Travelling to China takes a long time. After 24 hours of travelling (and two seriously delayed flights), I’m finally here! What, you might ask, was the first thing that I saw in the airport after getting off of my airplane? A Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurant! KFC was the first American fast-food restaurant to open in China. I mentioned the KFC spotting to my hosts, who quickly pointed out how much they loved the Colonel’s recipe. I’m literally on the other side of the globe, yet I still feel very connected to my Kentucky roots.  

In 8 hours, I’ll start teaching my research methods in social psychology course. It has a lot in common with the 8-week courses that we’ll be offering in A&S Wired, with the exception that the course only lasts a week. The course has a small enrollment to facilitate connections with students and the faculty instructor. The course utilizes interactive features in which students respond to course readings in a public “open thread” format, which will enable other students to read and comment on their classmates’ thoughts. Finally, students get hands on experience participating and conducting social psychological research. Like all of you, they will learn the value and excitement of discovering completely new information. Thus, the students will gain knowledge about new scientific information and they get hands-on experience creating new scientific information through taking part in research, learning how to ask questions using the scientific method, and collecting data on questions that interest them. Very cool!