Withdrawal Dates:
If you are considering withdrawing from PSYC 102, please do so according to the withdrawal/drop dates for this UBC academic year. You can access dates and information here.
Student Expectations:
TREAT OTHERS WITH RESPECT Your behavior in the classroom, face-to-face, and in writing (e.g., over email), reflects who you are as a person and student. We expect you to treat your instructors, Teaching Assistants, fellow classmates, and anyone else that might be part of our class with respect. This means being courteous when asking questions or making comments during class, and not monopolizing a discussion or question period.
PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC INTEGRITY Students are in charge of their own learning experience and success. Plagiarism, cheating, and dishonesty of any kind will not be tolerated, including sharing iClickers, copying other’s exams and assignments. UBC provides a great resource about Academic Integrity here. If you are worried about your performance, or thinking about cheating, please talk to us or use the resources here!
COMPLETE ASSIGNMENTS ON TIME Late assignments will be accepted up to 1 week after the due date. A 7% per day deduction will be applied. Assignments will not be accepted after 7 days (including weekends).
TAKE TWO MIDTERMS AND THE FINAL EXAM You can find specific exam policies here and here.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS We encourage you to share feedback about this course, particularly about things we might change for future students! We are very open to working together to make this course a positive experience for everyone involved 🙂
LAPTOPS AND ELECTRONICS IN THE CLASSROOM We understand that many student use laptops or other electronic devices as learning tools. However, some students use their laptops during class for activities that are not related to the course. This can easily distract students sitting nearby. For this reason, we ask that anyone using a laptop or similar device for activities unrelated to the course sit at the back of the classroom.
What Students can Expect from Us:
AVAILABILITY We will make ourselves available to help you and your classmates in your efforts to succeed. Visiting us during office hours is typically more effective than email for clearing up questions. If our office hours absolutely cannot work for you, respectfully email us a few time and day options to make an appointment.
ONLINE CONTENT AND LECTURE POLICIES We will post lecture slides on Canvas before the start of class. Whenever necessary, we will also post final versions of the lectures slides, to more accurately line up with the content covered in class. If a final version of a lecture is available, please study from the final version. The posted lecture slides are not a substitute for attending lecture, and exams will contain a significant amount of content only provided in lecture. If you must miss class, please contact a fellow student (not your instructor or TA) to try and obtain notes and/or other information on what you missed.
PROVIDE PERSONAL FEEDBACK We can arrange to provide you with feedback on Midterms, Assignments, and the Final Exam as promptly and as with as much detail as possible, given the size of this class. Please see us at office hours for additional feedback.
ACT RESPECTFULLY & ETHICALLY At all times, we aim to treat each of you with respect, and to make all course decisions with the highest ethical standards in mind. If you feel you are being treated unfairly or disrespected by us or a classmate, we invite you to talk with us so we can sort out the issue together. These kinds of discussions will not impact your grade!
Grade Scaling Policy:
To ensure fairness across multiple course sections, all psychology courses at UBC are required to comply with departmental norms. According to departmental norms, the average grade in a 100- and 200-level Psychology course are 67% for an exceptionally strong class, 65% for an average class, and 63% for a weak class, with a standard deviation of 14%. Scaling (up or down) may be used by the instructors or the Department of Psychology to comply with these norms. Grades are not official until they appear on your transcript. You will receive both a percent and and a leger grade for this course. At UBC, they convert according to the provided key:
| A+ | 90-100% |
| A | 85-89% |
| A- | 80-84% |
| B+ | 76-79% |
| B | 72-75% |
| B- | 68-71% |
| C+ | 64-67% |
| C | 60-63% |
| C- | 55-59% |
| D | 50-54% |
| F | 0-49% |
Campus-wide Grading Policies:
Information about UBC grading policies can be found here.
Psychology Department’s Official Statement on Academic Misconduct:
Cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic misconduct are very serious concerns of the University, and the Department of Psychology has taken steps to alleviate them. In the first place, the Department has implemented software that can reliably detect cheating on multiple-choice exams by analyzing the patterns of students’ responses. In addition, the Department subscribes to TurnItIn — a service designed to detect and deter plagiarism. All materials (term papers, lab reports, etc.) that students submit for grading will be compared to over 5 billion pages of content located on the Internet or in TurnItIn’s own proprietary databases. The results of these comparisons are compiled into customized “Originality Reports” containing several, sensitive measures of originality that flag instances of plagiarism; instructors receive copies of these reports for every student in their classes.
During exams, the instructor and invigilators reserve the right to move students in their seating arrangement with no explanation provided.
In all cases of suspected academic misconduct, the parties involved will be pursued to the fullest extent dictated by the guidelines of the University. Strong evidence of cheating or plagiarism may result in a zero credit for the work in question. According to the University Act (section 61), the President of UBC has the right to impose harsher penalties including (but not limited to) a failing grade for the course, suspension from the University, cancellation of scholarships, or a notation added to a student’s transcript. For details on pertinent University policies and procedures, please see Chapter 5 in the UBC Calendar (http://students.ubc.ca/calendar).