Fall 2020 PSYC100 Musings - 01

 I decided to take a basic PSYC100 course this term at Capilano University. This follows the Philosophy course I took in January 2020, which was relegated to online when the pandemic hit in March.

So, this is a itinerant record of that experience, sort of a psychological study of the new online post-secondary environment, using a psychology course as the vehicle for the study.

First things first: I'm enrolled in 1 of 12 sections of PSYC100, all but one are fully asynchronous online. That is, there are only videos to watch and the textbook to read. No streamed lectures. I'm disappointed by this. The streamed lectures in the previous philosophy course that kicked in when the Pandemic hit worked out quite well.

The start to the term did not go well. I was not enrolled in the class before classes started on Sept 8 (day after Labour day). The Cap Learning Management System(LMS) - Moodle) was down on Labour day (actually I think the single-sign on server was down, Moodle was fine), and was incredibly slow on the first day of classes. 

(This is understandable, and kudos to my new and old colleagues at Cap for at least keeping it up and running on the first day of classes when everything is online. This in itself is one of those remarkable achievements that IT departments routinely pull off with no one the wiser as to the incredible challenge this poses.)

The entire class missed the welcoming Zoom meeting that was supposed to happen Sept 8 morning, probably because the messaging did not come through in time. The instructor sent out another invite at about noon for a similar afternoon meeting. I missed the message, and I don't think it was well attended. 

The videos for the first week are a mix of introductions, Cap specific content, and generic PSYC content from the web. One video lecture I found particularly interesting was the relationship between Philosophy and Psychology (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieE1XMIezV4). Another was Cap specific and introduced me to a new visual of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Good to see there's a sense of humour. 

First week's assignment is to submit a one page document to describe what I thought Psychology was before I started the course, compared to what I now think it is after I've studied the content (videos and textbook) for the first week. Not challenging so far.

One observation that I had before, and was enforced by my readings, is the defensiveness of Psychology professionals in labeling their area of study a science. That is, Psychologists consider their field a science. However, the 'hard' scientists (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) scoff at this notion.