The assignments in this course are openly licensed, and are available as-is, or can be modified to suit your students’ needs. Selected answer keys are available to faculty who adopt Waymaker, OHM, or Candela courses with paid support from Lumen Learning. This approach helps us protect the academic integrity of these materials by ensuring they are shared only with authorized and institution-affiliated faculty and staff.
If you import this course into your learning management system (Blackboard, Canvas, etc.), the assignments will automatically be loaded into the assignment tool, where they may be adjusted, or edited there. Assignments also come with rubrics and pre-assigned point values that may easily be edited or removed.
The assignments for Introductory Psychology are ideas and suggestions to use as you see appropriate. Some are larger assignments spanning several weeks, while others are smaller, less-time consuming tasks. You can view them below or throughout the course.
You can view them below or throughout the course.
| Module | Discussion | Assignment |
|---|---|---|
| Psychological Foundations |
Explain behavior from 3 perspectives |
Watch a TED talk |
| Psychological Research |
Describe and discuss a PLOS research article |
Compare a popular news article with research article |
| Biopsychology |
Describe parts of the brain involved in daily activities |
Create a visual/infographic about a part of the brain *larger assignment |
| State of Consciousness |
Describe sleep stages and ways to improve sleep |
Track and analyze sleep and dreams. Record sleep habits and dreams a minimum of 3 days. *larger assignment, needs introduction at least 1 week prior to due date |
| Sensation and Perception |
Demonstrate cultural differences in perception. *If used in conjnuction with the “Perception and Illusions” assignment, this post could ask students to bring in examples/evidence from the illusion task |
Apply Food Lab research and the Delbouef Illusion to recommend plate size and dinner set-up. Apply an understanding of Martin Doherty’s research on developmental and cross-cultural effects in the Ebbinghaus illusion. Find an illusion, describe it, and explain whether or not it may show cross-cultural effects. |
| Thinking and Intelligence |
Choose to respond to two questions from a list |
Describe 3 smart people and analyze what contributes to their intelligence.
Examine an experiment about cognitive overload and decision-making when given many options. |
| Memory |
Create a mnemonic and explain an early childhood memory |
Apply knowledge from module on memory, thinking and intelligence, and states of consciousness to help a struggling student. |
| Learning |
Write examples of something learned through classical, operant, and observational learning |
Spend at least 10 days using conditioning principles to break or make a habit. *requires sufficient time (10 days) of working on changing behavior, and should be introduced with two weeks of advanced notice. |
| Lifespan Development |
Pick an age and describe the age along with developmental theories and if you agree or disagree with the theoretical designations |
Find toys for a child of 6 months, 4 years, and 8 years, then explain theories for the age and why the toys are appropriate. |
| Social Psychology |
Pick one question to respond to out of 4 options |
Create a shortened research proposal for a study in social psychology (or one that tests common proverbs). *larger assignment, possibly the largest assignment. Could be broken into multiple parts and given advanced notice. |
| Personality |
Use two of the theories presented in the text to analyze the Grinch’s personality |
Take two personality tests then analyze their validity and reliability.
Examine various types of validity and design a new way to test the validity of the Blirt test. |
| Emotion and Motivation |
What motivates you to do your schoolwork? |
Demonstrate the James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Schachter-Singer, and cognitive-mediational theories of emotion.
Take a deeper look at the Carol Dweck study on mindset and analyze how the results may appear different if the control benchmark varied. |
| Industrial-Organizational Psychology |
Pick a favorite I/O topic or give advice on conducting an interview |
Investigate and reflect on KSAs needed for future job. |
| Psychological Disorders |
Diagnose a fictional character with a psychological disorder |
Research one disorder and create an “At-a-Glance” paper about the main points. |
| Therapy and Treatment |
Choose to respond to one of four questions |
Describe 3 different treatment methods for the fictional character diagnosed for the “Diagnosing Disorders” discussion. *This assignment builds off of the discussion assignment in the previous module, in which students “diagnosed” a fictional character with a psychological disorder. |
| Stress, Lifestyle, and Health |
Give advice on managing stress or increasing happiness |
Pick from three options to do things related to tracking stress and time management. *requires advanced noticed |
Discussion Grading Rubric
The discussions in the course vary in their requirements and design, but this rubric below may be used and modified to facilitate grading.
| Criteria | Poor | Good | Excellent | Points |
| Responds to prompt | Response is superficial, lacking in analysis or critique. Contributes few novel ideas, connections, or applications. | Provides an accurate response to the prompt, but the information delivered is limited or lacking in analysis. | Provides a thoughtful and clear response to the content or question asked. The response includes original thoughts and novel ideas. | __/4 |
| Supporting Details | Includes vague or incomplete supporting evidence or fails to back opinion with facts. | Supports opinions with details, though connections may be unclear, not firmly established, or explicit. | Supports response with evidence; makes connections to the course content and/or other experiences. Cites evidence when appropriate. | __/2 |
| Comments and participation | Provides brief responses or shows little effort to participate in the learning community. | Responds kindly and builds upon the comments from others, but may lack depth, detail, and/or explanation. | Kindly and thoroughly extend discussions already taking place or poses new possibilities or opinions not previously voiced. Responses are substantive and constructive. | __/4 |
| Total | __/10 |
