Take My Liberty PSYC 635 Class

Cavanaugh and Blanchard-Fields is read two chapters a week, with occasional chapters summarized rather than assigned in full. The book follows adults from early adulthood through late life, using a life-span perspective in which development is shaped by biology, psychology, social context and the timing of events.

The opening weeks introduce the field's research methods, including why cross-sectional and longitudinal designs can disagree, and the neuroscience of aging. Week two covers physical change and health.

Week three sets the textbook aside for Bible readings on aging and selected articles, with a discussion that asks for five replies instead of two. Weeks four and five cover how people interact with their environments, attention and memory, social cognition and personality.

Week six is given to Fowler's book, which explores how adult life stages and Christian vocation shape each other. Weeks seven and eight return to relationships, work and retirement, and then dying, bereavement and what successful aging means.

Every week has a forum, and six of the eight have a quiz, skipping weeks three and six. The research plan is due in week three, the reflection in week six and the research paper in week seven.

Selected articles and websites each week bring in current findings beyond the textbook.

Health and physical change are treated alongside psychology, since the two shape each other throughout adulthood.

Work and retirement chapters look at career change in midlife, caregiving while working, and what helps people leave the workforce well.

Week eight's chapters ask what it means to age well, comparing health-based and meaning-based definitions.

PSYC 635 is carried week by week, with the research paper planned in week three so the seven sources can be gathered while the discussions continue.

Each discussion thread answers the prompt in 200 to 300 words using the week's chapters, and each reply engages a classmate in 100 to 150 words. In week three, five replies are written instead of two.

The research plan, one to two pages, names a focused topic in adult development, explains why it matters and lists three scholarly references the paper will use. Good topics are specific and well studied, such as how grandparents raising grandchildren adjust, or what predicts adjustment to widowhood in later life.

The research paper, four to six pages with at least seven scholarly references, five of them journal articles, follows the plan and its feedback. It organizes the research by theme, discusses what it means for people who work with adults and considers how Scripture informs that care.

The week-six reflection, a few pages long, takes up one or two of Fowler's themes and asks what they mean for growing up as an adult believer or for helping others do so.

Posting, submitting and the quizzes stay with you.

Each post cites the week's chapter and, where useful, one of the assigned articles.

PSYC 635 work goes to a developmental psychologist or gerontologist with graduate training and experience teaching or researching adult development.

That background shows in the discussions, where claims about aging are precise. A thread on memory, for example, separates the kinds of memory that tend to decline, such as recalling new information quickly, from those that hold steady, such as knowledge and well-practiced skills.

It shows in the research paper, where studies are compared rather than listed, and where limitations such as small or homogeneous samples are noted.

The Fowler reflection is written thoughtfully, engaging his argument on its own terms and connecting it to the developmental research of the course.

A colleague checks each piece for length, citations and formatting, and one psychologist covers your term.

They also know the research on faith and aging, which helps in week three and the reflection.

They write with care about grief and dying.

The weekly pace is the first difficulty, with a discussion every week and a quiz in six of the eight.

Week three is the second. Its discussion asks for five replies, and the research plan is due the same week.

The research paper is the third. Four to six pages is short, so seven sources must be synthesized tightly rather than summarized one by one.

The Fowler reflection is the fourth, since it requires reading an entire book before week six and writing a personal yet scholarly response.

The reading is the fifth, with two chapters a week plus articles, websites and chapter summaries.

Chapter summaries assigned in weeks four and five are easy to skip, yet quizzes may draw on them.

Since week one already holds a forum and a quiz, help is best arranged before day one.

Discussion threads arrive early in each week, and replies once classmates post; week three's five replies arrive across the week.

The research plan arrives before week three closes, and the research paper before week seven closes.

The Fowler reflection arrives before week six closes.

The quote lists each discussion and both papers separately, with the research paper the largest line.

Students who join late are quoted from the next forum or paper still due, and an approved plan is used as the base for the paper.