The Intelligent plant
The Nature & Purpose of the Assignment
In recent years, the field of psychology has received more attention in the general media than it had before. That is, many of our discoveries have been published in scientific journals or presented at professional meetings, but they rarely had the opportunity to enlighten non-scholars. With the newer popularity of psychological writing, more and more people have gotten the opportunity to learn about the field and how it applies to their lives. The response papers for our course are an opportunity for you to learn some of these lessons and write about them.
For these assignments, you will be selecting from a number of articles that I offer from “pop” (non-academic) sources. You will read the article and apply it to our course. The specific areas I expect you to address are below in the rubric, which I will use to determine your grade. I recommend using the three main content areas below as a beginning outline so that you are providing what I am asking for.
Each paper must be submitted before class on its due date or it will be considered late. Please upload it to the Turnitin link on our course’s BlackBoard site. I recommend doing so in enough time that you can run an Originality Report before your final submission; This allows you to see whether your wording too closely resembles the author’s or another source’s, constituting plagiarism.
These are all articles that I have read and found interesting for a number of reasons, and I hope that you will too. I will also periodically ask you to tell others in the class about your article so that they might have some benefit from it as well.
Grading Rubric
Article Summary (25%): Does the summary indicate sufficient comprehension of the article? Does the focus rest on the important elements that would enable someone who has not read the article to know whether it is worth reading?
Application to Course Material (25%): Does the student apply the article to material from the course or vice versa? Is the link between the article and the text clear and sensible?
Article Critique (25%): Does the student bring in sufficient personal perspective to offer a reasonable critique? Does the student offer a logical or evidence-based response to the article’s author? Is the degree to which the student agrees with the author clear and supported?
Writing Quality (25%): Is the writing college-level? Is the writing clear and free of grammatical errors? Does the student use appropriate word choices and demonstrate a command of the language?
short (2-3 pages, double-spaced, Times New Roman 12 pt. font) response to a “pop” article related to psychology. I will post the article on Brightspace, and you will submit your response electronically as a Word Document (DO NOT paste your response in the comment box – those files are unreadable and will lose 25% per week it is late) on Brightspace via the designated assignment link. More on this assignment soon. Your response paper essentially must contain two sections: 1) a reasonable summary of the article sufficient that it is clear that you read the entire article, 2) a thorough thoughtful expression of your thoughts, feelings, agreement/disagreement with the article’s position or that of the individuals portrayed within; relevance/connection to course material or discussions; how the article has or has not changed your perspective about the article topic; any other unique perspectives you have to offer in response to having read the article
Other tips for writing a better paper:
- Use no more than 1 or 2 direct quotes (preferably none)
- This is scientific writing, not story telling (so don’t be “flowery”)
- If you know you struggle with writing, get someone to read your work before you turn it in (being careful not to get help with the content)
- Make your point as clearly as possibleClarify which points are yours and which are the author’s
Use the article attached for writing the paper.
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