Teaching of Psychology

The perceived relation between assigned student grades and instructor evaluations of teaching has been the subject of much debate, though few laboratory studies have been conducted with adequate controls. Marsh and Roche suggested that experimental field studies may be a particularly promising avenue for further analyses of this relation. The authors report two multiple-session studies that used videotaped instruction and artificially set class quiz averages. The first study involved administering multiple-choice quizzes over the videotaped lecture; the second study utilized essay quizzes. The results suggest that grades affect evaluations only when using subjective testing methods.

The authors developed and assessed a new undergraduate psychology course: Thinking and Writing in Psychology. A description of how the course was developed using the APA learning goals as well as results from an analysis of the course’s effectiveness are offered. The course demonstrated a positive impact on the overall grade point average and thinking and writing skills of students within the course as well as in more advanced courses. Implementing and requiring a thinking and writing course relatively early in the undergraduate psychology major was strongly supported by this study.

To investigate undergraduate students' perceptions of the role of the textbook in psychology courses, the authors surveyed 311 psychology students. Using an online survey, students answered questions about textbook importance, usage, and preferences and about scenarios that described a textbook as a resource or central course element. If an instructor expected students to read and understand textbook material before class, students perceived they would learn less, enjoy the course less, and find the course more difficult than if an instructor described the textbook as a resource to which students might refer for clarification. Results indicated that students valued classroom experiences more than textbook reading. The authors discuss how such preferences may reflect prior reading experiences and instructors' emphases.

The authors describe a classroom-based demonstration of the correspondence bias—the tendency for observers to make dispositional attributions for an actor’s behavior. The demonstration is memorable, effective, takes roughly 5 minutes, and produced improvement in understanding of the bias.

This article provides a list of statistical mnemonics for instructor use. This article also reports on the potential for such mnemonics to help students learn, enjoy, and become less apprehensive about statistics. Undergraduates from two sections of a psychology statistics course rated 8 of 11 mnemonics as significantly memorable and helpful in learning statistics. Undergraduates rated the 3 remaining mnemonics as helpful after excluding students who did not recall those mnemonics (beyond scale midpoint). Other measures indicated a relatively high regard for the overall use of statistical mnemonics. In particular, mnemonics were rated as motivating and fun. Students also reported moderate belief that mnemonics could reduce statistics anxiety. The variety of positive findings suggests strong promise for statistical mnemonics.

Undergraduate psychology majors (N = 51) at a mid-sized private university took a statistics examination on the first day of the research methods course, a course for which a grade of “C” or higher in statistics is a prerequisite. Students who had taken a problem-based learning (PBL) section of the statistics course (n = 15) were compared to those who had taken a traditional format section of the same course (n = 36). PBL students earned higher scores on the examination, taken several weeks after the statistics course had ended, than did students from traditional format courses.

To address the issue of plagiarism, students in two undergraduate Research Methods and Analysis courses conducted, analyzed, and wrote up original research on the topic of plagiarism. Students in an otherwise identical course completed the same assignments but examined a different research topic. At the start and end of the semester, all students (n = 44) completed a homework assignment assessing plagiarism knowledge and paraphrasing skills. Students in the plagiarism-themed courses showed improvement in both knowledge and skills, and the strategies they suggested for avoiding plagiarism became more sophisticated as did the reasons for avoiding plagiarism. The control group did not show the same improvements. Results suggest repeated hands-on exposure to the topic of plagiarism improves plagiarism avoidance and understanding.

Most psychology curricula require the completion of coursework on the physiological bases of behavior. However, delivery of this critical content in a laboratory format is somewhat rare at the undergraduate level. To fill this gap, this article describes the design and implementation of an undergraduate laboratory course in psychophysiology at a small, primarily undergraduate institution. I discuss the course goals, course structure, and evidence related to its usefulness and promise. The course appears to successfully illuminate the physiological bases of behavior via the conduct of original psychophysiological research.

This article describes how an Integrated Social Justice Pedagogy was applied in a graduate-level multicultural psychology course. As such, it provides an overview of the model and how it is utilized in the didactic, experiential, and reflexive components of the course.

Maintaining contact with alumni can result in a number of benefits for psychology departments. For example, alumni may give feedback useful for curriculum assessment and departmental planning, assist with recruiting, and provide current students with information about jobs and graduate school. The authors describe a Facebook group they created for their department to connect alumni, current students, and faculty. A year later, members evaluated the site. Respondents agreed that it was a valuable resource, but current students rated it higher than did alumni. The authors discuss features the members enjoyed and ideas for improving the site.

A national sample of psychology instructors (N = 134) rated the appropriateness and frequency of 104 potential student behaviors, replicating and extending Parr and Valerius. The top 10 ratings for appropriateness and frequency differed from previous work. The author discusses the importance of clear communication of instructor expectations of student behavior in addition to course expectations as presented in the syllabus. Instructors may wish to use this list to help inform students of appropriate and inappropriate behaviors as well as to encourage students to increase the frequency of appropriate behaviors.

The authors experimentally investigated the effects of multiple-choice and short-answer format exam items on exam performance in a college classroom. They randomly assigned 50 students to take a 10-item short-answer pretest or posttest on two 50-item multiple-choice exams in an introduction to personality course. Students performed significantly better on items presented in a multiple-choice format. The high internal validity achieved with matched test items, manipulation of item type order, and manipulation of student expectancy across exams was complemented by high external validity and pedagogical ecology afforded by the college classroom, extending previous laboratory findings. Performance on multiple-choice exams may provide inaccurate information to instructors concerning student learning and overestimate students' learning of course information.

Although digital texts are growing in popularity, few studies have systematically examined whether students can learn as well when reading a digital text, compared to reading a paperbound textbook. The present study examined several variables related to comprehension of digital versus paper textbooks, including text complexity, engagement with the text, and long-term retention. Seventy-four students, randomly assigned to read an entire chapter from either a paperbound text or its digital equivalent, completed a 20-item multiple-choice quiz immediately after reading and 1 week later. No differences in comprehension emerged across any variables except for a main effect of test time. More important, there were no interactions with text medium. Therefore, the key to student comprehension appears not to be the method of text delivery but, rather, getting students to read in the first place.

This article describes three experiments comparing paper-and-pencil tests (PPTs) to computer-based tests (CBTs) in terms of test method preferences and student performance. In Experiment 1, students took tests using three methods: PPT in class, CBT in class, and CBT at the time and place of their choosing. Results indicate that test method did not affect performance and students liked the idea of additional CBTs. In Experiment 2, students chose the test time and administration method for four exams. CBT was the preferred method and CBT performance did not differ from a PPT comparison group. In Experiment 3, students chose the test method, but not the time, for three exams. PPT was the preferred method. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.

Student response systems have received much attention over the past few years. This easy-to-use technology has been marketed as a great way to enhance the student experience in the classroom through increased engagement and improved course performance. This aim of this study was to demonstrate that the simple addition of a student response system into the classroom does not create these large changes. Rather, these changes are likely due to the pedagogical changes that occur when an instructor implements this technology in the classroom. Student response systems should not be viewed as a magic bullet to improve students' experience; rather, more focus should be placed on how instructors can improve their pedagogy through the use of this tool.

Microsoft PowerPoint and similar presentation tools have become commonplace in higher education, yet there is very little research on the effectiveness of different PowerPoint formats for implementing this software. This study compared two PowerPoint presentation techniques: a more traditional format employing heavy use of bullet points with text and a newer format referred to as the Simplified-Visually Rich Approach, which uses frequent visuals and minimizes on-screen text. These techniques were assessed with a quasi-experimental between-groups design that analyzed the impact of these two formats on college student satisfaction and learning outcomes in a general psychology course. No differences in learning outcomes were demonstrated, although the Simplified-Visually Rich Approach produced significantly higher student satisfaction.

Previous findings suggest some advantages to using an online format to deliver declarative knowledge and to using class time for active learning and discussion. During 4 weeks of an introductory psychology course, students were assigned on alternate weeks to attend one of two lecture formats: in-class lecture or online video lecture with an in-class active learning session. No advantage was found for either format on the basis of quiz scores. Students appreciated the convenience of online lectures but preferred in-class lectures because of the increased ease of maintaining attention in the more structured environment. Attendance, as well as access of online content, decreased during the course of the study, suggesting that hybrid courses may lead to decreases in overall student effort.

The authors examined the extent to which student access to the MyGrade application in Blackboard may facilitate motivation and exam improvement via grade monitoring. In support of self-regulated learning and feedback principles, students indicated that the MyGrade application helped them better monitor their course performance and increased their motivation to study and pay attention in class. Access statistics for the MyGrade application in two undergraduate psychology courses revealed that students who viewed their grades weekly or more significantly improved their exam scores compared with those who accessed their grades less than weekly. These effects were robust when controlling for student characteristics (ability, experience, self-control) and class attendance. The authors discuss implications for the role of technology in facilitating self-regulated learning.

Gaining a perspective on the evolution of psychological concepts can show students the power of theory and societal perspective in shaping scientific ideas across time. In this article, the author uses two constructs, the broad concept of intelligence and the narrow concept of combat stress reaction, to illustrate how psychologists have grappled with these ideas over the past century. These examples can provide a model for using the history of psychology to explain how ideas have taken their shape. These illustrations also show the difficulty in developing ideas that are scientifically useful and that periodic changes in the conceptualization of ideas are a normal feature of a dynamic discipline.