know.

CookbookStudy and examsNo. 8

A semester from the syllabusPsychology 101 laid out by unit, studied from the open textbook and quizzed before each exam

Recipe No. 8Study and exams

For
A first-year student taking Introduction to Psychology in the fall semester
You bring
The PSY 101 syllabus as a PDF from the course site, the free OpenStax Psychology 2e textbook, and your own lecture notes as the weeks go by
You get
A course shelf with a course map of grades, dates and rules, a document per unit holding its readings, deadlines and key terms section by section, your lecture notes beside them, and a quiz before each of the four exams
Time
An hour on the first day to build and check it, twenty minutes after each week of lectures, and a quiz a day in exam weeks
Works in
know.sh on the web · your AI assistant, through MCP
Keep it
Private. This one never goes on a public link.

The syllabus goes up on the course site before the first Tuesday: nine pages holding fourteen textbook chapters, a reading quiz before most weeks of lectures, four exams, six research credits, two short papers and a paragraph on AI. Most first-year students read it once. By October the dates live in four places and two of them are wrong.

This recipe hands the syllabus to the assistant you already use, Claude, ChatGPT or a local model, connected to know.sh. In one sitting it builds the semester: a shelf, a course map of grades and rules, and a document per unit with every deadline and a draft note on the key terms of each assigned section of OpenStax Psychology 2e, linked to its page. You check it all in the editor, add your own lecture notes after each class, and ask for a quiz ten days before each exam.

The course site stays the official record of every date and grade. The assistant builds the scaffolding and the practice questions; the reading, the papers and the exams are yours.

What you will use

Your AI assistant
ChatGPT, Claude or a local model, connected to know.sh: it reads the syllabus you give it, builds the shelf and the unit documents, drafts key-term notes from the open textbook with each section linked, and writes the quizzes.
Shelf
One shelf for the course, PSY 101 — Introduction to Psychology, with the four exam dates in its line.
Research document
A Course map for grading, dates and rules, then one document per unit, named with the chapters it covers so the shelf reads in course order.
Finding
A dated schedule at the top of each unit, then one finding per textbook section: its key terms, a Lecture heading for your notes, and the section page as its source.
The editor
Where you check every date against the syllabus, rewrite the drafts in your own words, type in lecture notes and mark what the instructor stressed as Key.
Highlights
The sentence a quiz caught you out on, so the finding prints in bold in the index and Open at takes you back to it.
Quiz
Ten questions per unit before each exam, each citing the findings it came from, back under Revisit after 3, 7 or 21 days.
Star and Focus
The unit the next exam covers goes in Focus for its last seven days.

Method

  1. 1

    Give your assistant the syllabus on day one

    Save the syllabus from the course site to your computer. In ChatGPT or Claude, start a chat and attach it; with a local model, save it where your chat app can read it. Ask the assistant to read the whole thing and tell you what it found before it writes anything.

    A PSY 101 syllabus of the usual kind has four parts worth pulling out: the grading table, the schedule of weeks and chapters, the research participation rules (credits through SONA, or an alternative assignment), and the statements on AI, integrity and accommodations. If the summary misses one, say so now; everything after this is built from it.

  2. 2

    Have it build the shelf, the course map and the units

    Ask for a shelf named for the course and a first document, Course map: a finding for the grading weights, one per exam with its date and chapters, one each for the reading-quiz rule, research participation and the two application papers, and one each for the AI policy and the accommodations deadline, quoting the syllabus closely. If you have accommodations, file the deadline for your letter, never the reason.

    Then a document per unit, titled with its chapters: Unit 1 — Research and the brain (Ch. 1, 2, 3, 5) through Unit 4 — Stress, disorders and therapy (Ch. 14, 15, 16). The first finding of each is a dated table of every reading, every quiz deadline with its time, and the exam.

  3. 3

    Let it draft the key terms from the open textbook

    The course uses OpenStax Psychology 2e, free to read on openstax.org. Ask the assistant to open each section the syllabus assigns and add one finding per section, titled with its number and name, “6.3 Operant Conditioning”: the section’s key terms, each with a plain two-line definition in its own words under a Textbook heading, and an empty Lecture heading below. The section’s page is the finding’s source, one click from the full text.

    This is the part that scales: Unit 1 alone has nineteen sections. It needs an assistant that can open web pages; with a local model, give it the chapter from the book’s free PDF.

  4. 4

    Check everything in the editor

    Open Course map and press Edit. Check every date and weight against the syllabus, line by line; an assistant that reads “Thu 29 Oct” as the 28th will cost you a quiz. Where the syllabus contradicts itself, ask the instructor and file the answer.

    Then go through each unit. Correct any definition that disagrees with the chapter, delete sections the instructor says you can skip, and drag the findings into the order the lectures take. Where a definition reads like the textbook rather than you, rewrite it: you will remember your own sentence.

  5. 5

    Add your lecture notes after each class

    After each lecture, open the unit and type your notes under the Lecture heading of the right section: the examples the instructor used, the study they described, the grid drawn on the board, put into words. Mark as Key anything the instructor said “will be on the exam”. The slides stay on the course site, as the syllabus requires; write what you understood.

    If a lecture leaves you with something you cannot answer, file a Question finding and take it to office hours. When you have the answer, write it in.

  6. 6

    Ask for a quiz ten days before each exam

    Ten days before an exam, ask your assistant for a quiz on the unit: ten questions in mixed kinds, weighted towards Key findings, each citing the findings it came from. You take it in know.sh or the iOS app, which is in TestFlight beta. The timing matters: under 60 per cent brings the quiz back under Revisit in three days, 60 or more in seven, both before the exam. For Exam 2 on Thursday 29 October, take the first quiz on Monday 19 October.

    When you miss a question, open the finding it cites and highlight the sentence you had wrong. A unit with many bold numbers in its index tells you where the last week should go.

  7. 7

    Run exam weeks with Focus and Revisit

    Seven days before each exam, put its unit in Focus: Thursday 22 October for Exam 2. Each day, take what Revisit brings back, then ask for a short quiz on only the findings you have highlighted. For the cumulative final on Tuesday 8 December, ask for a mixed quiz across all four units.

    When the instructor moves a date, and one will move, ask your assistant that day to update the unit’s schedule and the course map, then check the change against the course site, which is the record that counts.

Specimen

  1. You

    I have attached my PSY 101 syllabus for fall 2026. Using know.sh, build the semester: a shelf for the course, a “Course map” document for grading, exams and policies, and a document per unit whose first finding tables its dates. Then, for Unit 1, add a finding per assigned OpenStax Psychology 2e section with its key terms in your own words, each citing the section page. Draft nothing for the application papers.

  2. ChatGPT

    The syllabus sets 14 chapters of Psychology 2e across 15 weeks in four units: exams on Thursday 24 September, Thursday 29 October and Thursday 19 November, and a cumulative final on Tuesday 8 December. I searched openstax.org for the Unit 1 sections and will build it now.

  3. dossier_createCreated the shelf PSY 101 — Introduction to Psychology
  4. research_createCreated Course map — grades, dates and rules on PSY 101
  5. finding_addAdded “Grading: exams 65%, reading quizzes 15%, research 10%, papers 10%” to Course map, 1
  6. finding_addAdded 8 more to Course map: each exam, the quiz rule, SONA credits, the papers, AI policy, accommodations
  7. research_createCreated Unit 1 — Research and the brain (Ch. 1, 2, 3, 5) and the three other unit documents
  8. finding_addAdded “1.1 What Is Psychology?” to Unit 1, citing its page on openstax.org, 2
  9. finding_addAdded 18 more section findings to Unit 1, each citing its section page

  10. ChatGPT

    Done: a shelf, five documents, 32 findings. One thing to check: the schedule puts Exam 3 on Thursday 19 November, but the grading table says Tuesday 17 November. I filed the 19th and said so in Course map, 4; confirm it on the course site. Every Lecture heading is empty for your notes, and I wrote nothing for the papers, since the syllabus allows AI for studying but not for graded work.

ChatGPT reading the syllabus and building the semester through know.sh, then naming the date it could not settle from the syllabus alone.

PSY 101 — Introduction to PsychologyUnit 2 — Consciousness, learning and memory (Ch. 4, 6, 7, 8)

10of 23

6.3 Operant Conditioning

Observation, key finding, 2 highlights, 1 note, 1 source, 330 words

From OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 6.3 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Drafted by ChatGPT, checked against the chapter on 5 October.

Textbook

  • Operant conditioning: learning from consequences. A behaviour followed by a consequence becomes more or less likely. Skinner, building on Thorndike’s law of effect.
  • Reinforcement makes a behaviour more likely; punishment makes it less likely. Positive adds something, negative takes something away.
  • Negative reinforcement takes away something unpleasant, so the behaviour increases. It is not punishment.
  • Primary reinforcers (food, warmth) need no learning; secondary reinforcers (money, points, praise) are learned.
  • Shaping: reinforcing closer and closer approximations of the behaviour you want.
  • Schedules: continuous or partial; fixed or variable, ratio or interval. Variable ratio gives the highest, steadiest rate and is the hardest to extinguish.

Lecture, Thursday 8 October

  • The 2×2 grid: add and take away across the top, increases and decreases down the side. Draw it before any question on this.
  • Time-out is negative punishment: attention is taken away.
  • “Will be on the exam”: which schedule an example shows. Slot machine, variable ratio; checking for a text, variable interval.

Where I went wrong

Quiz, 19 October: I called the alarm example positive punishment. The alarm is taken away and getting up increases, so it is negative reinforcement.

One textbook section as a finding: the assistant’s draft of the key terms, checked and trimmed, the lecture notes typed in after class, and the two lines a quiz caught out, highlighted.

QuizzesUnit 2 — Consciousness, learning and memory (Ch. 4, 6, 7, 8)Question 4 of 10

Your alarm keeps sounding until you get out of bed and switch it off, and over the semester you get up faster. Which kind of operant conditioning is this?

  1. aPositive reinforcement
  2. bNegative reinforcement
  3. cPositive punishment
  4. dNegative punishment

The answer is (b). Getting up takes the alarm away, and the behaviour that did it becomes more likely: something unpleasant removed, behaviour increased. Punishment of either kind makes a behaviour less likely. See Unit 2 — Consciousness, learning and memory, 10.

A scenario question written from the finding above, with the wrong choice struck through and the finding to reread named in the answer.

Prompts to try

  1. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    I have attached my PSY 101 syllabus. Using know.sh, create a shelf called “PSY 101 — Introduction to Psychology” and a document called “Course map” with one finding each for the grading weights, each exam, the reading-quiz rule, research participation, the application papers, the AI policy and the accommodations deadline, quoting the syllabus closely. Then create one document per unit, titled with its chapters, whose first finding is a table of every reading, quiz deadline and exam with dates and times. Tell me where the syllabus contradicts itself instead of choosing.

  2. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, for each OpenStax Psychology 2e section assigned in the document “Unit 3 — Development, personality and social psychology (Ch. 9, 11, 12)” on my PSY 101 shelf, add a finding titled with the section number and name. Under a Textbook heading, list its key terms with a plain two-line definition in your own words; add an empty Lecture heading below. Use the section page on openstax.org as the source, and do not copy the book’s sentences.

  3. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, make a quiz of ten questions on “Unit 2 — Consciousness, learning and memory (Ch. 4, 6, 7, 8)” on my PSY 101 shelf: six multiple choice, two true or false and two select all that apply. Weight it towards Key findings and the ones I have highlighted, prefer everyday scenarios to definitions, and cite the finding each question comes from.

  4. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, compare every date in “Course map” and the four unit schedules on my PSY 101 shelf with the list below, which I copied from the course site today. List each date that differs, with both versions. Change nothing until I say which is right.

Variations

  • Taking four courses? Give each syllabus its own shelf, then ask your assistant for a document called Fall 2026 — every deadline that tables them week by week, each row linked to its course map.
  • Teaching PSY 101 rather than taking it? The course syllabus and class study guide recipes are the other side of this one.
  • Keep the shelf after the final. PSY 101 comes before research methods, developmental and abnormal psychology, and next year Look up will find schedules of reinforcement faster than a box of old notes.

Where it falls short

  • The syllabus never goes into know.sh itself: there is no file upload. Your assistant reads the PDF in its own chat and files what it finds, and the textbook’s figures and the lecture slides stay where they are; describe a diagram in words.
  • Nothing in know.sh sends alerts. The dates live on the shelf and on the course site; if you want your phone to ring before a reading quiz closes, put the deadlines in your own calendar.
  • Quizzes are yours alone and cannot be given to a study group. They come back on a 3, 7 or 21-day rule by score, not spaced repetition, and they cover what is in your findings, not what the instructor will ask.
  • The key-term drafts need an assistant that can open web pages. Any assistant can misread a date or define a term loosely, and a smaller local model more often; Revisions shows every change it made.

A note on AI policies, the textbook and exam materials

Indexed under

SyllabusPsychologyOpen textbooksDue datesKey termsLecture notesExam weeksAI policies

See also