Hi, everyone. My name is Andy Tix,
and I am really honored and thrilled to be your professor for this course,
and I'm really excited to welcome you to Introduction to Psychology.
I also want to welcome you to my home
and I want to point out some things
to help you to maybe get to know me a little bit better.
So you can see behind me, some bookshelves,
and I guess it's not that surprising that a professor would love books,
but that is true for me.
And you can see some pictures of people that I love, my family and friends.
You can see there's kind of a farm feel here,
and in the back, we've got a windmill, which reflects the fact that my wife and I
are both from small rural areas in Minnesota.
I'm from a small town of 300, my wife is from a farm and so,
you know, I just want you to start to get to know me in ways
that my face-to-face students probably won't.
And the reason why I bring this up at the outset is that, in an online course,
this is definitely a possibility.
In online courses,
there are opportunities to connect,
to get to know each other at a deeper level,
to share stories and questions that reflect, in some ways,
more of where we're really at as people and to be kind of more honest and raw
in how we're trying to work through the material for the course.
You will probably notice that this is common in this course
and that, rather than just a select few sharing,
kind of everybody shares because the setup allows for that.
And so, this promises to be really an adventure here this term
and you'll be surprised at how the ideas and the concepts relate to your life
and relate to other people's lives in ways that really bring out our humanity
and really get us thinking and sharing
and thinking through kind of how to approach life,
so something to look forward to.
And this really promises to be a terrific experience for all of us.
I've been reading through some of the initial work
through the this first week's application assignment
and reading through stories and questions,
and I thought I'd take this opportunity here today
to just address some preliminary concerns and questions that seem to be bubbling up.
So the first question I see coming up in different forms is:
"Can this really be an engaging course, given that it's completely online,
given that we will never meet as a class together all at the same time?"
And so, I want to address that question in a couple different ways.
So psychology is, by definition,
the scientific study of behavior and mental process.
And as such, in psychology,
we address some really fascinating questions,
and I've organized this course around four of those questions, and I thought,
kind of as a way to introduce a course, I could mention those questions
and give you kind of a sense for what we're going to be doing in this course.
So the first question we're going to discuss in this course after we get through
some of this preliminary getting used to things kind of stuff is: How do we know we know?
It's a really essential question,
and you know, when you think about
all the different claims about what is true in the world
and all the different things people believe,
how do you figure out what is true?
It's really core to us as people
and it's really core to the discipline of psychology.
Because of that, there --
Because, of course, there are all sorts of ideas
about what is true about behavior.
And so we need a method to determine for ourselves
and also in the discipline of psychology
what is true so that we can start to create
knowledge and have a firm foundation to base our lives and
our applications of knowledge off of.
So we're going to start there.
The second question we're going to go into pretty shortly after that is:
How can students thrive in school?
And this is maybe something you have wondered about in the past.
I know some students have struggled in school
and some students have done really well,
and in this unit, we're going to reflect on what might contribute to that,
what might distinguish between those who fail versus those who get by,
versus those who thrive in school.
And so, as a part of that,
we're going to be looking at the science of student success,
and we'll be studying topics such as motivation
(what motivates students and how those motives might affect student success)
as well as memory, human memory,
because a lot of what happens in school actually are memory tests,
and so, students who have a better memory
(who know how to study better to have an accurate detailed memory for tests) do better,
and based on the science of memory, we can apply some of what we know
to help people to remember better and hopefully, then, perform better in school.
Later in the semester, we're going to study stress,
and, of course, stress can interfere with our ability to do well in school.
And so, we'll be considering
how some people can respond more effectively to stress than others
and how we can learn from that to hopefully do better as students in school.
The third question is kind of
the bread-and-butter core question of psychology, and that is:
"Why do people do what they do?"
And maybe you've thought about that for yourself.
You know, sometimes you do something and you think: "Well, why did I do that?"
or you observe someone else and you think: "Why do they do that?"
And sometimes, this question takes more specific forms, such as:
"Why are men and women different in certain ways?"
or "Why are some people more likely to be depressed
and other people less likely to be depressed?"
This all kind of has to do with why people do what they do
or why people are who they are
or why people have the traits that they do.
And so, we'll be looking at this
from the classic perspective of the nature/nurture debate --
nature having to do with biology,
so we'll be studying things like genetics and the brain;
and then nurture has to do with life experience back,
early childhood factors, situational factors that elicit behavior --
and we'll be trying to understand
how nature and nurture come together and interact
to ultimately influence why people do what they do.
The fourth question is: "How can we all be happy?"
Of course, happiness is something
that humans often almost universally strive for in their lives.
And so, we're going to be studying different kinds of topics that might
help us understand why some people are more likely to be happy than others,
and then to apply that knowledge
to hopefully increase happiness in ourselves and others.
We'll be looking at psychological disorders and psychological treatment.
We'll be looking at close relationships and how that relates to happiness.
We'll be discussing things like gratitude and exercise
and how people respond to stress.
And so, all of that hopefully will lead us in the end of the course to some ideas
about what we can do with our own lives
to bring about more happiness for ourselves and others.
So, I think, when you think about those four questions,
you'll agree, these are intriguing questions.
These are questions that you think about outside of school.
And so, in this course, we're just going to be looking at those questions
more systematically through the help of,
really, the best thinking and the best science in the history of psychology,
and then looking at our own experience and considering how that relates to all of that.
My story is that when I was an undergraduate at the University Wisconsin,
I was actually an accounting major going into business school,
and I needed to take Introduction to Psychology as a prerequisite
(like I imagine a lot of you are taking this course as a prerequisite
for some other program).
But what I found was that maybe a month or two into the course,
I had fallen in love with psychology and these questions,
probably because, more than anything else --
and I would still say this after having went to school for many years --
Introduction to Psychology was the one course I ever took
where every single class and every single topic
seemed to relate to my life
and I would always leave thinking to myself: "I have a slightly different perspective now"
or "I have a different idea about how to approach something more effectively,"
and I loved that.
I loved being able to apply material to life, to think differently,
to act differently, to kind of be a better person.
Now, I don't suspect that you will become a psychology major
or go into psychology like I did.
I assume that this will be the only psychology course you ever take,
and so I've organized the course
to give everybody kind of a sense of the best of psychology.
And so, you'll be hopefully exposed
to some of the best thinking and the best research,
hopefully really engaging discussion,
that will have you have a similar experience that I did,
where you feel like you can really connect with what we're studying
and relate it back to your life
and hopefully leave the course a little bit better,
a little bit more likely to live well, which is kind of the ultimate hope.
Now, another way of answering this question about whether this can be an engaging course
is to kind of think about how I have organized the course for you.
And so, I just want to mention briefly, I've really tried carefully to select readings
that will help you, that are relevant.
I've tried to eliminate anything from the book that might not be as helpful or relevant,
so you'll see that I've only actually assigned a portion of the book
and decided instead to supplement with a lot of additional resources.
So I have written personal reflections for different topics
about what studying that material has meant to me personally,
which I hope you'll enjoy.
I will be producing some audiovisuals,
I'll be producing videos, I'll be creating podcasts (audio-only podcasts)
where I reflect also and answer common questions that students have.
I've assigned, I think, some of the best audiovisuals in psychology --
TED Talks and podcasts --
that will give you different way of learning material
so that if you don't like to read as much,
maybe you'll like the TED Talks or the podcasts
or you know, there's kind of a diversity
of ways we'll be approaching this in this course.
You have assignments -- reflection assignments, application assignments, dialogue assignments --
that will encourage you to get more deeply involved in the course.
And so, hopefully, all of this will come together
and really make for an engaging experience for you
where you will leave the course somehow different and better than you are now.
The second question that I see kind of bubbling up in the discussions is just:
"What exactly do I do here? How do I know what to do in this course?"
And there's a couple sources I'll point you to.
So first of all, on D2L in the Announcements section, there will be updates.
And so, if you're watching this video on D2L now, if you look up,
you'll probably see the word "Announcements,"
and so, if you scroll down, you'll see previous announcements I've made.
If this happens to be the first announcement you've seen,
go down, and I've been writing about what to do and when to do it.
This is what I'll be doing throughout the term.
Check D2L in the Announcements regularly,
and I will be posting what to do, when to do it,
including the links and where to go and everything.
Oftentimes, I'll be referring to the syllabus,
and really, the syllabus is the most important document for the course.
In fact, if you haven't already read the syllabus,
the first thing I would do when finishing this video is, go to the syllabus.
You can see it in my previous announcements,
Or if you go under Content and then Course Information, you'll see a link to the syllabus.
Read the whole syllabus through in its entirety, in detail, and it will
answer a lot of your questions about what to do, what's going to be coming.
At the very end of the syllabus
is a schedule where I list in order --
basically in a recommended order of what to do --
what you'll need to do, and when you need to do it by.
And in fact, maybe you could even print off the syllabus and
just check off one thing after the other in the schedule
so that you can keep up on what you're supposed to be doing.
So that's the way I would kind of approach that.
I would just do one thing after the other,
and before you know it, the semester will be over
and hopefully, it'll be a very meaningful experience.
Finally, I just want to close by mentioning,
especially in an online course, I think you really get out of it what you put in.
And so, it is possible to go through this course
and kind of just do the minimal work and get the points,
but it's also possible to go above and beyond and really invest yourself,
really make a decision to be vulnerable
and to share and to ask heartfelt questions
and sometimes even post more than you're expected to,
to really thrive in this course.
I'm hoping that each of you will connect with me somehow or other --
face-to-face, over the phone, Skype -- there's different ways we can do that.
You'll see my contact information at the top right of D2L always,
and that provides when I'm available and how I'm available.
And if you ever have thoughts or questions to share,
I really hope that you will reach out to me.
I want to know how the course is affecting you, and I want to know,
as we go through the course,
what you're thinking and what questions you're having
above and beyond just what you're posting and doing for assignments.
I want to kind of check in and help you to get the most out of this course as you can.
So I hope you'll be in touch,
and if you ever have any questions, please let me know. END