PSY 400 Individual Paper

Portfolio Group Influence Assignment This required Portfolio assignment due in Week Four will give you experience observing and interacting with people outside of the classroom. It has been designed to provide you with the opportunity to develop skills, synthesize knowledge, and integrate learning in a real world setting. This assignment accomplishes that goal by challenging you to:

• Observe a group discussing a topic of interest such as a focus group, a community public assembly, a department meeting at your workplace, or local support group

• Study how the group members interact and impact one another

• Analyze how the group behaviors and communication patterns influence social facilitation

• Integrate your findings with evidence-based literature from journal articles, textbook, and additional scholarly sources

Purpose: To provide you with an opportunity to experience a group setting and analyze how the presence of others substantially influences the behaviors of its members through social facilitation.

Process: You will participate as a guest at an interest group meeting

in your community to gather data for a qualitative research paper.

Once you have located an interest group, contact stakeholders and

explain the purpose of your inquiry. After you receive permission to

participate, you will schedule a date to attend the meeting; at which

time you will observe the members and document the following for

your analysis:

o Any assignment that has more than 15% of the paper quoted (properly or improperly) will be subject to a point deduction or discipline action in the case of intentional plagiarism. You may run your paper through the UoPX Plagiarism Detector to ensure compliance.

o Please note the 1200-1500 word assignment is a MINIMUM – as noted in Helpful Hints – A papers go above and beyond the minimum requirements.

o Part I is integrated into your 1200-1500 word minimums. The questions are answered as part of your paper.

o Be sure that you view the rubric for a more thorough discussion of paper requirements.

As this is an upper division psychology class, the proper use of APA formatting will be required and will be a graded focus on all papers within this course. Please be sure to submit the certificate of originality in a SEPARATE file with every assignment. See course for more details.

Here is what our professor posted:

•You are not allowed to use websites, encyclopedias, dictionaries or previous textbooks on your papers – only library peer reviewed research.

•Just to be clear from above – any paper that has anything OTHER than our CURRENT textbook and EXCLUSIVE peer reviewed research will not receive a passing grade – no matter how good it is.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

•I do not have a required number of citations per paper, however, you should DEFINITELY use the textbook and at LEAST ONE peer reviewed journal article that you get from the library for EACH paper. Like the word count, doing one peer reviewed journal article will help you pass the paper. A papers generally go above and beyond, and include 3 or 4 peer reviewed journal articles and NO websites, dictionaries, old textbooks and encyclopedias.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

• Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
• Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
• One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
• I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.

Weekly Participation

• Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
• In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
• Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
• Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.

APA Format and Writing Quality

• Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
• Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
• I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.

Use of Direct Quotes

• I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
• As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
• It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.

 

LopesWrite Policy

• For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
• Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
• Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
• Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

• The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
• Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
• If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
• I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
• As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

• Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: 
  • Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
  • Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.