Tani McBeth

Contact information for Tani McBeth

            

Webpage for Tani McBeth

Psychology Department

Sylvania Campus (SS 215)

Public Service and Education Pathway

tmcbeth@pcc.edu

Welcome!  I look forward to learning together with you.  🙂

All online classes at PCC are in D2L Brightspace.  You will access it by logging into MyPCC and clicking on D2L Brightspace on the left navigation menu.  Or, you can log into D2L with your MyPCC user name and password directly at online.pcc.edu.

I’ve been teaching in the Psychology department since 2003, including fully online courses since 2007 when I first became involved with Quality Matters. And, I’ve continued to be involved since 2009 as an Online Faculty Mentor in Online Learning at PCC.  And, of course, I also teach in remote and face-to-face class modalities as well. 🙂

I tend to teach the following classes:

  • PSY 101 Psychology and Human Relations
    • This is a great course for focusing on applied psychology concepts to improve work and personal interactions.  We’ll explore various psychological and human relations theories and research concepts to understand and practice making changes to behavior.
    • This course focuses on practicing the concepts that we’re exploring in the course for skill development. You will need to be prepared to go beyond understanding to practice the skills. Main areas of practice include perception checking, paraphrasing, ‘I’ statements, and non-defensive responses to criticism.
  • PSY 214 Introduction to Personality
    • This course covers personality theories including the theoretical and scientific explanations for individuals’ characteristic patterns of perception, thought, emotion, and behavior. Incorporates activities which help students apply what they have learned about personality theories to their personal and professional lives.
    • Analyzing behavior is something that all of us do regularly without really thinking about it-choosing a roommate, friend, or partner, choosing an employee/employer, selecting an instructor, etc. 🙂  We will explore clues to personality, personality assessment, and use personality traits to understand (and predict) behavior.
    • We’ll discuss the person-situation debate about whether people do/don’t have consistent personality traits. Personality psychology is the ‘opposing’ view from social psychology which focuses on situationism or how situational variables influence people’s behavior more than personality traits. We’ll explore interactionism or how personality traits and situations interact with each other to influence behavior.
  • PSY 215 Human Development
    • This course surveys major theories of behavior and patterns of change and continuity in people over the life span. Emphasizes development from physical, cognitive, social, emotional, moral, and cultural perspectives from prenatal development through development of infants, children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly.
    • We get so many opportunities in this course to explore both research and anecdotal experience to apply the lifespan stages to various personal and professional settings such as healthcare, education, etc. 🙂
  • PSY 216 Social Psychology

    • This course surveys the scientific study of how individuals think about, influence, and relate to one another with respect to social beliefs, persuasion, attraction, conformity, obedience, prejudice, aggression, and pro-social behaviors.

    • Social Psychology is the “…scientific study of the influence of the real, imagined, or implied presence of others upon our thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and behavior-and of how we influence others…” (Aronson and Aronson, 2018).  Aronson, E., with Aronson, J. (2018). The social animal (12th ed.). New York: Worth. 

    • Particularly, the influences that groups (family, culture, society, etc) have on individuals will be examined; however, individual and small group influences on larger groups will also be discussed.  Specifically, we will look at how the power of the situation (cultural and social context) interacts with the individual person (personality and individual experiences).  

    • There are applications to our everyday situations in business, politics, environment, health, the legal system, and human relations. 🙂

I most enjoy the opportunities that we get to share our various perspectives and experiences in our discussions together to apply the course material to our lives! 🙂

Student Support Resources

Link to the Resources page for students

You’ll find information on how to drop a class, Academic Advising, Counseling, Computer Labs, Tutoring, Writing Center, Multicultural Center, Student Help Desk for technology help (MyPCC, D2L, etc.), Library, Bookstore, etc.

You may also be interested in the Panther Tracks: Guides to Student Success if you’re new to college, need information about student success or study skills, financial resources, etc.

OHSU Brain Fair and Brain Lecture Series

Link to the OHSU Brain Fair and Brain lecture series

Clarification:  The Brain Fair is put on by OHSU researchers, but is held at the OMSI. There is no cost to attend this fair at the OMSI.