This week's topical blog will be devoted to your analysis of the movie American Beauty.

This movie has concepts from Chapters 7-9.

Watch the movie. Take notes.

Next, write your comment. Your comment does not need to provide an overview of the movie (we have all seen it). Your comment should be an in-depth analysis of one or more principles from your text. You should use scenes and characters to provide examples of textbook concepts. Your comment should reflect that you are in an upper division, university level Motivation and Emotion course and clearly link elements from the movie to the textbook.  This is a comprehensive assignment (linking course lectures, textbook, and the movie) and you cannot do that in just a few short paragraphs.

BE SPECIFIC. At the bottom of your comment, please put a list of the ME terms you used.

This week's topical blog will be devoted to your analysis of the movie Good Will Hunting.

This movie has concepts from Chapters 5-7.

Watch the movie. Take notes.

Next, write your comment. Your comment does not need to provide an overview of the movie (we have all seen it). Your comment should be an in-depth analysis of one or more principles from your text. You should use scenes and characters to provide examples of textbook concepts. Your comment should reflect that you are in an upper division, university level Motivation and Emotion course and clearly link elements from the movie to the textbook.  This is a comprehensive assignment (linking course lectures, textbook, and the movie) and you cannot do that in just a few short paragraphs.

BE SPECIFIC. At the bottom of your comment, please put a list of the ME terms you used. 

Please choose the book you want to do your book report on. The options are here:

http://www.psychologicalscience.com/motivation_emotion/2010/01/books-general-readership.html

As a comment to THIS post (not the link above), indicate your choice, AND your TUESDAY due date sometime this semester excluding 11/22.

If you have a book in mind that is not on the list, email me the title and a description of the book and I'll see if it'll work for this assignment.

Book report guidelines and grading scheme are available under the course resources tab.

This is your first Topical Blog. Topical blogs will allow you to learn and write about topics that interest you, be project oriented (something to do and report on), or focus on particular topic in motivation and emotion.

For your first one, I'd like you to browse the blog contents of our Motivation website. You can navigate by clicking on topics that interest you in the right hand column under 'categories.' This isn't about jumping to one topic and writing about it. Most of this assignment is about spending some time reading blog content (say at least 30 minutes).

Then, as a comment to this post, tell us about 3 or so topics you found interesting, and then report in detail about one particular post that you read.

Have fun!

Chapter 9

Read chapter 9. Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising thing you learned? How do personal control beliefs serve to encourage (motivate) or discourage behavior? Provide an example of each (an encouraged and discouraged behavior) and specifically discuss how personal control beliefs would influence those behaviors.

Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.

Chapter 8

Read chapter 8. Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising thing you learned? What elements of goal setting will you be able to use to strive to achieve your goals? Why do you think some goal setting strategies will work better for you than others? Be specific.

Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.

Chapter 7

Read chapter 7. Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising thing you learned? If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.

Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.

Chapter 6

Read chapter 6. Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising thing you learned? If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.

If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?

Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.

Read Chapter 5.

Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising/interesting thing you learned? Is it possible to be intrinsically motivated yet still be paid? What are some examples of how you are intrinsically and extrinsically motivated? How will information from this chapter change how you think about motivating yourself for school/career success?

Read Chapter 3 of your textbook.

Summarize the chapter, then answer the questions. What information was most surpising to you? What information was most confusing to you? What information do you want to learn more about? How is your understanding of motivation changed now that you've learned about some of the biological/physiological bases of it?

Welcome to your first reading blog.

Read Ch1 and Ch 2 in your textbook. Don't worry so much about your answers being long or beautifully written (yet!); focus on reading and understanding the material and then communicating that understanding to us when answering these questions.

From your reading, which topic(s) are most interesting to you?

If you had to describe to someone not in this class what Motivation is all about, what would you tell them based on your understanding of this chapter?

What was the most surprising or memorable thing you learned about in this reading?