PSYC 5800 Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Assignments
Fall 2006
 
Case Study Project: Each student will complete a series of exercises to simulate activities that are typical of an industrial/organizational psychologist. The project involves doing a job analysis and using the information to approximate the development and application of human resource functions. The project is specifically intended for students to develop new documents from scratch. No "existing" documents should be submitted (unless there are some rare exceptions that are cleared with professor beforehand). All students will submit only documents developed by the student for this course with no content from any other source unless clearly documented. Any other approach that involves copying information from existing documents or other sources will be considered plagiarism and dealt with accordingly. The penalty for plagiarism in this course will be at the minimum failure on the assignment. Depending on the extent of the infraction, the penalty might be failure in the course.

Each exercise will be completed and turned in separately. After review by the instructor the project may be returned for revisions by the student. The exercises listed below will be graded individually and averaged together for one grade that will be counted the same as a test grade. In addition to the text and lecture, students will have to rely on some outside sources to complete these assignments. Five points will be deducted for each day an assignment is late. Assignments are listed below and due dates will be given in class.
  1. Job Analysis (Specify behaviors, skills, knowledge and abilities from the job analysis.)
  2. Performance Appraisal Instrument (Use the Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale* Method from the text)
  3. Selection Instrument (Specify methods for the various types of behaviors, skills, knowledge and abilities from the job analysis.)
  4. Training Program (Specify methods for the various types of behaviors, skills, knowledge and abilities from the job analysis.)
  5. Structured Job Interview Form (Based on behaviors, skills, knowledge and abilities from the job analysis.)

Please follow the Project Submission guidelines below. Any project document that does not meet those requirements will be returned for correction. The acceptance date will be based on the final submission after these corrections are made. Points will be deducted for each day late, even if the initial submission is within the assignment due date, if the submission guidelines are not followed. In other words, the assignment will be counted as late if the revisions are completed after the due date and points will be deducted from from the due date.
* See the section in the book on this topic for an example. (Note the page number will vary depending on the edition of the textbook. Ask the instructor if you are not clear on this procedure.)

 
Presentations: Students will prepare and present two presentations for this course. One will be a chapter or part of a chapter from the textbook. The other will be a summary and overview of the job analysis project.
 
Participation: Students are expected to take part in class discussions and participate in critiques of projects. Attendance is required for this to take place, so attendance is a prerequisite for the participation grade. If a student misses class without an excused absence, the participation for that class will be deducted from the total. Although a student might not contribute to every class discussion, the grade will be based on regular contributions. At least one contribution weekly is expected. Questions will count as participation because they are often valuable in helping everyone learn more about the topic from the answer to the question.
 
Examinations: Three or four tests (including the Final) will be administered. The material for each test will come from lectures, the text, and other reading assignments. All material to be tested may not be covered in class. In the case of material that is not covered in class, students will need to read the chapters and focus on the key terms and issues. The Final will not be cumulative and will be weighted equally with the other tests (all tests will be weighted equally).
 
Project Submission: All project files and assignments will be submitted using your VSU E-Mail account. Send the files as attachments to E-mail and formatted as outlined below unless another format is negotiated with the instructor. These files will follow the formatting and file naming conventions listed and explained below:
Text documents will be formatted as either Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat *(PDF) documents.
Data files (if needed) will be Excel files (for spreadsheet data) or Access files (if a database is required).
Presentations (if needed) will be PowerPoint files.
Homework & Take-Home Test File Names: for the chapter assignments, use "chapter1.doc" as the file name; for the project assignments, use the task name such as "job_analysis.doc" for the file name.
Ownership of files: to indicate your ownership of submissions, use your first and last names with either a dot *(.) or underscore *(_) between the parts. For example: gerald_merwin_chapter1.doc and gerald_merwin_job_analysis.doc
Course Codes in Subject Line: to associate your submissions with our course to aid in filtering of E-mail, use the PSYC 5800 in the subject line of all messages sent to the instructor.
Questions: Please ask questions if any part of this information is unclear.
 
Reference http://www.valdosta.edu/mpa/classes/psyc5800/assignments.html
Updated 10/10/2006, contact Jerry Merwin