Advanced Topics in Psychology III (PSYC4883)

Your participation is critical to the success of this class. Contributing to class discussion facilitates your own learning, as well as that of your classmates. Participation allows further development of your analytical and critical thinking, and provides great practice in effectively communicating ideas to a group (an important skill in nearly every workplace).

How will you evaluate my participation? 

Clearly, you must participate in class if you are going to share your ideas with others. However, there is no need to speak frequently in every class session. The best contributors are not necessarily the most active speakers. Please note that your grade here depends much more on the quality of your comments rather than the quantity. In other words, participate when you have something meaningful to contribute, but do not talk just for the sake of talking.

Thoughtful participation is also about how you respond to and expand on the ideas of your peers. To develop ideas and understanding as a class we must discuss as a collective, not as opponents—being an intellectual team player also means working with and helping to develop the contributions of your peers, not merely focussing on generating your own ideas.

Your comments in class should be made in a respectful, mature, and professional manner towards everyone at all times, but especially in instances of disagreement.

To ensure your active participation in class each week, you must reflect on the content of the reading before class. To facilitate your class preparation, you must submit a short (no more than one paragraph) response to the assigned case by Thursday at 3pm. All submissions are via Turnitin. This response should focus on one of the question prompts provided for the case that week. Your response does not need to be beautifully written -- the goal is simply to show that you've read and thought about the case.

In sum, my assessment of your participation will be based on your overall contribution to class as well as your response to the reading prompt. Attendance is necessary, but not sufficient, to attain your participation marks.

What about COVID and the flu and all the other ways in which life may get in the way of my stellar participation?

If you have a legitimate reason for missing class contact me to discuss alternative arrangements.

Students will work in groups of 2 or 3 to lead the case analysis and discussion each week. Plan to lead the class for an hour and forty minutes (including a short break). As discussion leaders, you must:

• Carefully read the assigned case.

• Create discussion questions and activities (be creative! think about what would make the class fun for your peers) to facilitate the class analysis of the case.

• Connect with the empirical literature to provide evidence-based recommendations for how the organisation should respond to the issues it’s facing. For example, if a primary issue in the case centres on employee motivation, you will need to acquaint yourself with some of the key theories and research literature on employee motivation. I am happy to provide suggestions to your group to help you get started, but you will have a lot of latitude on the topics you cover.

Your ‘job’ is to lead a class discussion to analyse the weekly case (as a starting point, I have provided the class with specific questions to accompany each case). In analysing the case, you will need to integrate and make sense of the case in the context of the current literature. It may be that a clear answer emerges (e.g., the company should implement the new compensation system it’s considering) or it may be that there is no clear consensus regarding a particular workplace issue with which the organisation is wrestling (a very common outcome!). When that happens, you should show how different theories and/or research point to different recommendations. You might even identify how future studies could be conducted to help shed novel insights into the case. If you do your job well as discussion leaders, you won’t have to tell the class what the answers are, rather you will lead the class to find those answers.

As described in the section on participation, students not presenting must demonstrate they have read (and reflected on!) the weekly case through active and informed participation in the class activities and discussion.

When preparing for your seminar discussion/case analysis, remember the following:

• Read your allocated case carefully and develop discussion questions and break-out activities to lead the class through an analysis of the case. There may be jargon in the case that you initially don’t understand. Remember that your classmates won’t either. Part of the assignment is to learn these unfamiliar terms and be able to explain them to the class.
• There is no need to provide a comprehensive review of the entire field of research (e.g., a detailed description of all the theories that could be relevant). Focus on your case and pay particular attention to the theories/research that are most illuminating. Having said that, you should read widely to help ensure you are connecting with the most helpful/relevant research. It will facilitate the class discussion to provide some background on the area of research you are focussing on (e.g., describe a theory of organisational culture; present a model for implementing organisational change). 
• You don’t need to rely solely on the research literature – what are other organisations doing to address this issue? What seems to work/not work in the ‘real world’? Is the research literature informing organisational decision making?
• As you can tell, leading the case analysis and discussion will require a lot of preparation. It’s insufficient to simply generate a list of questions to ask the class. How can you engage the class and encourage their participation? How will you ‘teach’ the class about a theory or research findings that they may not be familiar with? How will you deal with silence when you ask a question? Hint: do not be afraid of silence—give your classmates time to respond (and if they are still silent you can break people into small groups, or have your classmates discuss the question with the person next to them and get them to report back to the class).
• It is not necessary to use PowerPoint/Keynote, but you may wish to incorporate visuals to facilitate the class discussion or to ‘teach’ the class about theories or research you’ve uncovered that helps shed light on the workplace issues described in the case. Be sure to provide me with a copy of any slides or handouts (email is perfect).
• Remember your primary task is to facilitate a class analysis and discussion of the weekly case, not simply to present theories and research. By all means, have notes or cards to assist your facilitation of class discussion, but do not plan to read a script. I highly recommend having a guide for your discussion, but remember to be flexible and let the discussion go in unexpected (but interesting) directions. This is a skill that takes time to learn so I don’t expect you to be perfect!
• I recommend having a break halfway through the session, and be sure to have a group activity in the latter part of the session to counteract inevitable flagging energy levels.
• When planning your session, keep in mind that activities and discussion will take longer than you expect. Be sure your session ends 10 minutes before the end of class.

What will I do?

Read and analyse the case.

Some general tips

• Try to be less descriptive and more analytical: Don’t merely repeat the facts of the case – the important part here is your ability to interpret the facts of the case.
• If commenting on ‘key’ or ‘critical’ issues, strengths, weaknesses etc make sure you discuss why these are key or critical. Otherwise, you end up with a long, undifferentiated list of attributes of the organisation.
• Try to look at the facts from more than one perspective. Would a fact take on different meaning if seen from another perspective?
• Be specific and address “how” or “in what ways” the organisation can act on your suggestions. You might find that some of your suggestions are nice in concept, but create more problems than they solve in the implementation. Take into account the costs and benefits of each of your recommendations.
• Make sure that you follow your line of reasoning throughout the write-up. Your analysis should be related to the problem you identified. The recommendations should address all the issues you raised in the analysis section, weaving together a linear and coherent narrative.
• Remember that this course is about relying on the research literature to make evidence-based recommendations. As such, be sure to describe the relevant research and/or theories you’re relying on. There is no need to limit yourself to the information and literature discussed in class this semester. So while you can/should use the class material as a starting point, you may find that reading more broadly will enable you to provide a more thorough and informative analysis of the case.