Attendance and participation in the class are worth 11.5% of your final grade. You can earn credit for attendance and participation either by attending class and speaking or by responding to a post on the course blog. Grades are computed by giving you a score each day: 0 for an unexcused absence, 0.5 for an excused absence, 0.8 for coming late, 1 for attending and not speaking, 1.3 for some participation, and 1.5 for outstanding participation. Responses to the blog posts receive 0.2 additional points. Your participation score is the average of your in-class score plus the average of your blog score.

Psychology is the science that seeks to understand behavior and mental processes. Since its beginnings in the 19th century, psychology has become a group of specialized topic areas, ranging in scale from the molecular (biopsychology) to the global (cultural psychology). In this course, you will be taken on a tour of several of these areas. Your objectives for this course are to:

1. Acquire a working knowledge of basic psychological principles and findings
2. Learn the methods of psychological research and use them to become an educated consumer of psychological research
3. Develop your critical thinking skills and motivation for learning
   

Mynatt, C. R., & Doherty, M. E. (2002). Understanding human behavior (2nd edition). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.