Portfolio Assignment (PA) (35 pts.)
The purpose of this exercise is to identify your learning goals, write reaction papers to various readings, and assess your learning progress. You will demonstrate your ability to conduct a computerized psychological library search, evaluate your sources, and write a research paper with citations and a bibliography. This will help to develop your research, analytic, and evaluative skills.
PA1. Learning Goal Selection (Week 3) (10 pts.)
 | From the textbook chapters covered this quarter, pick one that looks interesting to you |
| What do you want to learn about a chosen topic? |
| Use and identify the following sections in this part of the assignment: |
| A. Choose a topic of interest (e.g. "mnemonic devices") |
| B. Specify at least three things you want to learn about the topic (learning goals) (e.g. "whether mnemonic devices produce long-term retention.") |
| C. Hypothesis statement(s) or What you suspect to be true. |
PA2. Between Week 3 and Week 8 Identify and locate resources related to the learning goal. Show to Dr. G. (Part of Reaction Paper grade)
| a. library resources -- must have at least one journal article from the library, |
| b. internet resources |
| c. book chapter or magazine articles |
PA3. Reaction papers (Week 10) (25 pts.)
| Use and identify the following sections in this part of the assignment: |
| A. Brief summary of each article, book chapter, etc. |
| B. Reiterate the learning goals and describe how well you were able to attain them. If you haven't achieved your stated goals, explain why not. |
| C. Describe what you have learned from this assignment about the topic. |
| D. Evaluate each source by judging the author's expertise, the source's professional association, etc. |
| E Revise the goals based on your recent research. (Describe what further questions have been generated from the researched sources.) |
| F. Describe the difficulties you encountered in your research. |
| G. Bibliography in APA-style format |
Type this assignment. Write in complete sentences, paragraphs, etc.. Label each section A-G.
Include all copies of the articles and PsychInfo printouts with your submission of the Final Paper. Staple them to the end of the assignment.