Psychology

Why do you find it more difficult to keep up a good lifestyle after a long day of studying? Is ita good idea to work together professionally with friends? And what do you do if you are in a leadership position but no one follows you in your decisions? These seemingly unrelated phenomena share much more than you think. They are all rooted in the psychological foundations and processes underlying the behavior of individuals and groups in organizations.

The objective of this class lies in providing you with a sound understanding of psychological theories and models of human behavior. In other words: This course is about making you more effective in (1) managing yourself, (2) managing peers, and (3) managing your employees in work environments by using psychological theories. So unless you plan to become an eremite, this course will be of value for you. We will devote 360 lecture minutes (= 2 sessions) to each of the three topic areas.

The objective of this class lies in providing you with a sound understanding of psychological theories and models of human behavior. To put it more bluntly: This course is about making you more effective in (1) managing yourself, (2) managing peers, and (3) managing your employees in work environments by using psychological theories. So unless you plan to become an eremite, this course will be of value for you. We will devote 360 lecture minutes (= 2 sessions) to each of the three topic areas.

Topics cover among others: Personality, self-control, habits, group conflicts, team dynamics, charismatic leadership, and motivation.

See syllabus for reading list per session.

Interactive Lectures

Case Studies

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE REGISTRATION FOR THIS COURSE LIMITED TO 65 PARTICIPANTS AND WORKS ON FIRST-COME-FIRST-SERVE BASIS.

Your overall course grade is composed of three parts.

(1) Exam (60% of the course grade, individual work)

The closed-book exam will take 60 minutes. You will write the exam with no auxiliaries (notes, books, etc.). 50% of the exam grade comes from your correct answers to multiple choice questions. 50% of the exam grade comes from your correct answers to solving a case study (i.e., open questions).

(2) Case presentation in video format (30% of the course grade, teamwork)

You will be randomly assigned to a team and work on case study. The team assignment will be presented in session 02 and posted on Moodle.

Your solution to the case needs to be submitted as a video that can have a maximum length of 10 minutes. Please avoid overlength; for every 10% longer than requested (i.e., one to 60 seconds), you will receive a grade deduction of one “Drittelnote” (i.e. 0.3 or 0.4 respectively). The videos will be presented in four sessions of the course. That is, your video will need to be submitted before one of the sessions 03, 04, 05, or 06. Each team is randomly assigned to a session for the submission of their video. The deadlines are provided above in the section introducing the respective sessions.

The case study material for each of these four sessions will be made available to everyone five days before the respective session. Everyone will need to prepare by reviewing the case study material. During the session, the video of the team that has been assigned to this date, will be presented.

You will need to upload your video to OneDrive before your assigned session and share the link with Prof. Gerpott and the teaching assistant. This has to happen latest 2 hours before the class. The exact grading criteria for the case presentations will be discussed in session 02 and are also available on Moodle.

(3) Exam preparation submissions (10% of the course grade, teamwork)

For each of the six sessions, you will submit a quick exam preparation with your team. It is recommended to do this right after the lecture; however, latest until 11:59 pm on the day before the lecture of the subsequent week. For session 06, please submit it within a week after the last lecture (i.e., until the 14th of October, 11:59pm).

Specifically, your team prepares two multiple choice exam questions per session (= 12 questions in total for the whole course) with four response options (one must be correct, please indicate which one). These questions will be part of the exam. In other words, you contribute to creating your own exam by recapping what you have learned. Furthermore, you have the chance to get a good grade twice at once: a) you submit a very good question that then b) will be part of the exam.

Please choose one team member who uploads your exam questions via Moodle in the discussion forum for the respective week and your correct team number. If you post them to the wrong discussion threat, we are not able to assign them correctly to your team and they will not count for grading (i.e. will be graded 5.0). Make sure to read the questions that are already posted to guarantee that you post a sufficiently different question. Please also indicate the correct response to your submitted question.

In contrast to the exam and case presentations, in which the full grading spectrum is used, you will receive a 1.0, a 3.0 or a 5.0 for your submitted questions or your video message.

• You receive a “1.0” if your submission represents a good reflection on the course content.
• You receive a “3.0” if you submitted something but this reflects that you only superficially engaged with the course content.
• You receive a “5.0” if you submit nothing or something of very poor quality.

Your grade for this part is the average of the twelve submitted exam questions.

When will I get to know my grades?

You will receive developmental feedback on your case presentation as a team right afterwards. To ensure fairness and avoid undesired psychological processes, this feedback does not include grades. The grades for both parts (i.e., exam and case presentation) will be made available at the same time for everyone after the exam has been corrected.

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