By Christie Cathey

A Team Approach to Teaching Introductory Psychology

Those of us who teach Introductory Psychology at Missouri State University work closely together as a team of five full-time faculty members. Although we each have our own assigned section with 300 students, the course is highly standardized, and we all share a common syllabus. The team meets together weekly to talk about how our classes are going, brainstorm new class demonstrations and activities, and come up with solutions to the problems we encounter. We’ve tried to structure the course to help our students not only master the course content, but also become more effective learners in all their college classes. (1)

Focus on Study Skills

We spend a lot of time trying to help students develop better study skills, and much of this focus happens at midterm. We time this attack on study skills at midterm, because while many freshmen enter college with ineffective study skills, they don’t necessarily realize that they need better ones until they’ve received a few rounds of feedback on their performance. (2)

Midterm Meetings for Struggling Students

One particular study skills intervention focuses on students who are underperforming at midterm. We email each of our students with grades of ‘D’ or ‘F’ and invite them to meet with us one-on-one to discuss their course performance and to help them devise a more effective study plan for the rest of the semester. During these individual meetings, we give students a “prescription sheet” and have them write down their plan of action with a list of the specific study strategies we discussed.

Our email invitation contains a link to our YouCanBook.Me page and encourages students to sign up for a meeting within the next two weeks. Incidentally, if you’re not familiar with YouCanBookMe, you should check it out. It’s free, very user-friendly, and when students sign up, appointments go directly to your calendar. We think it’s a real life-changer.

Meetings Help!

Over several semesters, we tracked attendance at these midterm meetings and students’ subsequent performance. We found that students who met with us show more improvement by the end of the semester compared to those who didn’t. Obviously, there could be self-selection bias at work here – more motivated students are probably those who are more likely to come see us -- but still, we’re convinced these meetings really helped.

Non-Stellar Attendance Rates

Using Persuasion Principles to Improve Meeting Attendance

At some point, though, it occurred to us that as psychologists, we should know a thing or two about influencing behavior. There had to be a way we could use what we know about human psychology to manipulate students into doing what’s best for them, and what better place to look than to the work of the great Cialdini, social psychology’s persuasion guru. Surely we could use one of his principles of persuasion for good. But which?

The Principle of Scarcity

We began with the principle of scarcity. This technique seems to work well for QVC. Tell an at-home audience that there are only a few mauve sweaters left, and the phones magically light up with calls from people who suddenly can’t live without one. Surely the same would work on our students, right?

That semester, we sent two versions of an email inviting D/F students to meet with us. One version, our control, was the standard invitation. The scarcity condition email contained an additional sentence that suggested that meeting times with us were in short supply.

“These meetings times fill quickly, so be sure to sign up for an appointment as soon as you can.”

Sadly, while the principle of scarcity might motivate people to buy ugly sweaters, it didn’t seem to move our students – there was absolutely no difference between conditions.

Manipulating Social Proof

A few semesters later, we decided to try again – this time with the principle of social proof. The idea behind social proof is that when people are unsure about how to behave in a given situation, they look to similar others and model their own behavior after those people.

For example, Cialdini and colleagues found that simply hanging signs in hotel rooms that say that most other guests reuse their towels leads guests in those rooms to be more likely to reuse their own towels. This really struck us as the perfect principle to try next, because after all, what should be more persuasive to the typical 18-year-old than information about what other 18-year-olds are doing?

Three Email Conditions

For this new attempt at persuasion, we sent three versions of our email to D/F students at midterm. Once again, we had the standard, control invitation to meet. A second version of the email included one additional sentence, which was our manipulation of social proof:

Last semester, more than 60 students took us up on this offer for help.

Note that this number was technically true (when we combined attendance numbers across all sections of the course from the prior semester). Our IRB was fine with this slight deception.

A third version was our attempt to manipulate students’ perceptions about the likely outcome of meeting with us. The additional sentence in this version told the truth:

Of the people who came to meet with us last semester, 83% of them improved their grade by at least one letter.

Eureka!

Once again, we tracked meeting attendance, and this time, we found something really interesting. There was no difference in the attendance rates between students in the control group (22% attended) and the outcome focus group (28% attended), and these rates were similar to what we typically see. However, among students in the social proof condition, a whopping 43% came to meet with us.

Other Applications of Social Proof

The most surprising thing about these findings is that students seem to be more influenced by information about what other students do than by how a particular behavior is likely to pay off for them. This really seems to highlight the value of using information about peer behavior for good, and there are likely many other possible applications of this simple, but seemingly effective, manipulation of social proof to positively influence students’ academic behaviors.

For example, our team’s next move will be to see if we can use social proof information to increase student attendance at the Introductory Psychology help desk in our library that’s staffed by our course’s undergraduate learning assistants. We also have a colleague at a community college in Texas who’s attempting to use social proof to increase attendance at optional Supplemental Instruction sessions.

Being Mindful of Subtle Uses of Social Proof

After considering the influential power of the things we say to students about their peers’ behaviors, it occurred to us that perhaps we unknowingly convey that sort of information all the time. Perhaps it can sometimes have bad consequences.

For example, what about those times when we tell classes about their collective bad behavior in order to motivate them? We’ve all likely said things to classes like, “Not many of you have started this week’s assignments yet.” Given what we know about social proof, shouldn’t such messages actually serve to decrease the behavior we want to see? It seems we’d be much more likely to change behavior if we were to say to a class (even if it’s a white lie), “I’m so happy to see how many of you have already started on this week’s assignment.”

I used to try to convince my students that I truly wanted to see them in my office hours by telling them how lonely I get when no one comes by. I see now that I was likely driving students away by suggesting that not coming is the norm.

As teachers, it might be worth being mindful of how easily we seem to be able to sway students’ behavior (for good or for bad) with subtle changes in wording, especially when those words convey information about how other students behave. So consider putting a positive spin on things when you talk to your classes about typical student behavior. The perceived social pressure might be good enough for them to rise to the occasion and engage in the behaviors that will help them most!

Bio

Christie Cathey received her BA from Hendrix College and her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Connecticut. She’s held faculty positions at Missouri Southern State University and Ozarks Technical Community College and was a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. She is currently a faculty member at Missouri State University where she is Coordinator for Introductory Psychology. In her free time, she enjoys dominating her opponents in spicy food eating competitions.

Notes

(1) For details on how we redesigned our course, its current structure, and the resulting outcomes in student performance, success rates, and course perceptions, see Hudson, Whisenhunt, Shoptaugh, Visio, Cathey and Rost (2015).

(2) For details on an optional study skills class we offer at midterm, see Cathey, Visio, Whisenhunt, Hudson, and Shoptaugh (2016).

References

Cathey, C.L., Visio, M.E., Whisenhunt, D.L., Hudson, D.L., & Shoptaugh, C.F. (2016). Helping when they are listening: A midterm study skills intervention for Introductory Psychology. Psychology Teaching and Learning, 15(3), 250-267.

Cialdini, R. B. (2007). Influence: The psychology of persuasion. New York: Collins.

Hudson, D.L., Whisenhunt, B.L, Shoptaugh, C.F., Visio, M.E., Cathey, C., & Rost, A.D. (2015). Change takes time: Understanding and responding to culture change in course redesign. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 1(4), 255-268.

Goldstein, N. J., Cialdini, R.B., & Griskevicius, V. (2008). A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of Consumer Research, 35, 472-482. 

By Sara Finley

@ProfessorFinley

Introductory Psychology is a Platform

One of the main courses that I teach at Pacific Lutheran University is PSYC 101, Introduction to Psychology. This is one of the largest courses that PLU offers, with three sections of 90 students in the fall semester, and 1 section of 90 students in the spring. I also teach one small (online) section of PSYC 101 in the summer. With a total student population of around 3100, Introductory Psychology is one of the most popular courses at PLU. This is in line with statistics suggesting that Introductory Psychology is one of the most popular courses that students take in college. Given that so many students take an introductory psychology course in their college career, it makes sense to see this course as a platform. Not only can we, as introductory psychology instructors, help instill a love for the rich, deep field of psychology, and an interest in the scientific study of human behavior, but we can also instill important skills that students can use in their own studies and beyond. Topics such as learning and memory can help with study and learning skills. Topics such as disorders and treatments can help students better understand mental health, and may make them more likely to seek treatment, or help their loved ones to seek treatment. All of these components have important impacts on students. They have the potential to increase student success generally, and increase retention and persistence across the university. 

Given that introductory psychology has the potential for such a huge impact on the lives of students, I wondered whether there was a way to more successfully deliver on this potential, to build community among the students, and to increase student resilience. Resilience is an extremely important skill for anyone, but particularly important for college students, who often struggle with learning new materials, finding motivation, and balancing personal and academic challenges. Students with resilience have the skills to do well in college because they have, and seek out the resources necessary for them to be successful. The problem, of course, is how to instill these skills in our students.

Inspiration hit when I started listening to the audio recording of a book called SuperBetter (McGonigal, 2016). This book is considered a ‘self-help’ book, but it is a lot more. The book is written by Dr. Jane McGonigal, an expert in game design, and the use of games to better people’s lives. Using the science of games, she was able to lift herself out of the cognitive and emotional symptoms that followed a concussion. She created a game called SuperBetter, a game that is designed to increase resilience. In her book, McGonigal distinguishes between four types of resilience, social, mental, emotional, and physical. 

Social Resilience: “the ability to get support from friends, family members, neighbors and coworkers” (p. 17).

Mental Resilience: “motivation, focus and willpower” (p. 15).

Emotional Resilience: “the ability to access positive emotions at will” (p. 16).

Physical Resilience: “your body’s ability to withstand stress and heal itself” (p.14). 

Players increase their resilience in each of these categories through “quests” that help them to develop goals, conquer weaknesses, and develop allies. What inspired me so much about the book is not only that the book provides real, science-backed activities to help build their resilience ( the “quests”), but the book presents many of the concepts found in Introductory Psychology courses in an accessible, approachable format. Several key concepts include the spotlight theory of attention, self-efficacy, psychological disorders, and the importance of peer reviewed studies in the science of psychology.

SuperBetter is a game that anyone can play to become stronger and more resilient. Each small, achievable quest explains the science behind its underlying goal. Players complete quests as they read the book, but they can also engage with an online version of the game (also as an app). These activities allow the player to cultivate allies (social resilience), recognize and fight ‘bad guys’ (the things that keep you from achieving your goals, whether it’s negative thoughts, triggers, or actual people), and to set goals, all based on the science of motivation and behavior.

Incorporating Super Better into Intro Psych

I had no idea how to incorporate SuperBetter into my course, but I figured if I didn’t make a commitment that I couldn’t back out of, I wouldn’t do anything with it. So, I decided to assign the book as required reading in my Spring 2017 PSYC 101 course. I included the course readings in the syllabus, assigning about one chapter per week. I tried to get students excited about the concept of SuperBetter by watchingJane McGonigal’s TED talk (https://youtu.be/lfBpsV1Hwqs) on the first day of class. We discussed what it means to be resilient, and how games might help support the development of resiliency.

Because the book was required reading, I spent time in class covering topics discussed in SuperBetter, and how it related to course content. For example, I spent extra time in class discussing the spotlight theory of attention, and when and how gamefulness might help instill self-efficacy. I also included questions about SuperBetter on the exam study guides, and included 1-3 questions on each exam that either directly or indirectly linked to the book.

The biggest way that I incorporated SuperBetter into my PSYC 101 course was to gamify the assignments. Instead of calling them assignments, I called them ‘Quests’ following the SuperBetter format. I tried to include resiliency objectives within the overall learning objectives for each assignment, explaining to students how each activity is designed to help them increase their, mental, emotional, physical, or social resilience. While referring to assignments as quests may seem like little more than ‘rebranding’ I tried to make assignments that would feel more like games. For example, my students’ first quest included a scavenger hunt, requiring them to actively seek out information about psychology, particularly at PLU. They were required to meet with two faculty and ask them questions about their sub-discipline. Students were also required to research well-known psychologists, particularly women and scholars of color. While I did receive some pushback on this assignment (students reported not having time to meet with faculty or the idea being ‘silly’ or anxiety provoking), the majority of the students completed the task, and reported learning a lot about psychology, and feeling more connected to the psychology faculty. One student even reported considering majoring in psychology after her meeting with a PLU faculty member.

 Two of my favorite gameful quests included ‘Brain Games’ and ‘Ending the Stigma’. Brain Games involved students creating a game, song, artwork, or some piece of media, to help teach themselves about the major brain areas and their functions. Their objective was to make it fun and creative, but to also really learn the material. This assignment was a blast to grade. Students created actual board games, video games, songs with originally composed music, sculptures and other artwork that really impressed me. Ending the Stigma involved students creating a print ad or video PSA that aimed to help to end the stigma of mental illness by using facts from the course. One of my favorite submissions was a comic called ‘Stigma Monster vs. Fact Man’ in which the Stigma Monster would recite myths about mental illness and the Fact Man would bust the myths with facts, and eventually annihilate the Stigma.

 Positive Outcomes

After completing my first iteration of including SuperBetter in my PSYC 101 class, I can definitely say that the overall experience was positive. Students reported positive outcomes with many of the assignments. Students also reported more excitement and willingness to participate in research (as part of the psychology research familiarization requirement) and was reflected in the number of students who successfully completed the requirement. In Spring 2017, over 95% of students successfully completed the requirement– a jump of more than 10% from Fall 2015, when I last taught the course. Student grades also appeared to improve, overall by about half a grade. 

Challenges

While I would definitely say that incorporating SuperBetter into my introductory psychology course was an overall positive experience, there were definitely some challenges. First, incorporating SuperBetter was time consuming, both for me as well as for my students. Students are already stressed about not having enough time to do all the things required of them, and many felt overwhelmed with the extra reading (and the extra item to purchase), and the extra work required to complete an assignment creatively. Of course, one can argue that putting in the extra effort to read the book, complete the quests, etc. can pay off in the end, as students may be more likely to both build resilience and learn more about psychology. Because incorporating SuperBetter into my lessons required a lot more time and energy, sometimes I fell short in terms of full integration of the SuperBetter content into my lessons. Another challenge was that while many students completed amazingly creative assignments, other students really did not put in the effort necessary to learn the material. It is not clear how to inspire students to put in the extra effort to be creative and learn the material in a gamified, or even a different way. While I did make an effort to provide ways for students to apply principles of gamification to their own lives (such as links to the SuperBetter website and app, and invite codes for games that they can play with me, such as Words with Friends and Givling), students did not appear to be engaged in the App, and they certainly were not interested in playing games with me.

Another challenge with incorporating SuperBetter into my course was that the timing of the psychological content discussed in the book was not always in sync with the material we were covering in a particular week, making it difficult for students to see the connections between the SuperBetter book and regular course content. One place where I felt this was successful however was in an activity that had students complete three short quests from SuperBetter in class. These quests involved creating their own super hero identity by selecting personality traits that they have and personality traits that they admire in others. This fit nicely with the chapter on personality and the concept of traits and individual differences. 

Future Plans

While there were challenges to incorporating SuperBetter into my course, I plan to continue to think about how to use gamification and the concepts from SuperBetter in my teaching. I believe that SuperBetter has the power to help students apply psychology to their own lives, and to help them understand psychology in a way that could help them become more resilient. Of course, understanding whether and how SuperBetter might do these things is extremely important. My plan is to experimentally control for the use of SuperBetter in PLU’s PSYC 101 courses. My course will serve as the experimental condition, and another course, which uses the same textbook (but different instructor) and similar layout (multiple choice exams and short writings) will serve as the control condition. With the help of undergraduate student Kristina Kreamer, we’ve modified scales of self-efficacy, resilience, and basic knowledge of psychology. We hope to see whether students who engage with SuperBetter show higher rates of self-efficacy and resilience, and whether that relates to their persistence in college.

My Fall 2017 introductory psychology course will include SuperBetter as required reading, but I am hoping to do more to encourage students to interact with the apps, and to play games with each other and myself, to help boost their social resilience. I also plan to modify the quests to have clearer learning objectives relating course content to SuperBetter content. I will continue to use gamified activities in class, such as the super hero activity, but to do more to integrate the concepts from the book into the course.

In the future, it may turn out that requiring students to read the book isn’t necessary, but what may be important is incorporating and instilling a gameful mindset in the introductory course to give students more, and better tools to help them to be more successful in their education and beyond.

Important Links:

https://www.amazon.com/SuperBetter-Living-Gamefully-Jane-McGonigal/dp/0143109774

https://www.superbetter.com

Bio

Sara Finley ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of Psychology at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. She received her PhD in Cognitive Science from Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on language, and language learning, integrating methods from psychological science with linguistic theory.

By Kentina Smith

Our Biggest Rival for Student Attention

What are students doing in the back of your classroom?

If you’ve taught a class in the past decade you’ve no doubt experienced the infamous long eye-glaze or students’ constant glances to their laps and casual slumping behind a strategically placed purse or backpack. All of this in an effort to conceal something deemed a higher priority or more appealing than course content for the day – cell phone use.

There’s no getting around the fact that cell phone use is an integral part of our students’ daily activity. But cell phone use, unrelated to active class participation, can present a challenge in the educational environment and the process of learning. However, it also provides valuable insight into what interests our students and how we can engage them with course content.

Emotional Student Engagement: Curiosity

“Being curious can help us build relationships, allow us to become more engaged, be more personally invested, and possibly most important, curiosity motivates us to learn.”  – Sue Abeulsamid

Cell phone and Internet use may seem more enticing to students than the opportunity to learn in a classroom for many reasons. It is interesting and dynamic, offering a variety of ways to interact with information and learn what others’ think, feel, and know about any given topic. But perhaps more importantly for us as instructors, it offers a way for students to satisfy curiosity. If we can engender the same sense of curiosity with course content we’ve got a better chance to compete with our formidable rival.

Stimulating Curiosity Using Hooks

To tap into student interests and curiosity, I use the instructional strategy of “hooks” at the start of each class session. I also use “hooks” in professional development sessions. Hooks are brief lesson content teasers, relevant activities, stories, songs, provocative questions, headlines, current events, images, demonstrations, videos, or case studies designed to stimulate interest, curiosity, and active interaction with information that can be connected to course concepts. The key is to not exceed 10 minutes; 5 minutes is ideal. The hook is not the lesson, it is the intriguing trailer for the lesson.

Being curious is the jumpstart to expanding knowledge, testing out ideas, generating hypotheses, and discovery. Research and classroom experiences suggest that student interest, enjoyment, and perceived value of the content are important factors in the learning process. These factors, along with curiosity, describe emotional engagement in the classroom. Emotional engagement is not a requirement, for student learning but it is worth the investment to create an environment and experience where student input and contributions are encouraged, welcomed and valued.

The Venn diagram represents my basic ideal goals, when integrating hooks in my classroom.

Hooks can demonstrate:

• misconceptions about the discipline
• student experiences and interests relevant to connecting course content
• that content can be applied in a variety of ways
• the importance of being good consumers of information
• that diverse thoughts and experiences, and being contributive partners in the learning process is important to awareness of differences

Starting a lesson with an engaging hook is one way to introduce or review concepts students tend to perceive as dull or difficult. Intrigue and accessibility are key components of a good hook. The hook should be challenging enough to stimulate critical thinking, relatable enough so students feel confident they can contribute, and interesting enough to grab their attention. 

An ideal hook allows all students to be actively engaged, even the ones in the back of the classroom. To further stimulate curiosity, I do the following:

a) graciously thank all students for active participation, but avoid giving any specific feedback

b) move on to the lecture introducing new terms, and instruct students to think about how their responses and experiences from the hook connect to specific terms throughout lecture.

During hooks, when students publicly share information – accurate and inaccurate – my strategy is to thank them for contributions and sort out facts from misconceptions later during lecture. During hooks, I respond with general statements like “very interesting”, “hold that thought, it’s going to be really important to help explain key concepts”, “stay tuned” or “we shall see”.

Here are a number of example hooks used in my classroom.

In my courses, students tend to prefer video clips of popular television shows or movies to connect to course concepts. There are a wealth of videos online. Amazon also offers free trailers online. At times, creating and locating hooks that connect with both students and content takes quite a bit of time and effort. However, some can be as simple as one intriguing question, a moral dilemma, professional scenarios, an image, or snapshot you took to share with students. For a comprehensive list of movies, along with their descriptions and ratings, content covered, discussion questions, and activities, check out the website called Teach with Movies, found at http://www.teachwithmovies.org/

Some hooks will work well with one class but not another class. I find out as much as I can about all of my students so I can value who they are and what they bring by using relatable hooks. Each student completes an online form, to provide me with the following information: major area of study, interests, and why the course can be important in life, career, or personal academic pursuits. Students and engagement matters.

Bottom line: Curious students tend to be engaged; invest in hooks.

Bio

Dr. Kentina Smith is an assistant professor of Psychology at Anne Arundel Community College. Her area of scholarship is educational psychology. She has been in the field of education for more than 20 years and holds an advanced professional certification in teaching. Her experience has involved working with toddlers, managing literacy programming, inclusion classroom co-teaching, mentoring teachers, working with adolescents’ social and emotional skills and teaching in middle schools and college.

For further information, contact the author at Anne Arundel Community College at 101 College Parkway, Arnold, Maryland 21012. Email: [email protected]

References

Abeulsamid, S. (2016). That’s a really good question: Start the curiosity revolution. Retrieved from http://www.thatsareallygoodquestion.com/

Carter, A. E., Carter, G., Boschen, M., AlShwaimi, E., & George, R. (2014). Pathways of fear and anxiety in dentistry: A review. World Journal of Clinical Cases : WJCC, 2(11), 642–653. http://doi.org/10.12998/wjcc.v2.i11.642

Linnenbrink, E. A., & Pintrich, P. R. (2003). The role of self-efficacy beliefs in student engagement and learning in the classroom. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 19(2), 119–137. doi:10.1080/10573560308223

Mintz, S. (n.d.). Transformational teaching. In Science of learning: The psychology of learning and the art of teaching. Columbia University: Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Teaching Center. Retrieved from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/tat/pdfs/psych_learning.pdf

Smith, K. (2015). Student engagement: Getting 21st century students hooked into your instruction. Innovation Abstract, 37(26). National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development: University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved from https://www.nisod.org/password/online_abstracts/archives/pdf_archives/XXXVII_26.pdf

Trowler, V. (2010). Student Engagement Literature Review. York: Higher Education Academy. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/743769/Student_engagement_literature_review

By Melissa Beers @mjbeers1 & Jenel Cavazos @jenelcavazos

It’s hard to imagine teaching today without using an online learning management system (LMS). Almost all universities use an LMS to keep track of student grades, provide a place for faculty to post documents and resources for students, for students to submit assignments and quizzes, and for students and faculty to communicate with each other. These resources have become almost indispensable.

Fast facts about Learning Management Systems in higher education:

● 99% of institutions have an LMS in place

● 85% of faculty use the LMS, and 56% of faculty use it daily

● 83%, of students use the LMS, and 56% say they use it in most or all courses

● 74% of faculty say the LMS is a very useful tool to enhance teaching

Source: EDUCAUSE [https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ers1414.pdf] 

As technology becomes more and more advanced, companies that provide LMS platforms stay competitive by adding new features designed to boost productivity and enhance user experience. As the market evolves, many institutions across the country are evaluating and switching to new systems. Although it is exciting to have new opportunities and features, this can also mean that long-time users find themselves needing to redesign their courses, and new instructors may struggle to find the answers and support they need.

We both work at large institutions that recently switched to a new LMS (in our case, Canvas). We both rely heavily on many different features in the LMS for class management in our courses, which range from 30 to 2,000 students in both classroom-based and online formats. Now as seasoned switchers, here is our best “survival advice” if you find yourself wandering the wilderness of a new LMS at your institution.

Survival skill 1: Adjust your attitude

Most instructors find out about the decision to switch to a new LMS once the contracts have already been signed. Often, we have little to no choice but to go along and make the most of the change. Adopting a positive, curious attitude can have an enormous influence on your overall success in making an LMS change. Don’t be afraid to foray out ahead of the pack, too. If you are lucky enough to be able to be involved in the evaluation and selection process, do it! Although it may mean a few more committee meetings and a little more work, you can be in the best position possible to learn about the options and ask questions about the features that matter to you. If your institution is still in the process of deciding on the switch, volunteer for the committee or pilot as early as possible. You will get the most support, an early start, and you can try out all the features while it is still relatively safe to explore.

Survival skill 2: Navigate to higher ground

Survival Skill 3: Conserve your resources

The reality of such a huge institutional change is that faculty are going to experience an increased workload (Jones, 2015). Of course, some additional effort is to be expected. As you are planning your transition from one LMS to another, you will inevitably run into some snags and points of confusion. Even with the very best support at your institution, learning to speak the language of your new LMS is going to take you extra time, and you may have to rethink aspects of your course you probably haven’t thought about in a long time. For example, Jenel’s university has sent out multiple transition update emails this past year, each containing various tips and tricks to help faculty learn to use the new LMS. She almost ignored one email that focused on grades, figuring that most gradebooks are the same, but eventually read through it anyway. Luckily, she discovered that 0’s are treated differently in the Canvas gradebook than they are in her previous system, Desire2Learn (D2L), and that discovery changed the way she had to calculate midterm and final grades. Not realizing the difference in advance would have resulted in incorrect grades for several hundred students, which definitely would not have been fun to fix! Even though you think you already know how something works, tiny quirks of each system make attention to detail vitally important. Of course, reviewing all this new information takes time. Consider your time commitments especially during your first semester using the new system - learn how to turn the visibility of different elements of the class on and off so that you don’t feel pressured to do it all at once! You can “publish as you go” (but remember to publish!) Assess all your commitments and if you have any flexibility in when to start using the new system, plan to do so at a time when you have relatively fewer commitments so you can budget the extra time into your schedule.

Survival Skill 4: Orient to your new surroundings

Remember that students as novice learners in your subject will likely perceive the information you present online differently than you do. Novice learners are less likely to see patterns and connections between different elements in your course, even if these are patterns you as the expert think are obvious (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010). For example, in making the switch to Canvas, Melissa stopped organizing readings for her Teaching of Psychology course as a series of separate articles, and instead created a content page which not only provided overall context for the day’s topic, but annotated each reading and explained why it was assigned that day. This organization can allow an instructor to integrate readings, videos, guiding questions, and links to assignments all in one place. Very quickly it became clear that students enjoyed the readings more, engaged in more productive discussion, and at the end of the semester perceived the readings as a more valuable part of the class than they had in previous semesters - the readings hadn’t changed at all, but restructuring the way they were presented made all the difference. 

Survival Skill 5: Build sound (and accessible) structures

Face it: when you switch systems you are going to have to rebuild some aspects of even the best-designed course. The good news is that switching systems is going to mean your new system will have features and resources you probably haven’t tried before, and maybe some you weren’t even aware existed. As you are exploring and building your new course, make sure the course you are building is accessible for all. When adding images, make sure you add text descriptions so students using screen readers will understand what an image or figure represents. Similarly, taking advantage of the built-in styles to format titles and headings means students using screen readers will be able to understand how you have organized pages and files. Take a few minutes to caption videos before you post them. Doing these things as you go ensures your course will be fully compliant and accessible to all students - and it’s easier on you to take these steps while you are building rather than going back through an entire course later to correct mistakes! Sometimes referred to as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), accessibility means that your course is designed to be inclusive and will accommodate the widest possible audience of students. Wondering how accessible your course is? Canvas users can run an accessibility check in their course websites. For more information, Ohio State’s Office of Distance Education and E-Learning compiled this handy set of resources for instructors to use from planning a course to assessing student learning, including questions to ask yourself at each stage and resources for support.

Survival Skill 6: Signaling and communication in the wild

Remember, you are teaching in a community at your institution. Better yet, whatever LMS your institution selects, there is a community of other users at other institutions, too. Connect with other users in your campus community, or on other campuses using the same LMS. You’ll enrich your network of support and get some great ideas. Talk with other instructors who have already made the jump, either at their institution or elsewhere, who might be able to give some tips and tricks. Seek out colleagues at professional conferences and on social media - we did!

Survival Skill 7: Lead the way for students

If your university is changing to a new LMS, at first you may feel lost in new, unfamiliar territory - we did! By getting a head start, thinking carefully about course design (not just content), collaborating with colleagues and instructional designers, and staying open to change we are now thriving in our new LMS. You will soon be too!

 Bios

Melissa directs Introduction to Psychology and coordinates Introduction to Social Psychology at The Ohio State University, courses with a combined enrollment of over 3,000 students each year. She focuses on effective teaching practices, assessment of student learning, and how best to prepare graduate instructors for college teaching. Melissa leads a graduate course in the Teaching of Psychology which, in the last 11 years, has been taken by over 200 graduate instructors preparing for their first teaching assignments.

Jenel is the Introductory Psychology Coordinator at the University of Oklahoma. She teaches two large sections per semester (475 students each) and supervises several graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants. Her research focuses on factors that increase retention in first-generation college students.

References

Ambrose, S.A. Bridges, M.W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M.C., Norman, M.K. (2010). How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Dahlstrom, E., Brooks,D. C., and Bichsel, J. (2014) The Current Ecosystem of Learning Management Systems in Higher Education: Student, Faculty, and IT Perspectives. Research report.EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research, Louisville, CO.. Available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar

Jones, K. P. (2015). Impacts on Faculty Workload During a Learning Management System Transition. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Walden University. Available from http://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/1384/. 

By Rodney Schmaltz

One of the goals in my courses is to help students separate good information from bad, with a focus on ensuring that students can spot pseudoscientific claims. This can be extremely challenging. Even after a discussion of the difference between science and pseudoscience, I have had students say, “I understand that the research may not be there, but I’ve used homeopathy and my cold was gone almost immediately,” or “I know that most houses can’t be haunted, but I’ve seen something I’m sure even you can’t explain!" One of the biggest hurdles that instructors face is that many of students’ pseudoscientific beliefs are based on anecdotal, but meaningful experiences. For example, I have had several students in my classes claim to have witnessed some form of a ghostly apparition. From their descriptions, I am usually able to provide a counter explanation for their experience, such as the sightings being due to pareidolia or expectation (Shermer, 2011). If not handled properly, these counter explanations will not impact or change the student’s belief. It’s an interesting example of the bias-blind spot (Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002), where students recognize how others could fall prey to believing they have seen a ghost when in fact it was only an example of pareidolia, however, their ghost experience was different.

So what’s an instructor to do? Even the best students may have a belief in some form of pseudoscience (e.g., Impey, Buxner, & Antonellis, 2012). In fact, some research indicates that people with higher intelligence tend to be better at defending their own arguments and worse at accepting sound counterarguments. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, for example, was a strong advocate of alternative medicine. On top of this, if discussions of pseudoscience are not handled correctly in the classroom, there can be a backfire effect (Lewandowsky et al., 2012). This means that the students will remember the example of pseudoscience, but will not remember that this claim is not supported by empirical evidence.

To combat the backfire effect, and to help promote good scientific thinking, one classroom activity that I have found highly effective is challenging students to find examples of pseudoscience on or near campus. I call this, the admittedly poorly named, “Pseudoscience Super-Challenge”. Students are asked to work in pairs and find an example of pseudoscience in under 30 minutes. For extra inspiration, I provide the winning group with the prize of a coffee or hot chocolate at the next class meeting. Students are allowed to leave the classroom to hunt for examples. Upon their return to class, each group of students provides a short description of what they have found, and why it is an example of pseudoscience. At the end of the lecture, students vote for the best example. Based on my personal experience, do not allow students to vote for themselves – this will lead to a tie in nearly every instance.

This activity is effective for several reasons. First, students are generally amazed at how quickly they can find an example of pseudoscience. The examples are typically found in books in the library, or in posters promoting questionable study tips such as speed reading. One pair of students went off campus and found a psychic nearby; others have found “medical” offices that offer energy healing, and one group even bought homeopathic pills from a local pharmacy.

• extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence,
• a reliance on anecdotal evidence,
• and an absence of peer review (for a thorough list, see Schmaltz & Lilienfeld, 2014).

If an instructor were to describe a dubious healing technique, how it’s supposed to work, and then tell the students that this is an example of pseudoscience, students may remember the discussion of the healing technique, but forget that it is not empirically validated. Providing students with the hallmarks of pseudoscience and then challenging them to find an example places the focus on the warning signs of pseudoscience, rather than any specific type of pseudoscientific claim.

Students find the Pseudoscience Super Challenge highly engaging, and more importantly, it encourages them to consider the warning signs of pseudoscience (Lilienfeld et al., 2012). Having students present their example of pseudoscience and explain why it would classify as such, leads to fruitful class discussion and an opportunity for students to debate the nature of science versus pseudoscience.

If you are interested in trying this exercise in class, here’s a brief overview:

1. Review the warning signs of pseudoscience with your students. Here’s a link to an article by Scott Lilienfeld and myself on the warning signs: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00336. We briefly discuss the Pseudoscience Super-Challenge here, as well as other examples than can be used to promote scientific thinking in the classroom.

2. Assign students to work in pairs or larger groups depending on class size.

3. Allow students 30 minutes to find the best example of pseudoscience. I highly recommend having the prize of coffee for the students who provide the best example. It’s a surprisingly powerful motivator.

4. Once students return, allow each group 2 – 3 minutes to describe their example, and why it should be considered pseudoscience. Students will need to draw on the material earlier discussed in class and frame the example in terms of the warning signs of pseudoscience.

5. Following the presentations, allow the students to vote for the best example of pseudoscience.

6. As a follow-up, tell students to look for further examples before the next class. Challenge them to find a better example than the one that won the prize.

Students are often shocked to see how easy it is to find examples of pseudoscience. This activity is a fun way to get students thinking about the claims the see on a daily basis and to work on recognizing the warning signs of pseudoscience.

Bio

Rodney Schmaltz is an Associate Professor of Psychology at MacEwan University. His research focuses on pseudoscientific thinking, with an emphasis on strategies to promote and teach scientific skepticism. 

References

Impey, C., Buxner, S., and Antonellis, J. (2012). Non-scientific beliefs among undergraduate students. Astronom. Educ. Rev.11:0111. doi: 10.3847/AER2012016

Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., and Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and its correction continued influence and successful debiasing. Psychol. Sci. Public Interest 13, 106–131. doi: 10.1177/1529100612451018

Lilienfeld, S. O., Ammirati, R., and David, M. (2012). Distinguishing science from pseudoscience in school psychology: science and scientific thinking as safeguards against human error. J. School Psychol. 50, 7–36. doi: 10.1016/j.jsp.2011.09.006

Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y., & Ross, L. (2002). The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(3), 369-381.

Schmaltz R and Lilienfeld SO (2014) Hauntings, homeopathy, and the Hopkinsville Goblins: using pseudoscience to teach scientific thinking. Front. Psychol. 5:336. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00336

Shermer, M. (2011). The believing brain: From ghosts and gods to politics and conspiracies--how we construct beliefs and reinforce them as truths. New York: Times Books.

By Lynne N. Kennette, Lisa R. Van Havermaet, and Bibia R. Redd

We give our students a lot of information over the course of our weekly hours with them, but how often do we give students an opportunity to interact with, apply, or otherwise practice the course content? Not allowing enough opportunity to practice can pose a problem when we later ask students to use this content in some way (e.g., on an assignment). The Jumpstart lesson planning model used at Durham College ensures that lectures are broken up (or chunked) with opportunities for students to practice (with “practice activities”) in between presentations of new content (C.A.F.E., 2012). A previous NOBA post (Kennette, 2016) described the Jumpstart lesson planning model in detail, so you can read that first if you’re interested. This post will first briefly discuss why it is important to allow students to practice course content, then provide examples of tools and techniques to allow students to practice content, and finally, share some tips for success.

Why should students practice course content?

Practice activities allow students to engage with the material in a more concrete way and to practice the skills or knowledge they were exposed to in a particular unit of a course. Research has shown that there are many benefits for learning when students practice what they are learning, including neurological evidence of changes in the brain (e.g., Draganski, Gaser, Busch, Schuierer, Bogdahn, & May,2004; Zull, 2004). And, by allowing students to practice their newly-learned knowledge, they can also get a better sense of how they are doing in the course and whether they are actually understanding the material. That is, are they developing their metacognition, which is a powerful indicator of learning (Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1990).

One key feature of any practice activity is that it allows students to retrieve the information that was just presented in the course. Retrieval practice is well-established in the literature as improving outcomes (e.g., long-term retention). For example, Roediger and Karpicke (2006) compared students who had studied the same material four times to students who had studied it once and then were tested on the material three times (so both groups had 4 sessions with the material, the first of which was always a study session). Results showed that, although immediate performance was comparable across the two groups, the students who were tested three times (and therefore retrieved the information multiple times) significantly out-performed the study-only group both two- and seven-days later.

The bottom line is that the features of many types of practice activities are well established in the literature as providing benefits for learning: retrieval (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006), metacognition (Wang et al, 1990), immediate feedback (Dihoff, Brosvic, Epstein & Cook, 2004), collaboration (Rajaram. & Pereira-Pasarin, 2007), etc.

How to practice

The benefits of providing practice opportunities are clear, but finding suitable exercises and activities isn’t always easy. With that in mind, we’d like to provide you with a number of ideas that we have successfully used to help students practice, either in class or outside of class. Because, even if you use this approach of giving students opportunities to practice course content; you may still run out of ideas or resources to provide these opportunities to practice. Below are some examples and resources to use for practice activities including games, tests, and concept maps.

Games

Using games is the easiest both for student buy-in and because they are generally fun due to the inherent features of games (e.g., competition, prizes/winners, etc). Some popular examples include Taboo, Headbandz/Heads-Up, Jeopardy, Pictionary, etc. In each case, the practice activity can be to generate the game (e.g., to create a Taboo card for a concept covered) or to play the game (with instructor-generated materials), or both (have groups of students create the games and then a different group will play it)!

Self-Tests

and create html tasks for students to practice (crossword puzzles, fill-in-the-blank, etc). 

Concept Maps

Concept maps are another way for students to practice, synthesize, and organize the information presented in class. Here, students organize information in meaningful ways (e.g., hierarchically, or grouping in some way) and make links among the concepts. Online resources include Cmaps, Bubbl.us, and MindMeister. Many other opportunities exist as well for students to practice course content. These include case studies, debates,creating infographics or word clouds to summarize material, think-pair-share, more traditional worksheets, etc.

Planning for success

Now that you have some ideas, how should you begin incorporating opportunities to practice in your classroom? Before you begin, remember that the goal is for students to practice (perfection is not the goal at this point!), so students should get feedback (but NOT grades) on their performance on these practice activities. This feedback can take the form of faculty, peer, or self-marking, or the feedback received could be built into the outcome of a hands-on application (e.g., Did the program you coded actually work?). By ensuring that the activities are low/no-stakes, they will encourage students to take risks with their learning and truly practice the content.

Another point to keep in mind is that in some courses and topics, the practice comes more naturally. For example, in a statistics course, you teach a lesson, and the students practice via assigned problems. In other content areas, it will take more effort to develop opportunities for students to practice. For example, when teaching about the history of psychology, it’s not intuitive to have students practice that content, however it is still important. Although practice is important, don’t go overboard or you will exhaust both yourself and your students! Yes, it is important for students to practice the content, but start small, perhaps by developing something to give students the opportunity to practice one particularly difficult concept in the class. Or, consider using the same technique (e.g., IFAT scratch cards) as a weekly feature of the course so that students become accustomed to it.

Also, some of the activities described here may not work for your students. If you have a class filled with general education students, you’ll need to use a different approach for your practice activities than if you have a class of upper-level majors. Finally, you also need to find a balance between the amount of information presented in class and the amount of time spent on practice; too much of either would not be ideal. Typically, you will probably spend about 10-15 minutes providing the content, and then 5-10 minutes on a practice activity, though this may vary somewhat based on the specific topic covered. Regardless, the underlying premise is the same: students need to practice the content they are encountering. After all, if they don’t use it, they’ll lose it!

Bios

Lynne N. Kennette received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology (Psycholinguistics) from Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan). She is a professor of psychology and program coordinator (General Arts and Science) in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Durham College (Oshawa, ON, Canada). She has won numerous teaching awards, including two from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. She is passionate about psychology, teaching, and learning.

Lisa R. Van Havermaet is currently a professor of Psychology at Clarke University (Dubuque, IA). She received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Wayne State University (Detroit, MI). Her interests include psycholinguistics, embodied cognition, and pedagogical methods.

Bibia R. Redd received her Ph.D. in Social-Development Psychology from Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan). She is a Lecturer of psychology in the Department of Psychological Science at University of North Georgia (Gainesville Campus). She is the mother of two daughters, and one granddaughter and believes the transfer of knowledge to be one of the greatest legacies anyone can leave.

By Ziv Bell

I can guarantee you that whenever my fellow graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) and I get together over lunch or a bottle of wine, we invariably complain quite colorfully about all of our time commitments, research projects, clinical work, and teaching responsibilities. We also experience varying levels of support and preparation for teaching and pressure to maintain research productivity. Some of our most common complaints involve (1) doubts about our teaching abilities, (2) the amount of time we spend teaching and prepping, and (3) losing our passion for teaching.

My hope is that this post can help graduate students remedy some of these complaints and give advisors and supervisors additional ideas of how they can support their GTAs.

1. Dealing with Doubts

Graduate school can be an odd place, because one moment you are supposed to be a humble student soaking up wisdom from faculty, and the next you are supposed to present yourself and your ideas in front of your own students with confidence and pluck. It is natural to have doubts about whether your students like you, whether they trust you, and whether they are actually learning anything.

• "How do you measure success?"

Benjamin Zander has a wonderful TED talk (Benjamin Zander: The transformative power of classical music) in which he talks about measuring success by the number of "shining eyes" in the audience. Your students who have shining eyes are the curious ones: the ones who come up after class with interesting questions, the ones who make teaching worth it. 

The foil to shining eyes, I believe, is shark eyes, which are flat,dull, and lifeless.

 It is easy to get bogged down thinking about the students with chronic shark eyes, who make you feel boring and ineffective as an educator. However, you can think about measuring your success by the number of students with shining eyes, or the number of students you convert from shark eyes to shining eyes. Success could also be measured by a student who respects you enough to ask for a letter of recommendation, or receiving even one post-semester thank you email from a student who valued taking your class. Finally, record these moments of success. Print out nice emails, compile a list of positive comments from your students, and write yourself a note about the time your students’ eyes lit up about psychology. Whenever you have doubts about your teaching, open the folder and remind yourself about all of your teaching successes.

For example, in my success folder I have (1) an email from a Chinese student thanking me because she bombed the first exam but asked for help and ended up acing the course, (2) a note I wrote about the time a student wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat had an epiphany after completing an implicit-association test on race, and (3) the end-of-semester evaluation from a student who wrote that they were often tempted to skip class but because I always thank my students for coming they attended every class.

2. Saving Yourself Time and Headache

• "I've told them at least 50 times, it's in the f@*#ingsyllabus"

In addition to the syllabus, consider making an easily accessible, one-page document of the principal information students want to know: "What do I have to do? When is it due?” and, “Why is it part of this course?" They will still need to reference the syllabus for course policies, but they will be far less confused and anxious about readings and assignments.

• Teach by Example

Students often strive to complete assignmentsas quickly as possible while exerting the least effort, which leads them tofind creative ways to format and finish assignments that can be frustrating to grade. A fairly simple solution for this is to create and distribute an example to demonstrate appropriate length of writing, formatting, depth of thinking, etc. A counter-argument may be that the purpose of an assignment is that students think critically and creatively, rather than follow a template. For some assignments I will concede that point, but for most cases, if you want students to write an essay following rough APA format (Intro, Method, Results, Discussion), give them an example or you'll be pulling out your own hair in frustration while grading.

• Spread the Work with Your Students

Students frequently ask for more. More practice tests, more examples, more study guides. One option is to say you've given them enough (at the risk of receiving end-of-semester evaluations about how you didn't give them enough preparation for the exams), another option is to spend your evenings creating review materials, or a clever third option is to empower students to generate and share their own study guides and practice tests (read: make them do the work themselves).

• When they ask for more examples of applications of concepts, ask them to find and share helpful YouTube videos from channels like Crash Course Psychology,StatisticsLecures, or 2-Minute Neuroscience.
• When they ask for a study guide provide them a blank Google Doc they can make with their fellow students.
• When they ask for a practice test, assign each student to write 1-2 questions, and with a little bit of time spent editing, you can give them a decent practice test.
• And undoubtedly there will be a student who makes flashcards on a site like Quizlet. Ask that student if they would consider making their Quizlet public with the rest of the class.

The whole class benefits and each semester your students can add to the materials created in previous semesters to create a vast library of different review materials.

• Spread the Work with Your Colleagues

Finally, after you and your students develop study guides, practice tests, etc., share them with other GTAs. They will appreciate it and then you can ask them to send you any helpful materials they have created. Through this symbiotic interaction you can share ideas and resources with GTAs who may have other specialties! Your program may have an online repository or it may benefit you to reach out to a few colleagues over email.

3. Staying Passionate

Your advisor may or may not be supportive of the time you spend on teaching. It is possible that your advisor considers teaching nothing more than a distraction from conducting research. If so, and especially if you want to pursue a career in which teaching plays a significant role, find at least one faculty member who is supportive and pick their brains about maintaining passion for teaching. It's easy to fall into going through the motions: lecture about this, quiz about that, grade more essays on the same prompt again. Bouncing new ideas off someone can invigorate and remind you about what you love about teaching psychology. Whether that person is your research advisor, an adjunct, a faculty member in another department, or another GTA, it is important to stay fresh and positive. It is also possible to find support among professional networks, teaching conferences/preconferences, and even social media.

• “Why are they doing this to me?!”

When you think of the wacky emails you receive from students and their seeming inability to listen to announcements you make in class, it is easy and perhaps tempting to conclude that your students are actively trying to make your life hell. It is potentially healthier for you, however, to first attempt to understand their behavior in other ways.

• If you can believe that your student chose to start their email with "yoprof" out of ignorance, rather than malice, it will be easier to respond with compassion and not contempt. Always assume positive intentions from students until you have clear evidence to the contrary! Additionally, there is a movement in higher education to recognize that we are not simply teaching content, but also citizenship. Educating students on email etiquette may indeed be a more valuable lesson in the scope of their life than a clear understanding of the difference between internal and external validity, for example.
• In other instances, a student's poor attendance may not be due to laziness or millennial entitlement, but rather they might be working full-time, dealing with anxiety or depression, or struggling with the newfound responsibilities of living independently.Knowing about campus resources for academic advising and mental healthcare can help struggling students and allow you to empathize instead of begrudge students for not taking your class seriously.

Reframing frustrating student behavior can give your work a greater purpose by turning thoughts from "why are they doing this to me" into "how can I help them?"

• Find Balance

It should go without saying that graduate students need strategies to help balance work and maintain self-care; especially when the demands of graduate school directly oppose efforts to stay sane and healthy. It is difficult, however, to offer specific ideas for self-care given the idiosyncratic nature of effective self-care. Indeed, another blog post dedicated entirely to self-care and balance in graduate school is warranted. In the meantime, take an inventory of self-care strategies. Keep doing things that work and experiment with new ways to relieve stress, promote happiness, and thrive in graduate school. Above all, feel validated in seeing self-care as a necessary part of your life.

Thinking back to the image of graduate students co-ruminating about the drags of graduate school, a few hours can easily pass with the only result that everyone is angrier than before. One idea I particularly like is to agree as a group that for every minute spent complaining, spend an equal amount of time generating solutions or talking about things that are going well. This enables us to commiserate without fueling any fantasies about dropping out of grad school.

Conclusion

Teaching can be such a rewarding experience, but along with most other aspects of graduate school, it can also be draining. GTAs need good coping strategies to manage doubts, time, frustration, and potential burnout. Defining success and keeping track of successful moments can helpstave off doubts. Creating student-friendly assignment calendars and examples can help reduce emails and empowering students to share study materials can reduce time spent making review material. Finally, finding supportive colleagues and reframing frustrating student behavior can help GTAs retain their passion for teaching.

We study and teach psychology because it enables students to think critically about research, social interactions, mental health, business, public policy, and medicine. In sum, we teach psychology because it makes the world a better place. Adopting ideas to enhance teaching experiences in graduate school and offering support to GTAs promotes positive teaching experiences and empowers GTAs to spend time and energy on teaching that makes the world a better place.

Bio

Ziv Bell is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program at The Ohio State University, where he researches developmental psychopathology and teaches a flipped Introduction to Psychology course. He studied psychology and music at Willamette University and carries many of the lessons from teaching music into his psychology class. He can be reached at [email protected]

Special Thanks

To my colleagues teaching PSYCH 1100 for helping me more profoundly contemplate the art of teaching, and Melissa Beers for continuously supporting my passion for the teaching of psychology.

By Jon Skalski

What are students really going to remember many years from now? Some students will struggle to remember your name or even that they took your class. Yet the joy of our profession is that some students will cherish what you shared with them throughout their lives. Occasionally, we will help them overcome potentially damaging misconceptions and improve the way they understand the world in practical and important ways.

Unfortunately, research on the long-term retention of course content is rather discouraging (Custers, 2010; Landrum & Gurung, 2013). Landrum and Gurung (2013) found that the average student is unable to pass an exam from a psychology course just two years later. These findings are important to consider in regards to sequencing curriculum, and should inspire us to embrace both educational and cognitive science so that we can be more successful as teachers. Being aware of factors like decay, interference, failures to store and retrieve, and reconstruction errors is critically important to improve our pedagogy and help students retain the information they encounter in our courses (Lie, Donoso, Foutz, Lasoras, Oliver, 2011).

One approach to combat these negative findings about long-term retention, especially in general psychology, might be to focus more on addressing psychological misconceptions (Bernstein, 2016). Most general psychology students are filling a general education requirement and will not major in psychology; Bernstein (2016) argues that we best serve these students by focusing on addressing misconceptions about psychology, critical thinking skills, and practical knowledge.

In this spirit, novel in-class demonstrations can be effective in creating vivid, longer-lasting impressions (Vander Stoep, Fagerlin, & Feenstra, 2002). For example, it is one thing to know that eyewitness testimony can be contaminated in an abstract way and another to have firsthand experience with false memory. Likewise, it is one thing to memorize that negative reinforcement involves taking something away in order to increase a behavior and another to experience the differences between positive and negative reinforcement.

Here is a demo to help demolish misconceptions about eyewitness memory and another to demolish misconceptions about negative reinforcement, along with some suggestions on how you might adapt them for your classroom:

Can I Get A Witness? Creating Eyewitnesses

Students have seen on TV how powerful it can be when the prosecuting attorney announces, “We have an eye-witness!” Students have watched how persuasive it can be when the eye-witness swears on a Bible and affirms that she is absolutely certain that the suspect committed the crime.

General psychology students do not usually know that eyewitness testimony, like all evidence, can be contaminated. Eighty-seven percent of general psychology students endorse the statement that “memory can be likened to a storage chest in the brain into which we deposit material and from which we can withdraw it later if needed. Occasionally, something gets lost from the ‘chest’ and then we say we have forgotten” (Vaugh, 2002, p. 139).

You may have creative activities that convey principles related to false memory, but are students really altering prior misconceptions and learning in lasting ways? I use the term misconceptions to describe prior conceptions that may be more resistant than mere misunderstandings.

To provide students with their own eyewitness testimony about eyewitness testimony, I once transformed my classroom into a crime scene with the help of the local news. Here is the segment that was aired on our local TV station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drQ3i6EejPE. 

This demonstration was the most memorable experience of the semester for everyone involved! The students were shocked. They were shocked by the crime, they were shocked by how little they could remember about the suspect, and they were shocked that they misidentified an innocent person as a criminal. They came to clearly understand that memory functions quite differently than how they presupposed.

You could do a version of this activity in your own class with similar success and you do not need a local news anchor to make it work. Here are some ideas about how to pull it off:

1. Set up a video camera or smartphone in the classroom in order to record the “crime.” You could say that you are filming to gradually flip your classroom and for students who are absent or want to review the lecture.

2. Have a student confederate enter the classroom late and steal something in front of the class, when attention is to the front of the room.

3. Be prepared to deescalate the situation quickly. Consider having a teaching colleague step-in to debrief the students.

4. Ask students to respond to questions about the suspect’s description. You might have some students interview other students about the suspect’s description. Consider introducing incorrect information as part of a question. “What color was the suspect’s Nike jacket?”

5. In a few days, provide students with a photo lineup. Consider presenting some students with a simultaneous lineup and others with a sequential lineup.

6. Consider providing half of the students with the disclaimer that the suspect may not be in the lineup.

7. On this subsequent occasion, you could ask students if they saw a/the Nike logo on his shirt. You might even try to phrase the question differently to half of your students, “Did you see a Nike logo on his shirt?” or “Did you see the Nike logo on his shirt?” and see if there are significant differences.

8. Play back the video and/or show a photo of the suspect.

You can then help students think about how memory is nothing like a video recorder in which one can replay one’s experience. Instead, memory is a reconstruction. Memory is prone to being affected by one’s expectations and schemas about events, as well as one’s subsequent experience. Perhaps students will report that they did see the Nike logo on his shirt, and maybe it will even make a difference how you ask the question (Loftus, 1975). You might also discuss how one’s attention, experience, and resultant memory could be negatively affected by the presence of a weapon (Steblay, 1992).

Overall, research on memory and eyewitness testimony has been an area in which psychological science has been applied in practical ways. Psychological research has revolutionized the ways in which authorities gather evidence from observers, and introductory students need to be eyewitnesses to such concrete applications of psychology. Students need to see where the rubber of psychological research meets the road. They need to see that eyewitness testimony can be contaminated. This is a great way for you to help your students witness the importance of psychological research on memory in ways that they will never forget.

Teaching Negative Reinforcement; It’s Not Punishment

Introductory psychology students often struggle to understand negative reinforcement and commonly mistake negative reinforcement for punishment. This mistake was even made on an episode of The Big Bang Theory! Tauber (1988) found that 73% of students believed that negative reinforcement was used to decrease behavior and 76% of students reported that people do not look forward to negative reinforcement. Moreover, professors are often frustrated that students struggle to overcome these misconceptions. I do not have data to report, but it is safe to say that every single professor in the world who has ever actively tried to help students overcome this misconception has been somewhat frustrated. I use the word misconception for a reason! But teaching negative reinforcement does not need to be punishment.

You can use another engaging in-class demonstration to demolish this misconception. The demo not only lets you address confusion related to “negative” and “positive,” which most instructors seem to do well enough, but also contrasts negative reinforcement with other forms of operant conditioning:

Here is the process for an enjoyable and memorable demo that I like to do with my students:

1. Invite a student volunteer to step outside the classroom.

2. In his or her absence, ask the class to select a behavior that they would like to shape, like standing in the corner and/or scratching his or her head.

3. Have the volunteer return to the room and instruct the volunteer that the class has selected a behavior that you will shape by adding and taking away reinforcements as well as adding and taking away punishments.

4. Place a backpack heavily loaded with textbooks on his or her shoulders.

5. When the student starts doing something that approximates what the class has selected for the volunteer to do, remove textbooks (as a form of negative reinforcement).

6. When the student is not doing something that approximates the desired behavior, add textbooks (as a form of positive punishment).

7. As another aspect for shaping the volunteer’s behavior, bring out a cup and some Skittles. Add Skittles to the cup (positive reinforcement) when the volunteer’s behavior moves toward the target behavior and take away Skittles (negative punishment) when behavior is moving off target.

8. Consider doing the demonstration a second time. You might even highlight and emphasize how you are adding something, which is positive, and taking away something, which is negative. The moment that you add something, have the class declare “positive.” The moment that you take something away, have the class declare “negative.”

Note: Sometimes it can help to speed up the process by providing a little verbal information to the student, “Did you notice that when you raised your hand I took a book away (or added a Skittle)?” 

As the volunteer engages in various behaviors to gradually manifest the target behavior(s), there are smiles and laughter. When the student volunteer ends up moving to corners of the room, standing or sitting on chairs, scratching their heads, clapping, or even opening umbrellas, you can imagine the enthusiastic laughter. Be sure to create a courteous environment and also thank and reward the volunteer in some way.

You can then help students process and think about the demonstration in order to make distinctions about positive and negative forms of reinforcement and punishment. You might have students do this in small groups. Consider having them perform an additional small group demo in which they take turns shaping one another.

One thing you might emphasize is how a stimulus is considered either a reinforcer or punisher based on how it affects behavior. For example, in some instances, adding heavy books could function as a form of positive reinforcement if the student thought that he or she was receiving the books as gift (perhaps to sell online) or wanted the heavy pack for resistance working out (which would be considered punishment by someone else). The key is how the behavior is affected by the stimulus; does the behavior increase or decrease?

Overall, demonstrations that are personally experienced can be powerful. Experiential demonstrations meet us uniquely and speak to us where we are; some demonstrations can make concepts that are abstract and mysterious so concrete and clear that anyone can understand them. In general psychology, demonstrations can be used to demolish misconceptions, invite critical thinking, and foster practical understandings that last long after students have forgotten course content.

Bio

Jon Skalski is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rockford University. He received his B.A. in psychology from Saint Mary’s University of Winona, Minnesota, M.S. degree in psychology from Brigham Young University, and Ph.D. from the University of West Georgia. He is passionate about teaching psychology and has taught a broad range of courses over the past 8 years.

References

Bernstein, D. (2016, January). Bye bye intro. Presentation at the annual National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP) Conference, St. Pete’s Beach, FL.

Custers, E. J. (2010). Long-term retention of basic science knowledge: A review study. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 15(1), 109-128. http://hopkins-stile.med.jhmi.edu/media/Custers.pdf

Gardner, R. M., & Brown, D. L. (2013). A test of contemporary misconceptions in psychology. Learning and Individual Differences, 24, 211-215. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2012.12.008

Gardner, R. M., & Dalsing, S. (1986). Misconceptions about psychology among college students. Teaching of Psychology, 13(1), 32-34.

Landrum, R. E., & Gurung, R. A. (2013). The memorability of introductory psychology revisited. Teaching of Psychology, 40(3), 222-227. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0098628313487417

Lei, S., Donoso, D., Foutz, K., Lasorsa, M., & Oliver, S. (2011). Forgetting to remember important course information: Instructors' perspectives. College Student Journal, 45(1), 36-46.

Lilienfeld, S. O., Lynn, S. J., Ruscio, J., & Beyerstein, B. L. (2011). 50 great myths of popular psychology: Shattering widespread misconceptions about human behavior. John Wiley & Sons.

Loftus, E. F. (1975). Leading questions and the eyewitness report. Cognitive psychology, 7(4), 560-572.

Steblay, N. M. (1992). A meta-analytic review of the weapon focus effect. Law and Human Behavior, 16(4), 413-424.

Tauber, R. T. (1988). Overcoming misunderstanding about the concept of negative reinforcement. Teaching of Psychology, 15(3), 152-153.

VanderStoep, S. W., Fagerlin, A., & Feenstra, J. S. (2002). What do students remember from introductory psychology?. In R. A. Griggs, R. A. Griggs (Eds.), Handbook for teaching introductory psychology: Vol. 3: With an emphasis on assessment (pp. 8-11). Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Vaughan, E. D. (1977). Misconceptions about psychology among introductory psychology students. Teaching of Psychology, 4(3), 138-141. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15328023top0403_9

By Blake Harvard

@effortfuleduktr

Uncertainty is discussed through two conditions: uncertainty through inquiry and uncertainty through contradiction. Uncertainty through inquiry involves students being required to generate information, as opposed to receive it. Uncertainty through contradiction occurs when students are confronted with information contradictory to their belief or understanding and have to distinguish the correct from the incorrect. No matter the condition, Overoye and Storm set forth a basic principle: uncertainty is not a state to be avoided. When used correctly, it should be employed “as a vehicle to effectively engage and enhance student learning.”

The authors further dissect the two conditions of uncertainty, stating differing types of inquiry that can lead to gains when students are faced with uncertainty having to create answers to questions or prompts or when met with information that contradicts their beliefs.

Uncertainty Through Inquiry

Testing is a first type of uncertainty through inquiry. Using the retrieval process of memories to recall information is a researched strategy that can lead to gains across many content areas and testing types. This testing effect often leads to greater gains on more difficult tests than on easier tests, in particular when testing is delayed. When creating answers for either formative or summative assessments, an uncertainty may set in with the students. Please see The Learning Scientists for more information on differing types of testing and their positive effects.

A second type of uncertainty through inquiry is interrogative questioning. This strategy implores students to answer questions while they are studying. For example, when using elaborative interrogation, students are led to generate their own explanations and reasons about certain concepts. Also, self-explanation, as a type of interrogative questioning, requires students to relate their current knowledge to new information or discuss how they solved a prompt. This questioning or self-explanation forces the students to interact and focus on the text or material, which can lead to an uncertainty that can produce curiosity in the students to further research material, re-read material, etc. for clarification.

A last form of uncertainty by inquiry is generation, which asks students to create new information, often times with uncertainty being a byproduct of this generation. This allows material to be better recalled later, perhaps because of the intrinsic nature of the generation. Also, research has shown generation enables students to be better learners in the future. In a way that other forms of practice don’t allow, generation gives the students a taste of learning how to learn.

Uncertainty Through Contradiction

Through inquiry (testing, interrogative questioning, and generating), students create answers, ideas, concepts, etc. With this level of thinking, students are apt to make mistakes. When students are allowed to make mistakes and are later made aware of their errors, research has shown this actually facilitates learning, calling it error-facilitating learning. Through error-facilitating learning, when students are in a place of uncertainty because of their incorrect answer, they are in a position to more effectively encode and remember the correct information. Furthermore, when students give a cue before being told the correct answer, they perform better when later tested than if they had simply studied without generating incorrect responses. Does the level of confidence the student has in their answer matter? According to research, and perhaps contrary to intuitive thought, incorrect answers given with high confidence are actually more readily corrected by feedback than those given with low confidence.

Doesn’t this contradiction cause  a confusion in the student’s understanding that can create a certain level of proactive interference? Actually, no. As long as the correct answer is eventually given, the confusion of the incorrect belief enhances learning. The confusion appears to challenge the student’s schema and forces the creation of a new understanding; a theory called cognitive disequilibrium. Another case for contradictions and confusion is the idea that critical thinking skills and scientific reasoning are enhanced. Allowing for confusion allows students to challenge their beliefs and create new ideas or ways of thinking that may be difficult to cultivate otherwise. This idea of learning how to learn and assimilate new information to accommodate schemas is also very transferrable from subject to subject and is even a much needed skill throughout life.

Allowing for uncertainty in the classroom seems ironic and somewhat hypocritical of the outdated beliefs of school. Students enter our classroom to learn. Teachers should show them the correct answers so they can commit them to memory and regurgitate the answer when needed. While this may lead to more memorization, if certain learning strategies are present, this doesn’t necessarily lead to a better learner. Placing students in a state of limbo with their beliefs and allowing them to fester in the uncertainty of their knowledge leads to better learning and to the cultivation of better thinkers. As Overoye and Storm conclude, “Education is about more than learning facts; it is about teaching students to evaluate what they know and do not know and to think critically about what they learn.”

[This post first appeared on Blake's own excellent blog, The Effortful Educator. We highly encourage you to visit, read, and subscribe.]

Bio

Blake Harvard is an AP Psychology teacher at James Clemens High School in Madison, Alabama. He has been teaching for about a decade and received his M. Ed. and B. S. degrees from the University of Montevallo. Blake has a particular affinity for all things cognition and psychology; especially when those areas are also paired with education and learning. He started his blog The Effortful Educator to highlight research being done on learning, memory, and cognition and their connections to the classroom.

References

Overoye, Acacia L., and Benjamin C. Storm. “Harnessing the Power of Uncertainty to Enhance Learning.” Translational Issues in Psychological Science 1.2 (2015): 140-48.

By Jessica LaPaglia

Each semester I attempt to overhaul a single course based on my assessment of the previous semester. In fall 2014, that class was Learning and Memory. As a memory researcher, I know that frequent testing is a powerful memory enhancer (1), so I incorporated daily quizzes. I also wanted to engage students in psychology research, so students designed their own memory experiments. I saw huge gains in student learning from the beginning of the semester to the end and assumed that students loved the course as much as I did. (Because why wouldn’t they?) On that dreaded day when course evaluations are released and faculty are crying over that one negative comment, I was eager for confirmation that my hard work paid off… only to be completely blind-sided by the amount of negative reviews from students.

One comment read, very simply, “I did not like the quizzes or the paper we had to write.”

“But it was for your own good!” I yelled at the computer screen.

While there was satisfaction in seeing gains in student learning, it was completely overshadowed by their distaste for the course. Consumed by the need to be liked (a feeling that plagues most junior faculty), I concluded that another overhaul of the course was necessary. Inspired by a Psychonomics talk by Dr. Steven Luck on “Using Cognitive Psychology to Improve the Teaching of Cognitive Psychology,” I decided to give students more of what they seemed to hate. After careful research and reflection, I incorporated even more empirically supported techniques into my course, but did so in a way that would garner student buy-in. The six learning techniques described below became the essence of my new and improved Learning and Memory course.

Learning and Memory Revised

Six learning-enhancing techniques were used to improve student learning:

1. Daily Low-Stakes Quizzes. Testing/quizzing is a very powerful memory enhancer (when compared to re-study (1)). There were pop-quizzes at the end of most class periods. These quizzes were a small proportion of their final grade and covered the material presented that day. Students were allowed to use hand-written notes to look up answers, but were encouraged to attempt to retrieve the answer from memory before looking it up.

2. Hand-Written Notes. Hand-writing (as opposed to typing) notes leads to a better understanding of the material (2). Although students were free to type their notes, only hand-written notes could be used on the quizzes.

3. Self-Correcting Exams. Students took the multiple-choice portion of each exam once in class and again at home (with notes) for a chance to improve their score. The average score (from both attempts) was used to calculate the final exam grade. This self-correcting method improves learning because students need to spend more time on the material and they are challenged to find the correct answer on their own (3). Furthermore, research indicates that errors made in high confidence will lead to better learning of the correct answer— a phenomenon called hypercorrection (4). The self-correcting method ensures that students will take a careful second look at their exams.

4. Distributed Practice. At the beginning of each class period, I asked students questions about key concepts from the class period before. Distributed practice helps connect the material and improves retention of information (5).

5. Elaborative Processing. Relating the information learned in class and from the text to one’s own life can improve learning (6). Reflections, in-class activities, experiments, and the group research project reinforced this type of deeper understanding.

6. Collaborative Review Sessions. Students answered practice test questions first on their own, then with a partner, followed by corrective feedback from the instructor. Incorporating both testing and elaborative processing during review sessions increases student understanding of the material by providing an initial retrieval opportunity followed by immediate feedback from peers (7).

These learning-enhancing methods became the theme of the course. Students developed their own experiments related to improving memory, created flyers about study methods and posted them around campus before finals week, and reflected on the process of learning in these ways at several points in the semester. Reflection was guided by the use of prompts that encouraged students to apply the learning-enhancing methods to their studying for the course and their learning in other courses.

Cultivating Student Buy-in

One of the biggest challenges in any course re-design is getting students to buy into the process. On day one of the semester I talked about the six learning-enhancing techniques and how they would be used in this course. I included this information (citations and all) in the syllabus and quizzed them on it.

In the past I had used some of the learning-enhancing techniques, but I never explained why I used them. I foolishly assumed that students would make the connection between the testing effect that we discussed in class and the fact that they took a quiz each day. This time was different. I let the students see behind the curtain.

Although it is a great start, telling students why we do what we do is not enough to get buy-in. Throughout the semester, students read the original research behind these learning-enhancing techniques and reflected on their application to learning in this course and beyond.

Reflection is also a great way to get feedback. The general consensus from my students was that these methods were beneficial to their learning. In their reflections, they even developed interesting ways to incorporate other learning-enhancing techniques into the course such as interleaving (8) and dual-coding (9).

The Results

It was course evaluation day. Again. After the last time I was cautiously optimistic. I opened the link to find that I had done it. Not only did I see student learning increase throughout the semester, but their ratings of the course increased significantly as well. They had learned something and enjoyed learning it! When asked what helped their learning, nearly every student comment mentioned the learning-enhancing techniques—especially the daily quizzes. Yes, they liked the daily quizzes because now they could see the value in it.

Applying These Methods to Other Courses

This course design can easily be applied to any cognitive-related course. Applying these techniques in other courses could also be done, but on a smaller scale. Let your students in on why they take quizzes every day in your class, why they are required to take hand-written notes, or why they are engaging in research in a psychology class. At midterm and the end of the semester, have students reflect on their learning and how the daily quizzes, review sessions, and projects they completed helped them understand the material. By implementing some of these techniques and learning reflections, you may improve student learning and be pleasantly surprised when examining those pesky end-of-semester course evaluations.

Bio

Jessica LaPaglia is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Morningside College in Sioux City, IA, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She received her B.A. in psychology from Augsburg College (Minneapolis, MN) and M.S. and Ph.D. in psychology from Iowa State University (Ames, IA). She teaches a variety of courses including cognitive psychology, brain and behavior, and research methods.

Special Thanks: To Jason Chan for helping me discover the awesomeness that is the testing effect.

References

(1) Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science, 19, 966–968.

(2) Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25, 1159-1168.

(3) Gruhn, D., & Cheng, Y. (2014). A self-correcting approach to multiple choice exams improves students’ learning. Teaching of Psychology, 41, 335-339.

(4) Metcalfe, J., & Finn, B. (2011). People’s hypercorrection of high-confidence errors: Did they know it all along? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning , Memory, and Cognition, 37, 437-448.

(5) Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 354-380.

(6) Craik, F. I. M., & Tulving E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104, 268-294.

(7) Maxwell, E. J., McDonnell, L., & Wieman, C. E. (2015). An improved design for in-class review. Journal of College Science Teaching, 44, 48-52.

(8) Kornell, N., & Bjork, R. A. (2008). Learning concepts and categories: Is spacing the “enemy of induction”?Psychological Science, 19,585–592.

(9) Paivio, A., & Csapo, K. (1973). Picture superiority in free recall: Imagery or dual coding? Cognitive Psychology, 5, 176-206.