This document provides an overview of Psyc 300W, a critical analysis writing course at SFU's Department of Psychology. The course is taught by Dr. V. Gordon Rose and several TAs. It will consist of guest lectures from faculty in different psychology areas presenting important issues. Tutorials will focus on critically thinking and writing about these issues. Students will complete weekly writing assignments, online discussions, and a term paper in stages involving drafting, peer review, and revision. The goal is to develop students' abilities to critically read, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and write about psychological issues. Evaluation will be based on the written assignments and participation, not exams.

1. SFU Department of Psychology
Psyc 300W (v. 3.1):
Critical Analysis of Issues in Psychology
Spring 2016
Instructor: Dr. V. Gordon Rose
Office: RCB6151 (no phone)
e-mail: vgrose@sfu.ca
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2:30-3:30
Lectures: Tuesdays, 12:30-2:20, AQ3181
TAs: Emily Hirst (ehirst)
Sara Frankenberger (sfranken)
Emma Leonard (eml7)
Maitland Waddell (mwaddell)
Carleigh Woodward (ckw8)
(?)
Textbooks: – Course readings – on Canvas, or on-line
– Optional lecture notes MAY be made available via Canvas
– In addition, students would be well advised to purchase a copy of the
APA Publication Manual, available at the bookstore.
– Those students who would find a writing manual useful are encouraged
to consider Rosen, L.J. (2012). Academic Writer’s Handbook, 3 ed.rd
(Pearson).
General Description:
The purpose of this writing-intensive course is to train students to critically analyse and write
about important issues in psychology. The course will consist of guest lectures from faculty
members in different areas of psychology (e.g., biological, cognitive, developmental, law &
psychology, social, theory & methods) presenting a range of important issues in psychology
related to their areas of research, including historical and theoretical background. Tutorials will
be structured around the process of thinking and writing critically about these issues. Students
should be prepared to do considerable writing, and to have examples of their writing shown
(anonymously) in class for feedback and instructional purposes. Registration in the course is
taken to be consent by the student to having examples of their work used in this (anonymous)
fashion. Regular attendance, compliance with deadlines, and participation in labs, lectures, and
on-line discussion are necessary to achieve an acceptable result in this course.
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2. Course Goals:
In Psyc 300W, I have a number of rather ambitious goals for students, some goals for the TAs,
and even a few goals for myself! Hopefully, each assignment and component of the course can be
understood as attempting to advance one or more of these goals.
1. Goals for Students:
– To develop or enhance your ability to read sometimes difficult material, often from
primary sources, in psychology and related fields of science. This includes particularly
material in areas you may be unfamiliar and uncomfortable with, such as biological or
mathematical psychology. To gain a reasonable level of understanding about the points
and arguments made in such material, and to gain confidence in your ability to do so.
– To develop or enhance the ability to accurately and succinctly summarize complex
arguments and supporting evidence.
– To develop or enhance your ability to analyze and critically evaluate the arguments and
evidence presented by others.
– To develop or enhance your ability to synthesize a position from multiple sources.
– To develop or enhance your ability to adopt a position (i.e., to state a strong thesis), and
to solidly support that thesis with evidence and logical argument. To practice and enhance
research skills ancillary to constructing a strong scientific argument.
– To gain confidence in stating and arguing your position and in critically evaluating the
positions of others in public discussion/debate.
– To develop or enhance your ability to analyze and critically evaluate your own
arguments and evidence, through the analysis and evaluation of the writing of others
(published authors AND peers!).
– To practice the steps necessary for effective academic writing (including incubation,
research, peer review, and revision).
– To gain a sophisticated understanding of several issues from a diverse range of areas in
contemporary psychology, based on the guest lectures and associated readings, and to
master the evidence and arguments regarding at least one psychological issue of personal
interest through the preparation of a substantial term paper project.
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3. 2. Goals for TAs:
– To develop or enhance skills in reading, assessing, and evaluating student thesis-based
writing, and in providing revision-oriented feedback to support student development.
– To explore and consider teaching-related issues with a view to developing a repertoire
of solutions or approaches to typical issues or problems, and thereby increase confidence
in core skills related to teaching.
– To become competent and confident teachers in their own right.
3. Goals for the Instructor:
– To model good practices of scientific skepticism in making and assessing arguments in
psychology.
– To create an environment that will encourage students to openly express ideas, but also
to be discerning when evaluating arguments and evidence. To impart enthusiasm for
psychology. To help students enjoy learning for its own sake. To expect excellence, and
to reward risk.
– Bean (2001) discusses “the view of academic life implied by writing across the
curriculum, where writing means joining a conversation of persons who are, in important
ways, fundamentally disagreeing,” and where “a thesis implies a counter thesis and ... the
presence of opposing voices implies a view of knowledge as dialogic, contingent,
ambiguous, and tentative.” My role as a teacher, then, is to encourage students to enter
into this academic debate, and to help them develop and strengthen the necessary skills.
– To develop TAs as teachers, giving them instructional responsibilities, but also the
support to properly exercise those responsibilities.
Evaluation:
Weekly Critical Readings Evaluations 40%
Weekly In-class writing 5%
On-line discussion and participation 5%
Term paper (several components): 50%
Exploratory paper 5%
Peer-Review process 10%
First Submission 15%
Final Submission 15%
Review Responses (2.5% ) 5%
______________________________________________
TOTAL 100%
There are no exams in this course.
Letter grades will be assigned based on your performance relative to your classmates.
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4. Lectures and Lecture Responses:
Lectures will generally be broken into two parts: the first 50 minutes or so will involve the lecture
proper, often delivered by other faculty members in the Department of Psychology. Students will
then spend about 5 minutes on a “freewrite” – a brief summary of the lecture and their reactions
to it. It is not expected that these summaries will be written in formally exact English – these are
“low-stakes” assignments, intended to help students focus on the main ideas conveyed in the
lecture and think about them in a critical way. These assignments give students practice in
“thinking out loud on paper.” We will then engage in a open discussion about issues arising from
the lecture and readings.
Critical Readings Evaluations:
Students will submit critical evaluations of the assigned readings each week in advance of the
corresponding lectures. The purpose of this requirement is encourage students to carefully read,
reflect on, and respond to the assigned readings in preparation for class.
Tutorials:
Tutorials are scheduled for 110 minutes, and will generally involve instruction on and practice in
the writing process, along with discussion and argument on the week’s lecture and readings.
Most weeks will allow some time for consultation with TAs.
Term Paper:
This course is designed around the term paper assignment. The paper will be completed in several
stages, designed to teach the process of writing a typical thesis-based research paper in
psychology. The various steps will include an Exploratory Paper, a Peer-Review exercise, a First
Submission with Peer-Review Response, and a Final Submission with TA Review Response.
More information on these components is contained in the “Tutorial Handbook.”
Attendance, Deadlines, Excuses and Absences:
Obviously, there are many assignments in this course, both formal and informal. As a result, the
marking workload for the TA s is very heavy. In order to manage that workload, it is essential
that deadlines for all assignments be respected. Although your TAs will mark assignments that
are up to a week late, you should not expect your TA to give comments or feedback on such
assignments.
Extensions on assignment deadlines will be granted only for legitimate excuses, where satisfactory
documentation is provided. There must be a clear association between the excuse provided and
the inability to complete the assignment in a timely manner. The official documentation must
clearly show that the excuse extended for the entire period for which the student is requesting the
deadline or late-penalty be waived.
Students who are seeking to excuse missed deadlines on medical reasons must submit an SFU
“Health Care Provider Statement,” signed by a doctor, and available at:
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5. www.cs.sfu.ca/~oschulte/teaching/320-09/medical-excuse.pdf
No other form is acceptable. If you are going to miss the paper exchange or peer-review tutorials
for medical reasons, you are expected to advise your TA IN ADVANCE! Notwithstanding
anything else in this syllabus, no paper or assignment will be accepted more than one week late (in
the absence of a properly documented valid excuse), and no assignments will be accepted after the
last official day of classes.
Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty:
Academic dishonesty in all forms violates the basic principles of integrity, thus impeding learning.
Academic dishonesty includes cheating, fabrication, fraud, facilitating academic dishonesty, and
plagiarism. For example, submitting the same (or very similar) assignments for credit in two
different courses is a form of academic dishonesty, even if you wrote both papers. (In this regard,
please note that if you are taking this class for a second time, you must write your term paper this
semester on a DIFFERENT topic than you selected before.) Failure to indicate a quotation, or to
acknowledge the source of your ideas is plagiarism. ALL materials submitted in this course are
subject to the requirements of SFU’s of academic honesty policies (and, without restricting the
generality of the foregoing, this includes weekly CREs, the Exploratory Paper, both submissions
of the Term Paper and the version subject to Peer Review, as well as any drafts shown to TA s or
the course instructor.) Students are also cautioned not to incorporate classmates’ posts from
Canvas into their CREs without attribution.
Academic dishonesty is dealt with under the University’s Policies and Procedures Relating to
Student Discipline (S10-01 through S10-03). Penalties may include a warning, a requirement to
redo the work or complete supplementary work, a reduced grade, an “F”, an “FD”, denial of
admission to the University, de-registration, forfeiture of awards or assistance, or suspension or
permanent suspension from the University. Students should review the relevant University
policies, available on the SFU website at:
http://www.sfu.ca/policies
The SFU Library’s Plagiarism Tutorial and Quiz is no longer a required part of this course, but
the tutorial is still available via our Canvas container, and students are encouraged to take the few
minutes required to go through the tutorial. We will assume that students understand the
information presented in that tutorial.
This semester, for the first time, we will be requiring that all assignments be submitted to Turnitin
before being handed in for grading.
Written work for this course will be submitted via Turnitin, a third party service
licensed for use by SFU. Turnitin is used for originality checking to help detect
plagiarism. Students will be required to create an account with Turnitin, and to
submit their work via that account, on the terms stipulated in the agreement
between the student and Turnitin. This agreement includes the retention of your
submitted work as part of the Turnitin database. Any student with a concern about
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6. using the Turnitin service may opt to use an anonymous identity in their
interactions with Turnitin. Students who do not intend to use Turnitin in the
standard manner must notify the instructor at least two weeks in advance of any
submission deadline. In particular, it is the responsibility of any student using the
anonymous option (i.e. false name and temporary e-mail address created for the
purpose) to inform the instructor such that the instructor can match up the
anonymous identity with the student.
Students can find information about using Turnitin here:
https://www.sfu.ca/tlc/technology/turnitin.html
This week in tutorial, your TAs will give you the class codes and passwords you need to set up
your student accounts.
Written assignments that have not been submitted first to Turnitin will not be assessed. The
standard late penalties will apply to assignments until they have both been filed with Turnitin
AND submitted via Canvas (or in person where required).
Canvas:
This course will use Canvas for access to materials, to post marks, and as a discussion forum.
You will also be submitting many assignments electronically via Canvas. TAs will provide more
information on the use of Canvas in this course.
Email Policy:
It can be difficult to respond to questions that cannot be answered in a couple of sentences.
Questions requiring longer replies should be asked in class or brought to the instructor or TAs
during office hours.
Please include the name of the course in your message headers, and PLEASE SIGN your
messages! I do not usually respond to email (or any other business correspondence) that is
unsigned. If your message does not clearly address the content of the course, or the subject line is
simply “hi,” or if it is not sent from an @sfu.ca email address, there is a good chance that your
message will be automatically classified as SPAM and discarded without my ever seeing it. In
particular, messages from hotmail, g-mail, or other similar accounts may be discarded
automatically by my SPAM filter. I am more likely to respond in a timely manner if you send me
e-mail, as opposed to leaving messages on Canvas.
Instructors and TAs should not be expected to respond to messages late in the evening or on
weekends. If a message is sent late on Friday afternoon or during the weekend, students should
not expect to receive a response until the following week. Although we do our best to respond to
inquiries in a timely manner, students should understand that due to the large volume of e-mail
we receive, it may several days before an instructor can reply to their message, particularly if it
requires a considered response.
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7. Please proof-read your messages so that your questions are clear, and please word your messages
in an appropriately polite and respectful manner. Before asking a question, please ensure that the
information was not presented in class or in the course handouts. Please note that I do not speak
“text.”
Suggestions:
This course has a fairly heavy reading load, and assignment deadlines weekly. It is important that
you plan your workload and schedule to allow you to do your reading, writing and research in a
timely manner. If you fail to keep up with the readings and your assignments, it is unlikely that
you will do well in the course.
A Word of Encouragement:
The course does require a fair bit of work, and a strict adherence to deadlines. However, it is not
as daunting as may seem to you at this moment. As one student wrote at the end of the first
offering of the course in Spring, 2006:
During the first lecture of the course, I was thinking “What have I gotten myself
into – there is no way I can do well in a writing intensive course!” However, as
the course progressed, my fear began to subside, and I began to enjoy the class.
The course ended up being one of my favourites this semester. I am glad I took
the course as now I am no longer afraid to write critically.
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