Course Syllabus

HLTED 6 – Stress and Healthy Adaptation

Spring 2026 - COURSE SYLLABUS

Laney College – KASH Department

Course Dates: January 20 - May 23 , 2026

Location: A273

Instructor: Austin Kiraly

Office Phone: (510) 464-3482 (Best way to contact is email)

Fax: (510) 986-6900

Email: akiraly@peralta.edu (I will check it daily on Weekdays, you may also use Canvas messenger)

Canvas Student App: the Canvas Student app is an easy way to navigate the course and receive alerts when new modules are published or due dates are changed. The app is available on any app marketplace. Please download it and log in so you can easily monitor and contribute to the course. Below are links to download the app.

Canvas Student App Information (Links to an external site.)

Google Play Store (Links to an external site.)

Apple App Store

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course is designed to:

• Help you distinguish types of stress and their impact on health.
• Select appropriate stress reduction methods to lower the health impact of stressors.
• Develop personal resource management techniques to lower risk of potential life stressors.

To get started, please click the syllabus link available in the tab on the left or in the Modules tab. Then follow along with the available Modules for each week. If you are not familiar with the online format known as "Canvas", you can watch the tutorials on the Canvas home page.

All communications for this class will be done via announcements and on the Canvas inbox messenger. To access your Canvas inbox, click on the "inbox" icon on the left side of the page. Messages can be sent directly to me, and I will use it to address the class.

Note: Do NOT start any forums or quizzes until reading all the directions.  You will not get full credit for Late Work -- you MUST pay attention to the deadlines or risk losing points.

Other Resources

Laney College has a great Remote/Online Student Services site that has links for all the great services that Laney College is providing. This includes basic needs (food, laptop rental, etc), counseling, tutoring, financial aid, and a number of other helpful services. Here is the link to find helpful resources: https://laney.edu/online-student-services/

Canvas Student App Information (Links to an external site.)

Google Play Store (Links to an external site.)

Apple App Store

Policies and Procedures:

• Contacting Instructor: email is the best way to get a hold of me unless you call me while I’m in the office. If you leave a phone message, I may not pick it up as often as email. I check email M-F daily and sometimes on the weekends, so if you have questions, make sure you email me by Thursday/Friday to get them answered.
• Online Skills Needed: To be successful in this class, I recommend having the ability to navigate and search websites, be proficient with email, read online content, watch video's online (not closed captioned at this time), and navigate through various windows of class content.
• Time Management Skills Needed: Since this is an online class, you will be responsible for managing your time to be able to get online daily for at least 1-2 hours in order to complete course activities and reading. At the beginning of each week, you should check out that week’s coursework (look at the weekly checklist) and plan a time each day to work on different elements for the week. If you are not as computer ‘savvy’, you may need to plan for more time to navigate and figure out the necessary online activities.
• Honesty Policy: Due to the ‘hidden’ nature of an online class (since I’m not ‘watching’ you in a classroom), I expect that each student will be honest in completing his/her own work and not plagiarize or copy another individual's work, or have someone else complete any portion of the class other than the actual student enrolled in the course. All copyright laws must be upheld. If plagiarism is discovered, you may be expelled from this course.
• Participation Policy: My expectation is that all students will maintain an active roll in class discussions and activities, and that each person’s input is valuable and contributes to the whole class's learning environment. Don’t deprive your classmates of learning from you! Risk getting involved, even if topics are a little uncomfortable for you to talk about. According to class reviews, this is one of the things students love most about this class - they love to learn from each other and share their experiences.
• Course Content Warning: This class covers mature content geared toward college level participation/ students. We will be discussing and viewing content related to human anatomy & sexuality, contraception, sexual diseases, and these types of content may include video and pictures that are appropriate for a mature audience (you may not want younger children watching with you when you are viewing this material). All materials are geared for tasteful educational purposes, but I just felt that you should be aware of the materials and the expectation that each student be able to handle him or herself in a mature, responsible fashion when dealing with these subjects.

Student Learning Outcomes:

These are the things that I expect will be the Learning Outcomes from you taking this class. By the end, I will expect that:

1. Students will identify 2-3 health behaviors that could be improved in their daily lives, and create SMART goals to address these behaviors.

2. Students will apply healthy concepts to daily living.

3. Students will be able to describe health principles and concepts from each of the various components of wellness.

Methods of Evaluating Outcomes :

Each topic will be at least one quiz, a forum, and other possible assignments to complete. These elements of the course will be graded. Your points will be totaled and a "Simple Weighted Mean" calculation will be used to determine your final grade. That means that each graded element is given a 'weight' that is calculated as Max Grade - Minimum Grade. Graded assignments that are worth more points, will be weighted 'heavier' than lower point assignments. For instance, a 100 point assignment is given a weight of 100 and a 30 point assignment is given a weight of 30.

Discussion Requirements:

One of the graded elements is participation in class discussions.

For each topic we will have at least one discussion discussion. A discussion is an online way to 'chat' and answer an initial question that I post. You will be able to see other classmate’s posts as well. You must post THREE times in each discussion topic to get the maximum number of points for your participation . Each discussion's set of 3 substantive (significant/abundant) and complete posts are worth 30 points (10 for each of the 3 forum posts) for that discussion.

If you post more than 3 posts, you will not gain any additional points. Make sure, if you want to add any additional Non-Graded posts, beyond the 3 required (to enhance discussion) put in parenthesis (DO NOT GRADE)… so I do not grade it and hold you to the grading standards.

Your 3 Posts:

1. The first or initial Post is your individual response to the discussion question.

2. The second Post is a response to a classmate's initial discussion post.

3. The third Post is another response to a different classmate's initial discussion post.

As the instructor, I will facilitate student discussions but I will not address every single post. In most cases, I might email the class as a whole with my thoughts, or I might individually share a related idea, intervene when the discussion goes off-track, or tie student comments together to help deepen student learning. Consequently, I will not directly answer questions in the discussion area unless they are addressed to me (please email me if you have an actual question).

What do I mean by a substantive and complete post?

Basically, in an initial post, I look for you to cover each one of the parts of the discussion question (do not skip any parts), and for you to expand it with experiences or ideas you have. When responding to posts from other classmates, I look for you to comment on/give opinions on what others have said, and try to insert some personal experience or opinions that will help them or cause them to think more about the forum topic.

The following are some ideas to help you focus on your participation and the development of your critical thinking skills in your posts:

1. Ensure that the posting contributes to the overall discussion thread that is being developed. Your response must contain some reference back to the original discussion question. Stay on track by always referring back to that original discussion question.

2. Try to use your posting to add value to the discussion. This is more effective than simply responding to meet a requirement.

3. Check to see that the posting expands on the main theme (in the discussion question,or assignment posting).

4. Make sure your posting is at least 50-150 words.

Some characteristics I consider to be part of excellent discussion contributions are outlined below. I will consider these characteristics when assessing the quality and level of student participation.

• Submit initial post(s) early in the week, and subsequent responses to the posts of other learners at timely intervals throughout the duration of the weekly session. The goal is to have a dynamic discussion around the topic that lasts throughout the entire weekly session.
• Posts and responses should be thorough and thoughtful. Just posting an "I agree" or "Good ideas" will not be considered adequate. Support statements with examples, experiences, or references. Be brief but thorough— keep each post and response to one or two short paragraphs. Keep in mind that fellow learners will be reading and responding to you, too.
• Make certain that all posts and responses address the question, problem, or situation as presented for discussion. This does not mean you should not extend the topic, but do not stray from the topic.
• Discussions occur when there is dialogue; therefore, you need to build upon the posts and responses of other learners to create discussion threads. Make sure to revisit the discussion forum and respond (if necessary) to what other learners have posted to your initial post (these will not be graded - but they enhance interaction and learning).
• When relevant, add to the discussion by including prior knowledge, work experiences, references, web sites, resources, etc. (giving credit when appropriate).
• Contributions to the discussions (posts and responses) should be complete and free of grammatical or structural errors. I recommend you read your posts out loud PRIOR to sending them, to catch obvious grammatical and spelling errors.

Other Ideas for Participation

• Share a related experience.
• Comment on others' experiences.
• Ask students questions about their ideas/experiences.
• Consider an idea being discussed, and offer a different perspective on it.
• Describe an interesting idea from the week's reading, and explain what insights you gained from it.
• Ask the group a question about the week's reading.
• Disagree (respectfully, of course) with a point that someone else has made.
• Discuss a related issue on which you would like some feedback.
• Describe how you have applied the recent course concepts to your personal/professional life.
• Share another resource you have used as you explored the course topics.

How Discussions' are Graded:

Discussion posts are only graded if they are submitted during the one week time frame allowed! No late discussion posts are accepted! The discussions are opened on Monday morning at the start of each week and they close on the next Sunday! Posts that are completed late are not accepted/graded as the system locks down my ability to grade entries. Early posts are also not accepted ---if I open a new week prior to Sunday, any posts posted prior to Sunday will also NOT be graded! So, make sure you work on your posts from Monday and complete all 3 posts by the following Sunday.

Posts are worth a possible 10 points each - with a total of 30 points for all 3 posts. The criteria for grading is listed below. During the week, I will start grading the posts. If you check your GRADES during this time, you may see INCOMPLETE grades. For instance if you have only posted 1 post or I have only graded one of your posts so far, you may see 0-10 points listed out of the 30 possible. After all the posts are closed and I have a chance to grade them all, you will be able to see your actual total for all 3 posts. (I usually finish all grading by Wednesday of the week following the deadline.)

Here is a grading rubric to help you see how forums are graded:

Criteria	Unsatisfactory	Satisfactory	Exemplary
Personal Experience (10 points possible)	Does not submit any personal experiences or opinions in post	Submits at least one personal, thoughtful, experience/ opinion in post.	Submits two or more thoughtful personal experiences/ opinions in post.
Demonstrates knowledge and understanding of content and applicability to professional practice (10 points possible)	Post(s) and responses show little evidence of knowledge and understanding of course content and applicability to professional practice.	Post(s) and responses show evidence of knowledge and understanding of course content and applicability to professional practice.	Post(s) and responses show evidence of knowledge and understanding of course content and applicability to professional practice and include other resources that extend the learning of the community.
Generates learning within the community (10 points possible)	Posts do not attempt to elicit responses and reflections from other learners and/or responses do not build upon the ideas of other learners to take the discussion deeper.	Posts attempt to elicit responses and reflections from other learners and responses build upon the ideas of other learners to take the discussion deeper.	Posts elicit responses and reflections from other learners and responses build upon and integrate multiple views from other learners to take the discussion deeper.

Late and Make-up Work

On Time assignments will be given full credit and then graded for completeness.

Late assignments may be turned in if an agreement was made with the instructor.

Course Management:

The best way to approach this class is by going over the Modules on the Monday that they come out. Once you have an understanding for what is due by the end of the week, you can manage your time better and complete each forum, quiz and assignment before the Sunday night deadline. The material for this course if very straight forward, so as long as you are viewing and understanding the material you should do well.

Textbook: All information for this class is in the modules, so the textbook assigned for the course is not required.

FINAL PAPER due MAY 23, 2026

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/index.html

Grading % Scale:

90 - 100% …………………A

80 - 89% …………………. B

70 - 79% ………………...…C

60 - 69% …………………...D

0 - 59% ….…………………. F