Hi everyone!
I have been wanting to take a psychology course since forever (well precisely, since I was in secondary school) but I never got that chance since it was not offered in my school. Of course, I could have learnt by myself using the vast resources that can be found on the Internet but due to that presence of too many information, filtering it for the most reliable and significant knowledge on psychology can be challenging. Therefore, I decided to take a formal education on Introductory Psychology which was taught by an experienced and reliable instructor instead.
I just want to share a word equation that best represents Psychology: Psychology = Biology + Philosophy. In UBC, there are two parts of Introductory Psychology which are PSYC 101 and PSYC 102. PSYC 101 focuses more on the Science (Biology) approach of Psychology while PSYC 102 focuses more on the Arts (Philosophy) approach of Psychology. I've taken PSYC 102 previously during my first year and while I really enjoyed the lectures, I found PSYC 101's topics to be extremely mesmerising and more interesting- sleep, dreams, consciousness, memories, perception and so many more (by the way, I find it intriguing that dreaming is an altered state of consciousness while sleeping is a state of unconsciousness).
Of course, since this is the Science part of Introductory Psychology, we are required to remember parts of the brain that are activated during certain actions.
I also would like to mention about the hilarious coursebook that is written surprisingly in a more casual and less textbook-like style. It makes it easier to read and understand the concepts better.
What I learnt from this course:-
1. The Biology part of Psychology
2. The simplified anatomy of the brain
3. Dreams, sleep, consciousness, sensation and perception, memories, language, thoughts, classical and operant conditioning.
4. the brief history of Psychology
5. Research methods
6. How to conduct research
7. How to write a research paper
8. How to read Psychology-topic journal articles
9. How to do critical thinking
Overall, I really enjoyed the course and I can't wait to take more psychology courses in the future.