I often have substantial learning goals that are so amorphous that it’s hard to focus on any one aspect. Cooking more things requires me to learn more about cooking techniques. Making things with a 3D printer requires me to learn how to use it, fix it, maintain it, and swear in complete sentences. Plus, there are regular learning goals like French on Duolingo. And that doesn’t even include actual courses.

I have long lists of courses from Coursera or The Great Courses in my retirement plans, where I would love to go through numerous topics. I’ve previously completed a massive open online course (MOOC) on MetaLiteracy through Coursera and one on Understanding Video Games. In part, it was a result of the realization several years ago that while I’m interested in continuing to do courses and things, I don’t actually need a degree or even a grade at the end. I’m fine relying on a professor’s professional curation to spoon-feed me an intro; let me get what I get out of it, and then I can move on. A course structure gets me the desired curation; more targeted online stuff gives me additional access. Over the years, I’ve dabbled in courses on photography and astronomy, too.

I recently hit some work and personal milestones in my French learning. And it made me wonder…what would/could/should I focus on in 2025 that would give me a boost?

Plans for 2025

I initially thought of taking the daily engagement momentum with DuoLingo and boosting it to see if I could do the same with a lecture. Maybe a full lecture a day for the whole year? 365 lectures would be incredible. Probably 10 courses in total. Except DuoLingo lessons are 5-10 minutes, while lectures range from 15 to 60 minutes. I set up apps on Apple TV to make some of the coursework more accessible, and I tend to watch TV late in the day, so it is not impossible that I could do a lecture a day. Do I actually want to, though? I like the engagement, but I am doubtful about the duration per day, particularly at the end of the day if I’m too tired to focus on the content. I am playing with the idea of 10 minutes a day. Pick a course, watch 10m of video every day, keep going. For a total of 3650 minutes as my goal for the year. As the year started, I was in the DR, and not feeling much like learning, so it was a bit slow of a start.

I watched a couple of videos to test different subjects and decided early to combine my goal with something that interests me — an Introduction to Psychology option. I have read a lot of psych stuff over the years, ranging from pop-psych interpretations of goal-setting behaviour all the way to case studies of trauma recovery or ADHD diagnosis and treatments. I dabble in a lot of topics. My main interest is behaviour modification for positive change, but I’m also prone to reading deep dives into the minds of serial killers. 🙂

Ultimately, I committed to The Great Courses’ (TGC) “An Introduction to Psychology” (AITP) with Catherine A. Sanderson, Amherst College.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with TGC, the premise is basically finding great teachers from around the world — you know, the ones that students rate highly at various universities and give awards to — and hire them to do a version of their favourite course in front of a video camera. The best teachers, their favourite course, as rated and identified by students. It’s not unusual, online offerings like MasterClass and Coursera have tried to do the same. Other online sites went for quantity, taking any course from almost anyone, while TGC, MC, and Coursera often wanted the “best”. Coursera isn’t as rigid as the other two, often having multiple professors teaching similar course offerings, sometimes going for expertise or simply different perspectives.

This isn’t my first foray into online psych courses. Back around 2010, I looked into a MOOC offered by Carleton University. I committed to it a bit more in 2015, downloaded the texts, bought the textbook, and geared myself up to watch the lectures. I was intending to formally audit the course. Then life intervened and I didn’t really get going on it. I still have the first 10 printouts plus the textbook.

Lecture 1: Psychology, you, and your world

The AITP course for TGC by Professor Sanderson is different than I expected. As an intro course, I expected her to present an overall framework for psychology, delineate major streams of work and thought, and then start to work through the landscape. Instead, it seems a bit more like “hey, let’s look at this topic.” I have always been impressed with TGC for the quality of their video lectures, not quite TED Talk quality but close. But I had forgotten that almost all of their courses come with an online guidebook, too. AITP is set up for 36 lectures of about 30 minutes each, and there is a 382-page guidebook complete with a quiz that you can download/print/read online. I’ve watched the first five lectures, and while I won’t try to summarize them, I will try to see what I get out of the course as I go.

This lecture is basically what you would expect at the start of an introductory course. It starts with a definition of psychology as the scientific study of mental processes and behaviour; a layman’s focus on how we think, feel, remember and act; and an overview of the goals of psychology (description, asking why, predicting behaviour, and making change). Standard stuff, nothing revolutionary or surprising, I knew all of that already.

However, I was intrigued by how she describes the nature of psychology as a combination of clinical science, a biological science tied to neuroscience and physiology, a social science of behaviour, and even an applied science (with experiments). While it is easy to see them all linked together, I never really thought of the biological component as really being “part” of psychology, as my interest is more the description and social sciences side, with a tinge of clinical therapy. It’s obvious from her description that the bio component is equally psychology too, but as I said, I’m less interested and knowledgeable about the physiological/biological aspects.

I’m less enamoured with the ending of the lecture where she talks about the modern focus on positive psychology and the links to “how do we increase happiness?”. One of the examples she gives about the components of happiness, which shows up later in a separate lecture, is highly suspect to me in its diagnosis. For me, it’s more definitional…if you define happiness as being X, Y, and Z, it’s not surprising that you will find people “happier” if they do Z. But was Z valid to begin with? I’ll come back to it, but for me, it fits more in the realm of philosophy and ethics than psychology. I’ve spent some time over the years reading a lot on the positive aspects aka “happiness and well-being”, and while I don’t discount the approach completely, it doesn’t resonate with me.

But it’s an interesting start. And it’s a long-standing goal to start chipping away at. That makes ME happy. 🙂