Course texts and materials:

Website Guidelines

General Guidelines:

Remember, this program is about the social science of life satisfaction (positive experiences, positive character, and positive institutions and communities). Please keep postings to your blogs relevant to the content we cover and point out how that is the case when you add something other than assignment responses or project interaction. The faculty reserves the right to remove any material that might be considered offensive, or if the material becomes too irrelevant or tangential to the purpose of the program.  

Please post your assignments by the deadline dates. Failure to do so will be reflected in your evaluation, or potentially a loss of credit. Also, keep your posts to the lengths requested. I would prefer you spend more time thinking about what you will write, so your responses are focused, coherent, and succinct. With each assigned posting you are required to respond to other students blogs.  Please vary whom you respond to each time and give thoughtful responses related to the assignment. Also, because so much information is in electronic expression and dialogue, please be careful about how much you read into something. Before reacting check it out with another student or faculty. As E. M. Forster said, “The wrong tone, or a misplaced word, and the whole conversation went awry.” 

Posting and Responding Guidelines:

A. Reading Material

1. Reading posts: For each book we read, please write a concise two page summary of 1) the main points of the book; 2) specific examples form the book that reflect these main points; 3) the strength of support for the points made; and 4) your personal conclusions after having read the book. Write this response in a Word document (or another word processing program) and then copy and paste the material to your blog. These responses should be posted by the Saturday evenings, six days before the next program meeting (January 26^th for The Introduction to Positive Psychology, and February 16^th for The Resilience Factor). This allows other students to respond to three other students’ posts by the Wednesday (Jan. 30^th and Feb. 20^th) before program meetings. 
2. Responses to Reading Posts: Please read three other’s posts to the reading and respond with substantive comment that addresses the points, examples, support, or personal conclusions of each student. Please post these to the blog of the student you are responding to by the Wednesday (Jan. 30^th and Feb. 20^th) before program meetings.  

B. Interventions

1.   Intervention posts: For each of the 6 interventions assigned this quarter please write a concise one page summary of 1) your thoughts about the intervention before doing it; 2) what happened during the time your were completing the intervention; and 3) the outcome of completing the intervention (thoughts, feelings, behaviors, physiological outcomes, social outcomes, environmental outcomes, etc.).These responses should be posted by the Saturday evenings, six days before the next program meeting (January 26^th for interventions 1 & 2, February 16^th for interventions 3 & 4, and March 1^st for interventions 5 & 6). This allows other students to respond to three other students’ posts by the Wednesday (Jan. 30^th, Feb. 20^th, and March 5^th) before program meetings. 
2. Responses to Intervention Posts: Please read three other’s posts regarding the interventions and comment on material related to their preparation for the intervention, their experience of the intervention, and/or the outcomes to their intervention. Please post these to the blog of the student you are responding to by the Wednesday (Jan. 30^th, Feb. 20^th, and March 5^th) before program meetings.  

C. Field Trip

Type up a two-page summary of how you applied theory (the concepts we have studied this quarter) to your experiential day on the field trip. Tie as many concepts as you can to how you were thinking, feeling, behaving, interacting socially, insights gained from exposure to a novel environment, observations you made of others, etc. You will be given an outline to assist you with this before we embark on the field trip. Bring this to class the day after the filed trip and then post it to your blog. 

Privacy:           

Due to the nature of the assignments you may feel the need to censor what you add to the website. If you decided to place a shortened or censored version of your assignment online please be sure to place a copy of the full version in your class portfolio. If you would like to make your assignment readable only by other class participants and facility then follow these instructions when publishing your blog:            

After writing your blog select Access on the menu list below the editing box. Select the check box for Only Viewable by “Registered Students”.