Posted: September 16th, 2017

As you have probably noticed, we don’t have an exam in HPS111. We know that exams are often

 

As you have probably noticed, we don’t have an exam in HPS111. We know that exams are often

anxiety provoking and can encourage students to rote learn material. We would rather you have
time to work through the content knowledge in this unit, and spend time thinking about how the
different ideas and concepts relate to one another, as well as how you relate to them. This is a much
more meaningful way to engage with the material we cover, and at the end you have a great set of
resources that you can refer back to in other units.
Task:

Your task is to create six (6) concept maps, one for each topic we cover in HPS111. A concept map is
a visual representation of information, showing the relationships and interconnections that exist
within a topic. In your tutorials we will work with examples of concept maps, and you can find more
information about what a concept map is in the interactive assignment guide (in CloudDeakin). You
can also head to this website for detailed information http://cmap.ihmc.us/docs/conceptmap.html.

The six concept maps you complete will be assessed by your tutor for knowledge of the discipline
and content accuracy, and are worth 35% of your final grade. The important thing to remember is,
everybody will create different maps – which is good! Your map should be a representation of how
you sort and understand the material. It’s a very individualised way to learn. For this reason, there is
no ??perfect map’ that we are looking for. What we will be looking for is that you have thought deeply
about the topic, have been able to work out what information clusters together well,

how you can
condense down a lot of words into meaningful visual representations, and whether you demonstrate
that you understand the material. These things will be reflected in the marking rubric (that you will
help to create!).
After you have completed your maps, your next task is to self-assess them. You may be thinking it’s a
strange thing to do, given your tutor will ultimately decide your grade for the maps. Not so, self-
assessment is an excellent way for you to develop many real-world skills that psychologists use all
the time in practice. For example, in creating and applying a rubric to your work, you will get a good

sense of what it means to assess a real person (i.e. yourself). As a clinician, you will be conducting
assessments of real people all the time, and it is critical that you a) know what it feels like (for your
own development of empathy), b) start to become aware of the biases and limitations that are
inherent in any attempt to assess something or someone, and c) develop insight into your own
thoughts and behaviours. These skills are fundamental to being a psychologist and it’s important
that you begin to learn about them early on.

In your self-assessment you will apply the final rubric to each of your maps and come up with a score
for yourself. This score won’t be your actual score, so it’s ok if it not perfect! Try to be as accurate
(and honest!) as you can with your self-assessment. Your justification and reflection document is
where you will explain your thinking and justify your self-assessed grade. This process is worth 15%
of your final mark, and 5 of those marks are for how accurate your self-assessment was compared to

your tutors assessment (hence you need to take the process quite seriously!). The benefit of this
process is two-fold. Firstly, you get to really reflect on your learning style and develop insight into
how you operate and think – this is not an intuitive process for most people but a truly valuable skill
to have. Second, your understanding of the content is assessed separately from your understanding
of yourself. So for example, you may really struggle to understand some of the content, and hence

create limited maps. The score you receive for your maps will reflect this, however if you are able to
write an accurate and insightful reflection about your limitations, strengths and ways to improve
next time, you can still get great marks for the justification and reflection.
NOTE: In week 7 you will have the opportunity to lodge your Science of Psychology map for
assessment. You will assess your map first, using the final rubric (this forms the basis of your second

reflection), and then lodge your map into the correct dropbox for the tutors to assess. They will be
assessing it for real marks so please ensure you lodge your finished map. You can then use the
feedback you receive on your first map to see if you need to alter your remaining maps in any way. If
you fail to lodge your map in week 7, you can still lodge it in week 11, but you won’t have had the
benefit of formative feedback from the tutors.
You will lodge your six maps into their own dedicated Dropbox and your justification document will

be lodged in it’s own dedicated dropbox too. Please ensure you lodge the correct map into the
correct dropbox, tutors are marking your maps randomly so if it’s not in the right dropbox, it won’t
be marked. You will see that the maps are all due by 5pm on the last day of Trimester 1. I have put
some recommended due dates on each dropbox though, to help you aim to have your maps
completed each fortnight as we work through the material. The good thing is, you can lodge your

maps into each dropbox as many times as you like before the due date and each new lodgement will
over-ride the last. This means you can aim to submit your maps as you go, then if you have time to
work on them some more, you can re-submit the updated versions.
Resources:
You have plenty of resources to help you with this assignment. There are video tutorials from

YouTube that I have placed in the Content Roadmap folder, there are written instructions for using
Cmaps, also in the Content Roadmap folder. The Interactive Assignment Guide explains this
information in an audio-visual format, and we will work on our rubric development in tutes five and
six.
Resources for creating your map content are primarily your textbook, but also the seminars and
recorded lectures.

Parameters:
The most important parameter to keep in mind is the file type you lodge. We can open Word
documents (.doc) image files (e.g. .jpg), or PDF (.pdf) files. If you are using Cmaps, please ensure you
export your maps as image files as tutors will not have the Cmap program on their computers to
open .cmap files. If you use a program other than Cmaps, ensure you can save or export your maps
as one of the accepted file types. We will not be installing programs in order to open uncommon file

types.
Get started:
To get started, I recommend you download Cmaps, or your preferred concept mapping program,
and start seeing how it works. Get familiar with how to create nodes, linking lines and arrows, and
the linking words that sit on those lines. Also, watch the Interactive Assignment Guide about how to
create concept maps so that you have a good understanding of what your maps should start to look

like as you create them. Then you’re ready to start reading and creating!

One final tip….
Concept maps are hard! They take a long time to make, not because of the program but because
they require a substantial amount of planning and thinking. Please don’t think you can do a map in a
couple of hours, you should allow a week per map at least.