Fall 2006 Advance Course Information

This information effective for Fall 2006. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Psychology

[PSYC-115]

115. Current Topics in Personality and Developmental Psychology: Human Motivation.

Instructor: David M. Harrington
Office Hours: TBA
Phones: 459-5084 (Faculty Services) and 459-4622 (office and laboratory)
E-mail: harring@ucsc.edu

Course Description

In this seminar students take extremely active roles in exploring various aspects of human motivation in a seminar format. Students read assigned materials, co-lead two or more seminar discussions, participate actively in every seminar discussion, write or co-write a midterm essay, and produce a final paper or project exploring some aspect of human motivation which they find particularly interesting.

My Three Primary Goals in Offering this Seminar

1. I want to introduce you to some of the scholarly literature about human motivation so that all of  you will leave this seminar with a deeper and clearer understanding of human motivation, with knowledge of how you might use some of that understanding to improve your life or the lives of other people, and with ideas about some of the important research questions that need to be pursued and how one might pursue them. 

2. In typical lecture courses you learn how to take notes, prepare for multiple choice tests, write in-class essays, and, perhaps, write term papers. In a seminar, on the other hand, you have the opportunity to develop a different set of skills which I believe many of you will find more useful in the world beyond UCSC than those involved in taking notes, preparing for multiple-choice tests and writing in-class essays.

Toward that end, I want this seminar to provide you with repeated opportunities to strengthen the important life skills involved in:

• Expressing, exploring, and developing your own ideas in a group,
• Listening carefully to other people express their ideas and helping them clarify and develop their own ideas in a group, and
• Helping a group create ideas and understandings that no individual member of the group had possessed before the group undertook its collaborative exploration of the topic. In other words, I want to help you learn how to foster productively critical and creative thinking in a group setting.           

Written Work

Students will write one-page responses to each meeting’s assigned reading, a midterm essay, and an 8-10 page final paper. There will be no final exam.

How You Will Be Evaluated

Approximately 50% of your evaluation will be based on your contributions to the intellectual life and emotional health of the seminar, and 50% on the quality and timeliness of your written work.

Students will not be in competition with one another for a pre-determined number of high grades or excellent narrative evaluations. Students will be graded and evaluated in “absolute” rather than comparative terms.

Final Comment

If the topic of human motivation interests you, and if the idea of a seminar in which students play very active leadership roles appeals to you, you may find this an exciting seminar.

[top of page]