hello welcome to week one of learning and behavior I am Professor Jones I am going to be facilitating this course so the tutorial that you just watched was an introduction to your behavior change project you will be working on one step each week to describe measure and change a behavior of your choice at the end of the semester you will write a brief report on your project and present it to your peers in the discussion board don't worry it's very easy we go step by step each week you will submit your portion of the assignment and you will receive feedback and then we will move on to the next week for the first step of the project you will be choosing a willing participant and a Target Behavior you want to change and you will be submitting the operational definition for the behavior the participant should be willing without any coercion um and you should have easy access to this person's Behavior preferable participants would be you you can change your own Behavior Uh could be a roommate could be a sibling could be a parent could be your dog or your cat it needs to be somebody that you have very easy access to especially in cases where travel is disrupted for example during a freezing weather event or earthquake snow um so we want to make sure that your project is not disrupted make this easy on yourselves choose a behavior that is easily observable easily measurable you want to go through the the Motions of the project it doesn't have to be a complex behavior that you're changing the behavior should be seen heard felt whatever it is easily should be easy easily measurable should be something you can count or time or measure without any question avoid behaviors that happen so frequently that you can't count them or measure them avoid behaviors such as emotions you could Target reports of emotions such as reports of anxiety or depression you could Target uh using standardized measures for things like anxiety or depression you could also use a ler scale where the be the symptoms are well defined ahead of time so for this assignment you're going to focus on a specific Target Behavior I want it to be precise observable and measurable it needs to pass the stranger test so if we plucked somebody off of the street and said hey read this this description they read the description they could very easily identify that behavior without any further clarification so it needs to pass that stranger test it also needs to pass the Dead Man's test if a dead man can do it it's not Behavior so think about that is sitting still a behavior is that something that a dead person can do if so it's not Behavior upload a written description of your operational definition here and then we will give you feedback possibly refine it and then we will move forward there will be three check-ins throughout the course if this is easy for you if you're not having any issues all you'll need to do is send us an email describing where you are describing if if you have any questions if you need more help because this is not something that everybody does we we can set up a face-to-face meeting or um you could always come to campus and get one-on-one support there so I I am looking forward to seeing all of your ideas I'm excited for a great semester please reach out if you have any questions have a great beginning week of class