Psychology 2020A 650 FW25
Drugs and Behaviour
WESTERN UNIVERSITY
LONDON CANADA
Department of Psychology
Fall 2025
Psychology 2020A Section 650
Drugs and Behaviour
1 CALENDAR DESCRIPTION
Survey of the major drugs of abuse, including alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, opiates, stimulants, inhalants, and sedative-hypnotics. Discussion will focus on historical and current patterns of use and abuse, behavioural and psychological effects of acute and chronic use, psychological processes involved in drug effects, neurochemical bases for action, and treatment issues.
Antirequisite: Not Applicable
Prerequisite: Not Applicable
3 lecture hours; Course Weight: 0.5
Unless you have either the prerequisites for this course or written special permission from your Dean to enroll in it, you may be removed from this course and it will be deleted from your record. This decision may not be appealed. You will receive no adjustment to your fees in the event that you are dropped from a course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites.
2 COURSE INFORMATION
Instructor: Dr. Riley Hinson
Office and Phone Number: see Brightspace 519-661-2111 x84649
Office Hours: By appointment
Email: hinson@uwo.ca
Time and Location of Classes: The course is asynchronous. Lectures will be prerecorded and posted to the course Brightspace site.
Website: There is an Brightspace site for this course. Access to this site is via your id name and password (this is typically your last name and the code involving a combination of numbers and upper and lower case letters). Important course information will be posted at the website, and this is the main method of communicating information to students. It is the student’s responsibility to check the web site regularly for important course information. If you miss a course component (test, make up test, etc.) when the information for that course component has been posted on the web site, then you will receive a grade of zero (0) on that course component.
For courses that include an online component, students must have a reliable internet connection and computer that are compatible with online learning system requirements.
3 COURSE MATERIALS
All material that will be tested will be presented in the recorded class lectures. If you would like to have a complete copy of most of the material that might be presented in class, you may purchase the entire set of my lectures from the Bookstore. You are not required to purchase this, as only the material presented in the recorded lectures will be tested. If you are considering purchasing the lectures from the Bookstore, make sure you get the correct book (you may contact me about this is you wish). The price of the Text Notes is set by the Bookstore. The price last year was $77.
4 COURSE OBJECTIVES & LEARNING OUTCOMES
The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with the major drugs of use and abuse. These include alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, opiates, marijuana, sedatives, hallucinogens, stimulants, inhalants, steroids and other miscellaneous drugs. The history of use of the different drugs will be presented. The current use of drugs will be described. The behavioral effects will be presented. Behavioral and biopsychological research aimed at identifying factors involved in drug use will also be discussed.
By the end of this course, the successful student should be able to
- recognize and identify major drugs of abuse when they are discussed texts, news, public forums
- recognize and identify major concepts related to drug addiction
- recognize and identify major experimental procedures related to the study of drug addiction
- compare, classify, and interpret information about drugs and drug addiction as presented in texts, news, media or public forums
Student Learning Outcomes, Activities and Assessment
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Learning Outcome
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Learning Activity |
Assessment |
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5 EVALUATION
The evaluation and testing formats for this course were created to assess the learning objectives as listed in section 4.0 and are considered necessary for meeting these learning objectives.
Quizzes: These will count 50 marks. There will be weekly quizzes as indicated in the schedule in 7.0. (Note: There will not be a quiz on some weeks.) The quizzes will be “open book”, so you may have written or printed notes. You cannot use electronic notes for the quizzes. You must complete the quiz by yourself. You cannot have any outside help. The quizzes will take place via Brightspace Tests and Quizzes. The weekly quiz will become available at 23:00 hours on Wednesdays and will be available for 24 hours until 23:00 hours on Thursdays. The quizzes will be time-limited meaning that while you have a 24-hour period in which to begin the quiz, once you begin there will be a limited amount of time to finish. Most quizzes will be 20 minutes. Once you start a quiz the time clock starts and will end in 20 minutes. You cannot exit the quiz and come back. Once you start you have 20 minutes to finish. The coverage for each weekly quiz will be posted to Brightspace. The quizzes will be MC. See 7.0 below for tentative quiz schedule.
There will be a total of 10 weekly quizzes. The best 8 of these 10 quizzes will be used to calculate your quiz grades. For example, if each quiz was worth 12 marks, and there are 8 countable quizzes, there would be 96 possible marks, and if you make 80 marks, you have 83.33% on the quizzes, so 83.33% of the 50=41.67 quiz marks. Note since only 8 of the 10 quizzes will be used this is considered a flexible arrangement. As such the Undocumented Absence option of being excused from a quiz without having to provide documentation to Academic Counselling does not apply. If you miss a quiz and wish to be considered as being excused, you must provide Academic Counselling with documentation. They will determine if you are excused and will post to the official site. If you are not excused the grade of such missed quizzes will be 0.
Per Western Technology guidelines—When taking quizzes you must not have the course site open in more than one window/browser at a time. If you have the course site open in more than one browser/window it may not accept answers to the test, it may shut down, it may do many undesirable things---and you will not be allowed any consideration in terms of the answers not being submitted, test timing out, etc. DO NOT HAVE THE COURSE SITE OPEN IN MORE THAN ONE WINDOW/BROWSER AT A TIME.
It is the student’s responsibility to ensure that they have appropriate and stable internet connections. If there are documentable system wide internet problems or problems with Brightspace itself (which Western Technology can check) then you would be excused from missing a quiz. However, issues with connectivity or settings originating at the student connection end are not considered adequate for missing or failing to complete a quiz.
You are not permitted to print screen or copy screen any of the questions on any of the quizzes. All questions on quizzes and tests are protected intellectual material and may not be copied without permission. If you copy questions on quizzes or tests this is considered an academic offense, so you should not be doing this. If you copy questions and in any manner distribute those questions, that is both an academic offense that may result in academic penalties and it is also a violation of copyright law.
December Final Exam: This will count as 50 marks. This test will be cumulative over the entire course. It will be MC. Psychology 2020A is a 650 course (online), and the December Exam will therefore be online. During the final exam you will be allowed to use written or printed notes, including the Text Notes. Electronic notes are not allowed for either the quizzes or the Final Exam. For the Final Exam students will access a designated Zoom portal on Brightspace. Your camera must be on for the entire duration of the Final Exam. Proctors will be monitoring the camera view throughout the Final Exam. It is the student’s responsibility to ensure that they have a working camera for taking the Final Exam via Zoom.
Completion of this course will require you to have a reliable internet connection and a device that meets the system and technical requirements for Zoom. WTS logs any problems with Brightspace or Zoom. If you have a problem with Brightspace or Zoom that is not logged as originating from Western’s resources, you will not be allowed any make up tests or consideration of grades. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have a reliable internet connection. Information about the system and technical requirements are available at the following links:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us
* Please note that Zoom servers are located outside Canada. If you would prefer to use only your first name or a nickname to login to Zoom, please provide this information to the instructor in advance of the test or examination.
There will be NO MAKE UPS OF MISSED QUIZZES. See 5.1 on policy for missed work.
POLICY ON MISSING COURSEWORK
If you do not take a quiz and are not excused (via Academic Counselling) you will receive a zero (0) for the missed quiz, and that will become one of the quiz grades used to calculate you quiz average.
If you are excused from a quiz, the points assigned to that quiz will be added to the Final Exam. Since quizzes are worth 50 marks and there are 8 counted quizzes, each quiz is worth 6.25 marks. Any excused quiz will result in 6.25 marks being added to the value of the Final Exam.
The Psychology Department follows Western’s grading guidelines: https://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/general/grades_undergrad.pdf
The expectation for course grades within the Psychology Department is that they will be distributed around the following averages:
70% 1000-level to 2099-level courses
72% 2100-2999-level courses
75% 3000-level courses
80% 4000-level courses
In the event that course grades are significantly higher or lower than these averages, instructors may be required to make adjustments to course grades. Such adjustment might include the normalization of one or more course components and/or the re-weighting of various course components.
Policy on Grade Rounding
Please note that although course grades within the Psychology Department are rounded to the nearest whole number, no further grade rounding will be done. No additional assignments will be offered to enhance a final grade; nor will requests to change a grade because it is needed for a future program be considered.
6 ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION SCHEDULE
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Weekly quizzes |
50% |
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Final Exam |
50% |
7 CLASS SCHEDULE Tentative and subject to change
The schedule below shows weeks in which a quiz will be given (see above under evaluation for details). The actual coverage in terms of which recorded lectures will be tested on a weekly quiz will be posted to Brightspace before the quiz. For those that have the Text Notes, the actual lines covered for each quiz will be posted to Brightspace.
Each quiz availability starts at 23:00 hours, London, Ontario time on Wednesdays, and the quiz availability ends at 23:00 hours, London, Ontario time on the next day, i.e., Thursday.
Week of September 8 No Quiz this Week
Week of September 15 Quiz 1
Week of September 22 Quiz 2
Week of September 29 Quiz 3
Week of October 6 Quiz 4
Week of October 13 No Quiz
Week of October 20 Quiz 5
Week of October 27 Quiz 6
Week of November 3 No Quiz
Week of November 10 No Quiz
Week of November 17 Quiz 7
Week of November 24 Quiz 8
Week of December 1 Quiz 9
Week of December 8 Quiz 10
Shown below are the order in which the topics will be covered. There will be several recorded lectures for each topic. The actual recorded lectures that will be covered for each quiz will be posted to Brightspace.
- Introductory Material
- Alcohol
- Cannabis
- Tobacco
- Caffeine
- Stimulants
- Hallucinogens
- Sedative Hypnotics
- Opiates
- Behavioral Addictions
- Treatment
8 Academic Integrity
Scholastic offences are taken seriously, and students are directed to read the appropriate policy, specifically, the definition of what constitutes a Scholastic Offence, at the following Web site: https://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/appeals/scholastic_discipline_undergrad.pdf.
Possible penalties for a scholastic offence include failure of the assignment/exam, failure of the course, suspension from the University, and expulsion from the University.
Statement on Use of Electronic Devices
You are NOT allowed to use electronic versions of notes during quizzes and tests.
Multiple Choice Exams
Computer-marked multiple-choice tests and/or exams will be subject to submission for similarity review by software that will check for unusual coincidences in answer patterns that may indicate cheating.
Exam Proctoring Software
Tests and examinations for online courses may be conducted using a remote proctoring service. More information about this remote proctoring service, including technical requirements, is available on Western’s Remote Proctoring website at: https://remoteproctoring.uwo.ca.
9 Academic Accommodations and Accessible Education
View Western’s policy on academic accommodations for student with disabilities at this link.
Accessible Education provides supports and services to students with disabilities at Western.
If you think you may qualify for ongoing accommodation that will be recognized in all your courses, visit Accessible Education for more information. Email: aew@uwo.ca Phone: 519 661-2147
10 Absence & Academic Consideration
Academic Considerations: https://registrar.uwo.ca/academics/academic_considerations/index.html
11 Other Information
- Office of the Registrar: https://registrar.uwo.ca
- Student Development Services: www.sdc.uwo.ca
- Psychology Undergraduate Program: https://www.psychology.uwo.ca/undergraduate/index.html
Students who are in emotional/mental distress should refer to Health and Wellness@Western https://www.uwo.ca/health/ for a complete list of options about how to obtain help.
Please contact the course instructor if you require material in an alternate format or if you require any other arrangements to make this course more accessible to you.
If you wish to appeal a grade, please read the policy documentation at: https://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/appeals/appealsundergrad.pdf. Please first contact the course instructor. If your issue is not resolved, you may make your appeal in writing to the Undergraduate Chair in Psychology (psyugrd@uwo.ca).
Copyright Statement
Lectures and course materials, including power point presentations, outlines, videos and similar materials, are protected by copyright. You may take notes and make copies of course materials for your own educational use. You may not record lectures, reproduce (or allow others to reproduce), post or distribute any course materials publicly and/or for commercial purposes without the instructor’s written consent.
