same seats in class day after day because everyone else is. It significant because we do it without realizing and we are very unwilling to admit to ourselves that we conform. I am willing to admit that I conform to other people. I have changed my opinion of a movie after someone has explained to me why they did not like it, even if I personally thought it was an awesome movie. I conformed to there opinion, why? I truly do not know why. Maybe it was because they were my friends and because they did not enjoy the movie I saw not reason why I should be the odd one out and say that I actually enjoyed it.

Think about what you will be doing in 5 or 10 years from now, What information from this course would you most want to remember or believe will be most relevant to you, your work, or your life in general.

What I would most like to remember in the future would be the information on Compliance and the different techniques to bring about compliance. The reason I would like to remember this information the most because it is something that will mostly never become obsolete. The different techniques, foot-in-the-door, door-in- the-face, etc, is something that will always be used to help me comply with what someone else wants me to do. Compliance techniques are something that I can also use to get others to comply with what I wish for them to do.

Knowing these techniques can help to get someone to do things that I what them to do. Say I want my roommate to wash her dishes, there are a number of ways I can go about getting her to do this. I believe that the Door-in-the-face technique would be the most effective. I would start by asking her to clean to the room, there is a chance she would refuse, make an excuse to not do it, if she did I would make a ‘compromise’ by asking her to at least wash her dishes. Either way she will end up washing her dishes, if she complies and cleans the room, it includes the dishes. If she refuses and I give the compromise, she still washes the dishes, which is what I wanted her to do in the first place.

The Bias of labeling. Freak! Psycho! Weirdo! In the future I would really like to remember the harm that labeling someone with there illness can cause. When you label someone with there illness you no longer think that their actions on their own but believe them to be acting the ways they do because of their illness. I want to remember that people are people not their labels; and that labeling someone can cause a lot of harm to the person that the label is being applied.

What I think will be the most relevant to me in the future? Parenting styles are one think that shall be the most relevant to me in the future. I plan to have kids at someone in the future and it will be very helpful to remember that different parenting styles affect the behavior of children. Knowing that the Authoritative style of parenting is the most effective will allow me make decision on how to treat and what I should expect from my children. I should be demanding of my children but I should remember that there are limits to what they can and are able to do. I should also remember to communicate with them, to talk to them and understand what they are thinking and feeling.

Theory of Mind! Theory of mind let us understand mental state and emotions of ourselves and other people, it lets us realize that other people can and do have different thoughts than the ones that we have. This is something that will be relevant because understanding what other people what based on there emotions is always important. Not understanding why someone feels the way they do can be very harmful to friendships and family relations. I want to remember that understanding someone else mental and emotional state can help relationships grow and it can help me to understand the problems that others are going though.

Discuss two or three things we did in class that helped you to learn the material and discuss two or three things from class that should be changed to help students like you better learn the material.

What helped me to learn and understand the material better? TED talks! I found the TED talks to be interesting and they helped me to understand a lot of the material better. They are both informative and entertaining which helps me to enjoy watching them. The TED talks combine a lot of idea that I think help students to find the more enjoyable and therefore gain a new understanding to the material. They do not appear to be an education film and the speakers are often witty and obviously understand what they are speaking about. These things helped me watch the videos in depth so I gain a better understanding of the material.

Hands on activities! Hands on activities in and out of the classroom really helped me to understand the material better. This was especially helpful with my understanding of schemas. Using the Musk flavored Life savors to show us how schemas used assimilation and accommodation to change the way we think was extremely helpful at remembering any information on Schemas. Using visual cue like the banana’s hanging on the projector were also very helpful. Both these things are not normal ways to remember information from a class, which is probably why I remember them and the information related to them so well.

What I think should be changed to help students learn and understand the material better? No more Concept Maps… Personally I find concept maps more annoying than helpful, and I know that many people like doing them. I find them unhelpful because they repeat what I normal do to study, read the information and then write important bits down into notes to be looked at later. I really do not understand why I find them annoying to do, since it is really just an extra step that insures that I can remember the information later. I suppose it could be a combination of not completely understanding how to create an efficient concept map and the extra time in takes to create one. I think that to help future student it would be best to stop creating concept maps, or to make the concept maps extra credit so that students can do them if the wish but do not have to make them if they do not want to

More Blog posts! When the class started I will admit that I really did not like the idea of writing blog posts. I had never wrote any blogs before, nor had I ever really read any blog posts. I found writing the blog post enjoyable and helpful in learning the information. So I think what could be helpful to future students would be to have more blog posts to help them understand the material better.