Animal Minds :: Course Setup

Please complete the following tasks to set yourself up for the course. Due by 9 AM on January 22.

Blog setup

You’ll be submitting some of your assignments through the NowComment system, which will facilitate peer review and feedback. Your first assignment is to set up your blog with the following steps:

  1. Log into Collab and select this course (Animal Minds)
  2. Click NowComment in the toolbar on the left
  3. In the NowComment pane, select the group Psyc 2210 Animal Minds (Spring 2016). You should see a number of documents and blogs, including one from your instructor.
  4. Click Upload Document in the top toolbar.
  5. Select a format for your document. For this exercise, you’ll probably want to choose Text I'll Write Now, but in the future you can upload Word documents and PDF files.
  6. Write a brief paragraph describing the most puzzling thing you remember seeing an animal doing. NB: once you’ve uploaded a document, you can’t edit it easily, so do your proofreading!
  7. Click Create a Personal Blog. Give it a title as follows: Lastname, Firstname's Blog and select Only people and groups I invite to it when asked who will be allowed to see the blog.
  8. You will now be on the blog page. Click Invite. In the right pane, select the Groups tab and then select Psyc 2210 Animal Minds (Spring 2016). Click the orange button that says Invite. NB: please only invite the group to your blog, not to individual documents — these will create a lot of clutter on the main page.
  9. Now add the post you created to your blog. Click Add a Document, select the document you just wrote, and click Add. Your post should now show up in your blog. Note that if you don’t add a document to a blog, it won’t be visible to me or the rest of the class.

To edit a blog post: Click on My Library & Groups (to the far left of the dark blue navigation strip at the top of page) to go your My Library list, and then click on your blog title, which will take you to your blog with all of your posts in chronological order. Scroll down to the post you want to edit and click the blue “Edit” button, to the lower left below your post. You will be taken to a text editor page where you can edit your post and upload an image (for additional editing tools, click the small down-arrow on the upper right-hand corner of the editing box). To save changes, click the blue Update button (lower right).

Complete CATME survey

Several of the learning exercises in this course will be conducted in groups. To help me place you in a team that’s more likely to work well together, please complete a brief pre-course survey on CATME as follows:

  1. Go to http://www.catme.org and log in using your UVA email address. I have added the class to the roster, so you should see a class called Animal Minds and a survey called Pre-Course Survey. You also should have received an email from CATME about the survey with a link. If you are on the waiting list or joined the course after I set up the survey, you may not see the class or the survey. Please contact me by email ASAP so I can add you to the list.
  2. Select Pre-Course Survey and answer the questions to the best of your ability. If there is a question that you prefer not to answer, or where none of the options is applicable, you may leave the answer blank. All answers will be treated with strictest confidence.

Complete reading and warm-up activity

Go to Collab and select Tests and Quizzes in the left-side toolbar. Select the assessment called Reading Response 1/22. Answer the questions as you complete the required reading for Friday’s class, Chapter 1 in Fundamentals in Comparative Cognition. If you have not yet purchased the texts for the course, you can access the first chapter as a PDF here.