Emotional Intelligence (PSYC 1205) at UoPeople

Last term, I also took Emotional Intelligence (PSYC 1205). It’s an elective and a lightweight class. The focus of the course is knowing more about ourselves, people around us, why we react in a certain way when rewarded or threatened, our communication, analyzing situations through various tools, and creating goals. You do all of that through Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality type, SCARF (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness) tool, NVC (Non-Violent Communication) tool, SWOT analysis, and SMART tool.

It was a medium-sized class when it began, and not many students dropped out of it. The class had 20-22 students. My instructor had a Ph.D., however, I didn’t see much of her regularly in the class. She commented on the Discussion posts, not on their quality but just to give her own perspective on the topic. She didn’t change grades given by other students. I felt that I was graded unfairly once or twice. My grade also went down in peer assessment for giving a student zero for copying everything from Course Hero. I brought it to her attention, and she said she would take care of the plagiarism incident I reported to her, but she never changed my grade. In the end, it really didn’t matter as I ended up getting an A+, so no complaints there.

You have to write 3 Written Assignments in the class worth a whopping 5% each (15% in total). If your peer assessor grades you down, you’re SOL especially if your instructor isn’t very understanding. You have to write 4 Learning Journal entries worth 2.50% each (10% in total). You have to write 6 Discussion posts worth 2.50% each (15% in total). All the assignments require a great deal of critical thinking. The word count requirement for the Written Assignments is also very high, like 1000 words at times. Even though it’s a very informative course, the assignment questions were occasionally repetitive and quite ambiguous. Sometimes the assignments want you to discuss many examples for the tools you have learned, and at others, they want you to discuss how you can utilize the new information you have just learned. I loved the course, and the topics I learned. Nevertheless, I often didn’t like the assignments because of the redundancy of the same questions being asked again and again.

I liked the fact that how relaxed this course was. Some weeks you only have to write a Written Assignment, Discussion post, or Learning Journal. There is also plenty of break between Written and other assignments. But the Written Assignments are rightfully demanding given their huge worth. There is no prescribed book for this course. You learn everything from articles, journals, PDF reports, and videos. Some weeks, you have to read a lot to do your assignments. In the 3rd week, you have to partner with another classmate with a different MBTI personality type than yours, ask them questions, and do an NVC exercise with them for the Learning Journal. I found a partner quickly, but there were some hiccups in getting the answers back from them. I felt it was a fun assignment, but given how the UoPeople is structured, you might find it somewhat cumbersome to do it with another student. I had to send many messages to get all the answers back from my partner for the assignment. 

The Graded Quizzes and the Final Exam were very easy. Everything comes from the readings, non-Graded Quizzes, and Final Review Quiz. Not all weeks have practice quizzes, so you have to take some sort of notes to remember what you read. You get 20 questions for the Graded Quizzes, which you have to do in 30mins. The Final Exam had 50 questions, which you have to finish within 1hr 15 mins. The time allowed for the final exam was quite adequate, and I finished very quickly. The exam was a combination of previous Graded and non-Graded Quizzes and the review exam. I ended up getting an A+, and I couldn’t be happier with my effort.

Final takeaways, it’s a remarkable course that will help you understand many things about yourself and others. I loved it! But I didn’t enjoy the repetitive questions. I feel that the UoPeople needs to update the question part of the class. I left feedback on the course evaluation, and I hope that they take some sort of action to revise the said material.