Finals Week Bonus Blog Prompt

This is the prompt for finals week. You must post by 1 am Sunday, 12/14 to receive credit (comments will be accepted until 5 pm on Monday, 12/15).

Return to your introductory blog post where you described the 3 topics you were most and least excited about for this course, and the one question you wanted to be able to answer when it was over. Reflect on whether your predictions came true in terms of your favorite and least favorite questions, and try to answer the question you posed.

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Week 15 Blog Prompts

Here are the prompt options for 12/1-12/8

Option 1:

Your textbook lists 4 major types of psychotherapy (psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, and humanistic/existential). Rank these types of therapy according to how helpful you think they would be if you needed therapy and explain what it is about each one that you like/dislike. For your highest rated therapy, find additional information about it from a web source (include a link to the source and discuss its credibility).

Option 2:

Some phobias are relatively well known (like arachnophobia) while others are less common (though can be equally debilitating). Choose one of the phobias listed below, find information about it (provide a link to your source and discuss its credibility), and discuss how you might treat it using one of the therapies discussed in class or in your textbook.

List of phobias
alektorophobia bibliophobia carnophobia chrometophobia>
coitophobia coprophobia eisoptrophobia ergasiophobia
gamophobia helminthophobia hematophobia hodophobia
hydrophobia hypnophobia musophobia nyctophobia
oclophobia ommatophobia ophidiophobia osmophobia
pediophobia peniaphobia phonophobia pogonophobia
satanophobia spheksophobia tachophobia traumatophobia
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Thanksgiving Break Blog Prompts

Here are the options for 11/24-12/1:

Option 1:

TED talks by Ellen Saks and Eleanor Longden share many commonalities but also significant differences. Both speakers were diagnosed with schizophrenia as undergraduates and ended up being hospitalized. Each discusses her path to getting a handle on their mental health. Discuss the similarities and differences between the talks and the treatment each speaker received on her path to health. You also need to explore how we could identify students with mental health issues sooner and how we could get students to accept help.

Option 2:

Another set of TED talks conducted by Temple Grandin and Rosie King show two perspectives on living with autism. Both make a call for celebration of diversity, specifically neurological diversity and share their thoughts on how the world can benefit from being inclusive. Some people with disorders on the autism spectrum take offense to the idea they need to be “cured.” How do these two talks fit into the idea of trying to “cure” autism and how should we think about treatment with this population?

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Week 13 Blog Prompts

Here are the options for 11/17-11/24:

Option 1:

As mentioned in class, the Implicit Association Test (which can be accessed through this link) is a tool to identify biases which may be outside your conscious awareness. The results of this test cannot determine whether or not you are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., but they are useful to help you understand yourself and how you interact with others. For this post, you must take two separate IAT tests from the link above. You do not need to share your results if you don’t want to, but you need to talk about the experience of taking the test and getting the results, comment on whether or not the results were surprising, and discuss how this test can be useful for college students or your future career.

Option 2:

Now that we have learned about the power of persuasion, it’s time to examine these effects in our own lives. In advertising, both the central route and the peripheral route are used to persuade an individual. Many commercials use these routes to persuade an individual to buy their product or to buy into their idea. Select a product (e.g., cars, cereal, video games) and find a commercial that displays the central route and another that displays the peripheral route of persuasion. Discuss how each route is used, argue which route of persuasion you believe worked best, point out any other persuasion techniques that you noticed, and explain how the commercials could have better displayed the route of persuasion it used. Please put the link to the commercials in your discussion.

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Week 12 Blog Prompts

Here are the blog options for Week 12 (11/10-11/17):

Option 1:

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, discuss how reasonable you find its message to be, and discuss how you could implement some of the ideas into your life.

Option 2:

We all have different methods for coping with stress. For this prompt, please discuss your typical strategies for dealing with stress and evaluate how well they have worked for you this semester. Next, list 3 new strategies for coping with stress you could try and discuss how effective you think they would be. Finally, find a website that provides tips for handling stress and discuss how credible you find the site and its recommendations.

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Week 11 Blog Prompts

Here are the options for 11/3-11/10:

Option 1:

We all want to enjoy life and seek ways to make ourselves happy. Indeed, we spend much of 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, and discuss ways in which you can incorporate more synthetic happiness into your life.

Option 2:

Motivation is not a stable force, but often waxes and wanes. Throughout your time at Austin College, your motivation for school will undoubtedly be higher at some times and lower at others. How can we use the principals of motivation we discussed in class and read about in the text to help ourselves push through times of low motivation? Specifically, I want you to discuss why you chose to come to Austin College and use 2 different theories of motivation to explain your decision. I also want you to plan an intervention for yourself for how you can maintain motivation to succeed until graduation.

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Week 10 Blog Prompts

Here are the blog prompt options for Week 10 (10/27-11/3):

Option 1:

One of the most commonly discussed dimensions of personality is introversion vs. extroversion. In many ways, US society values extroverts more highly, but Susan Cain discusses the Power of Introverts in her TED talk. Watch the talk and discuss my assertion that extroverts are more valued in the US. What about Austin College? Are there advantages to being either introverted or extroverted here?

Option 2:

One popular form of assessing personality is the MBTI. In fact, many of you took the MBTI before you came to AC as part of the process of assigning you dorm rooms. Here is the website for the MBTI. Read through the links describing the dimensions of the MBTI to familiarize yourself with the personality types it produces. Then I want you to choose your favorite fictional character and try to guess what personality type (e.g., ENFJ) he/she/it would have. Find a link to a website that gives a synopsis of your character in case your readers are not familiar with him/her/it and explain your choices for each dimension.

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Week 9 Blog Prompts

Here are the blog prompts for Week 9 (10/20-27):

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. Watch these three videos: Jane Elliott’s classic blue eyes/brown eyes experiment, Claude Steele explaining stereotype threat, and Rosenthal & Jacobson’s discovery of the Pygmalion effect. In your blog post, react to what you saw in the videos, reflect on your own interactions with educators throughout your school career, and discuss what, if any, changes to the school system based on the concepts in these videos 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. The Mozart effect is highly controversial and has spurred numerous research studies, but was based on one study published in 1993. Read the original journal article by Rauscher, Shaw, & Ky and discuss whether or not the original evidence supports Governor Miller’s decision.

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Week 8 Blog Prompts

Here are the blog prompts for 10/13-10/20:

Option 1:

Elizabeth Loftus is one of the preeminent researchers in false memories. Her research has shed light on the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, the over-reporting of satanic ritual abuse, and the ease of implanting false memories. Her TED talk outlines much of her research and illuminates the fragility of our memory. Watch the TED talk and discuss your reactions. Make sure to specifically address Loftus’s implication that we could manipulate memory for positive outcomes (like enjoying vegetables) by discussing potential pros and cons and stating whether or not you believe we should consider tampering with memory.

Option 2:

Now that we have discussed learning and memory, evaluate your study habits. Describe how you studied for the first exam in this class and explain what you could do differently for the second exam to improve your preparation. Also explain why these differences would be better than what you did before. You also need to find a website that provides advice about studying and critique the recommendations based on what we discussed in class and what you read in your textbook.

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Week 7 Blog Prompts

Blog post prompts for 10/6-10/13:

Option 1:

Not everyone learns the same way. Each of us do best under certain conditions, and these tendencies are called learning styles. Take these two online learning style assessments (Link 1, Link 2). Report your results, discuss how credible you find them (both in terms of how well the results fit your experience and how well the assessment is designed), and discuss how you can use your preferred learning style improve your study skills. Finally, how well does AC do at teaching to your preferred learning style?

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 of first-person shooters and games with graphic displays of blood and gore has led to criticisms of the video game industry and claims that children are becoming more violent as a result. For this blog post, find a source on each side of the debate and summarize their arguments. Also critique how trustworthy you find each source and decide whether or not you think violent video games should be allowed or permanently banned.

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