Since I have caught up to our current assignment in our current unit, and there are 6 assignments in a 7 day week, there will not always be an assignment for me to blog about every single day. However, the term project instructions state that this is a daily blog, so I still have to post, and am going to do a quick reflection on the unit as a whole, including what I learned and what I feel about the assignments for the week in general.
Starting with the first assignment, we had the chance to take the Five Factor Personality Test and the Big Five Personality test. We learned about these 5 personality traits of extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. We learned that these traits vary from person to person, and that they are all on a spectrum, rather than purely being extroverted or introverted, for example. We also learned about the difference between affect and effect, and my main takeaway was that “effect” is generally used as a noun, and “affect” as a verb.
The main takeaways from second assignment were the meaning of “proportion of variance explained”, and how the big five personality factors explain certain internet use and choices. Essentially, I have described proportion of variance explained before, but essentially it relates to how much of a dependent variable outcome, such as internet use, can be attributed to a certain independent variable, such as level of neuroticism. The results show that for the most part, the big five personality factors do not explain a significant proportion of variance, however, sometimes extraversion does explain a significant proportion of the variance for some internet variables.
The third assignment included responding to 2 students’ posts from assignment one of this unit. This was not aimed at learning new course material, but allowed the students to get to know one another’s personalities, and who they are most similar to and different from.
The fourth assignment was where we watched a lecture video about selfies and then got to choose a question we wanted to answer, and completed the set of activities with that question. From the lecture video, we learned that selfies are super popular now, but have actually been around dating back to the 1830’s. Additionally, we learned that contrary to some reports, selfie taking is not related to narcissism and psychopathy. Fro my question, I chose to read about a court case regarding monkey selfies, and learned that a monkey took selfies on an abandoned camera in the forest. PETA sued the person who owned the camera for using the selfies the monkey took, and eventually an agreement was made where a proportion of the photo earnings would go to preserving macaque habitats.
The fifth assignment revolved around the concept of humble bragging, where a person tries to use sympathy while also impressing another person. We learned that it is associated with the opposite effects from what it is intended for, as it decreases perceived liking and competence, among other things.
The sixth assignment was the traditional review sheet and then term project update document. It allows us to review old and new material and also showcase how far we have come on our project so far.
Reflecting on this unit, I think it was actually one of my favorite units. The first reason for this was that we got to take personality tests and also compare answers with others. I have always found tests like this to be very interesting, and being able to see what others scored was cool as well, to see who was registered as similar to me, or different from me. These thing brought fun to the unit, rather than feeling like an obligation.
Additionally, this unit brought some learning of terms I was not very familiar with. For example, going into the unit, I did not really know what “proportion of variance explained” or “humblebragging” were. Even though I had seen and heard about those concepts in my daily life, I did not have a great enough understanding of them to have specific terms in my head to name them. So, assignments 2 and 5 did a great job of giving me knowledge about somewhat unfamiliar concepts.
Also, assignment 4 also brought some very interesting points that I really enjoyed learning about. I did not know that selfies went back so far in history, or of any reported monkey selfies. This assignment combined learning and fun, which showcases the ultimate experience!
So, overall, I am very happy with what this unit was composed of. I learned a lot, I enjoyed a lot, and the assignments were pretty valuable for the most part. I hope the final 2 units can be as good as this one was!
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