Assignment Overview: This semester, you will write a series of five papers, with each paper building on (and sometimes reusing) material from prior papers. To make sure your first paper (Paper I: Literature Review) provides a good foundation for subsequent papers, this “Read Aloud Assignment” focuses on helping you know what to write and how to write it. Grading is pass / fail: Just make sure to complete all four steps below to earn all assignment points. You will also have a good start on your first paper!
For this “Read Aloud Assignment”, I want you to complete four steps (see the Assignment #3 instructions for more details)
Step One: I want you to upload your first full page of Paper I. Submit your one-page document by uploading the paper file to Canvas.
Step Two: I want you to read your page aloud to another person. Then have your reader complete the six “Questions For Your Listener” survey
Step Three: To make sure you have a good grasp of your study hypotheses, I want you to tell your reader what your study is about in your own words and then ask them whether the first page of your paper does a good job setting up or leading into those hypotheses
Step Four: Finally, you will rate several statements about your own writing
Lecture and Lab Presentations:
The main lecture content this week is Chapter E (CCP) and Chapter 7 (Salkind), both on developing research ideas. Please note that the order of the class lecture material for the Salkind textbook may differ from the order of chapters in that book, so make sure to keep an eye on the syllabus so you know which chapters we are covering each week. Both Chapter B and Chapter 7 talk about research hypotheses, where will discuss the components needed for a good research hypothesis. That is, it is a very specific statement that predicts outcomes, often by comparison to control groups.
Your Week Two lab presentation focuses on your Social Loafing (Loafing) study predictions. Read all presentations early so you don’t fall behind. A quick note: As you read the lab material, look at the hypothesis for your Social Loafing study and see if it meets all of the requirements for a good hypothesis presented in your lecture material!
Papers:
You should be working on your first paper by now. Paper I: Study One Literature Review will be due Monday, September 19th. There are example papers, instructions, grade rubrics, and a checklist available online to help you with this paper, but it is important to get an early start on it! I talk about the paper a lot more in the lab powerpoint presentations, so make sure you know what goes into this paper. I’ll highlight a few of those elements below, but your best bet is to review the materials online right now to make sure you have a good start on the paper.
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⦁ Look over the instructions and the example papers carefully and make sure you follow those requirements. Your title page should be in APA format (including proper headers, page numbers, and title elements). Note that all class materials were revised right before this semester session to accommodate the new 7th Edition of the American Psychological Association Publication Manual. If you look at the example papers, you’ll find that they align with the 7th edition now, as does the APA formatting powerpoint presentation. I also included an example paper published by the APA with additional notes in case you would like to see yet another example.
⦁ I STRONGLY recommend you watch the APA formatting video. You can find it by clicking ⦁ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrh5OC3T6dc (Links to an external site.)⦁ It takes 10 minutes and will save you a lot of headaches in the future if you learn how to format early in the semester!
⦁ I want to give you some hints about the paper. Make sure your title page is PERFECT. It has very specific standards, and we will mark off a point for each error. Your second page starts the main body of your paper. There are some important APA format aspects here as well (the header is a little different, but you repeat your title).The main paper starts broadly and narrows toward the end. That is, I suggest giving an overview of Social Loafing early, defining the concept. Then discuss five studies in this area, all the time narrowing down as you near the end of the paper. Your hypothesis comes at the end of the paper. I gave this hypothesis to you in your experimenter script, so feel free to copy and paste it. The pages leading up to that hypothesis, though, should be your own work, and they should help support your hypotheses. Finally, your references start on their own page, with a lot of APA format requirements here. Review the APA formatting lecture to make sure you reference correctly.
⦁ My best piece of advice for this paper is to write it as if your reader knows nothing about Social Loafing, but also write it as if they do know about research methods. Your APA formatting should be perfect, as your reader will be familiar with the general organization of an empirical APA research report, but you have to “teach them” about Social Loafing in your literature review. Don’t assume they know a lot about the topic – YOU will educate them on it. When I submit my own papers to journals, I have to do the same thing – the editors know a lot about psychology but not always a lot about my specific topic. Potential journal readers are the same way. Thus my audience is APA knowledgeable but not necessarily topic-knowledgeable. Keep that in mind as you write your papers. In addition, there is a checklist on Canvas that walks you through each segment of the paper. If you can check “YES” to all items on the checklist then you have a great chance of getting a good paper grade. The checklist highlights both content as well as APA style. You’ll find a similar checklist for all papers in this course. I highly suggest you use them!
Discussions:
None this week!
Assignments:
Assignment #3 (Read Aloud Assignment). There are a few different “due dates” for Assignment #3, though the official Canvas-based due date is Sunday, September 11th. For Assignment #3, you need to write the first page of your literature review for Paper I, and you need to write it quickly! One of our course goals is to help you write clearly, thoughtfully, and properly in APA format. To accomplish this, we designed this Assignment #3, which asks you to first write your first page for Paper I and then read that whole page out loud to another person of your choosing (classmate, friend, family member, etc.). Because your official Assignment #3 deadline is September 11th, I recommend having the first page written no later than Friday and then reading it aloud to another person by Saturday. That will give you time to work on the question associated with Assignment #3 so that you can turn it in on Sunday).
Note #1: See the assignment instructions for more information, but my hope is that you will learn that reading your writing aloud is a great tool for making sure it is clear and precise. You will get some feedback on your paper from your listener, and you will provide ratings about your experience in Canvas. Make sure to carefully read the assignment instructions now so that you will be ready to submit it on Sunday.
Note #2: If the person you recruit to listen to your “read aloud” assignment will be one of your participants, then make sure to have them complete your survey (for Assignment #4) before you read them the first page of your paper. You are welcome to have them do both, but you don’t want them to learn about your study by listening to your read aloud assignment before they participate in the study.