Teaching of Psychology

Many students use laptops in the classroom to take notes; however, even when laptops are used for the sole purpose of taking notes they can negatively impact academic performance.

The current study examined state-dependent effects, and the potential for a match in note taking and quiz taking methods to improve quiz performance.

Participants were placed into a congruent (take notes by hand and complete the quiz by hand or take notes using a laptop and complete an online quiz) or an incongruent condition (take notes by hand and take an online quiz or take notes using a laptop and complete the quiz by hand).

The results revealed that participants who took notes by hand performed better on the quiz overall, and better on conceptual questions, then students who took notes using a laptop. We failed to find evidence for state-dependent effects.

The current study suggests that taking notes by hand may improve how students encode material, and result in higher quality external storage used by students when studying for quizzes.

Reinforcing the notion that taking notes by hand may benefit quiz performance for lecture-style information and could improve student performance in class.

Previous research suggests a relationship between teacher behaviors and students’ effort. However, it is not clear what role the students’ expectations (i.e., importance of teacher behaviors) play in this relationship.

Utilizing the teacher behavior checklist, this study sought to investigate whether teacher behaviors mediate the relationship between the importance students set on teacher behaviors and students’ effort. Further, the study explored which specific behaviors influence students’ effort.

Cross-sectional survey data were analyzed (N = 159) using mediation analysis and stepwise multiple linear regression.

There was evidence that teacher behaviors mediate the relationship between the importance students set on teacher behaviors and students’ effort. Four of the 28 teacher behaviors had a significant relationship to students’ effort: creative and interesting, enthusiastic about teaching, happy/positive/humorous, and promotes critical thinking.

Knowing students’ expectations (i.e., the importance of teacher behaviors) is essential to increasing students’ effort.

Happy/positive/humorous had a negative relationship with students’ effort, while creative and interesting, enthusiastic about teaching, and promotes critical thinking showed a positive relationship with students’ effort.

The course on cognitive assessment is mandatory for all school psychology programs. However, there have been no published studies that have explored learning objectives for this course.

The purpose of this study is to examine content covered and complexity of learning objectives in the cognitive assessment course.

Five raters coded 90 syllabi from school psychology cognitive assessment courses across the United States on a sample of six American Psychological Association assessment-related standards and on complexity using the six Bloom’s Taxonomy levels.

The majority of objectives were addressing lower levels of complexity as measured by Bloom’s Taxonomy with few syllabi including learning objectives addressing a wide range of levels. Based on the analysis of objectives by the sample of Standards, learning objectives most frequently addressed administration accuracy and test selection, whereas integrating results and linking to recommendations were often missing.

The learning objectives included in syllabi ranged in quantity, complexity, and content but focused on lower complexity skills. Learning objectives in cognitive assessment courses do not reflect the diverse assessment-related practice demands of school psychologists.

To align training with future practice, instructors are advised to review learning objectives with attention to complexity and content standards.

First-generation (FG) college students have been a popular subpopulation to study within educational literature as these students experience many unique challenges in their academic careers causing them to drop out within their first year. This gives courses with high first-time freshman numbers such as introductory psychology courses a unique opportunity to reach many of these students.

The purpose of this study is to examine new perspectives of FG students that may further explain hindrances to retention and achievement.

One hundred and ninety-three undergraduate students in an introductory psychology course completed surveys on task values in reference to psychology content at three different time points across the semester. Students’ exam scores were also reported as a measurement of academic achievement.

Analyses showed that FG college students reported higher levels of cost value and growth in cost value across the semester compared to non-FG college students.

FG college students experience academic challenges that may be related to their valuing of their educative experience in psychology courses.

Educators should actively attempt to alleviate academic obstacles facing FG college students by increasing access to the professor, ease of access to help, and assignment clarity.

Although undergraduate psychology curriculum should cultivate performance-based skills to prepare students for helping professions, little work to date has addressed this standard.

This research replicates the methods used in a previous study by examining pre-post changes in empathic communication skills and perceived communication competence across two applied psychology courses: Basic Helping Skills and Internship. This study extended this work by also exploring learning gains from different formats (i.e., face-to-face vs. online), internship types (mental health-related vs. not mental health-related), and the longevity of learning gains.

Psychology students (N = 171) completed a measure of communication competence and provided written empathic responses on a vignette-based performance measure at the start and end of the semester.

Students perceived their communication skills as improving over time; however, only students in the Basic Helping Skills course showed improved empathic communication skills, especially when the instruction was in a face-to-face format. Students with previous skill training maintained their learning gains over time.

Student empathic communication improves most with face-to-face instruction in Basic Helping Skills rather than an internship experience.

For the development of empathic communication skills, prerequisite requirements for Internship and instructive scaffolding for the application of skills may be recommended.

Research shows distributed practice enhances learning and skill development, but less is known about the effect on perceptions and attitudes toward the material being learned.

This study examined whether distributed practice could improve performance and attitudes in statistics, a subject that students report finding unpleasant and anxiety-provoking.

This quasi-experiment compared statistics students who received distributed practice with Excel throughout the semester to a control group without distributed practice. At the end of the semester, all students completed a major data analysis project with Excel and a self-report measure of their perceptions and attitudes toward the class and statistics.

Significant results suggest students who received distributed practice: earned higher project grades; liked statistics more; and perceived the class to be more effective for knowledge and skill development, even though they found statistics to be more difficult than the control group.

This study suggests distributed practice helps improve students’ performance and attitudes toward statistics, even though they think it is difficult.

In addition to improving performance in challenging subjects, distributed practice may be used to help students appreciate and feel more favorably about classes they find difficult.

Instructors and students are on a continuing quest to identify predictors of learning.

This study examines the associations between self-reported exam score and study techniques among students in two courses, Introductory Psychology and Computer Science.

We used an online survey to measure the extent students (N = 249) used 10 techniques studied in cognitive science. We also measured students’ perseverance, metacognitive skill, distractions, and procrastination.

Student use of specific study techniques varied between the two courses and a high utility technique, practice testing, was well used. Students reported low levels of spaced practice. Perseverance and metacognitive skills both correlated significantly with many of the study techniques. While no study techniques predicted exam scores in Introductory Psychology beyond variance predicted by GPA, the use of spaced practice predicted a significant portion of variance in students in Computer Science.

Students’ use of study techniques varies between their courses and while related to GPA and exam scores, are not unique predictors of variance in learning. Additional moderators and mediators of learning need to be identified.

We discuss ways instructors can help prepare students in Introductory Psychology and key needs for future research on studying.

Providing students with virtual role-play experiences has the potential to bring counseling role-plays into large undergraduate courses.

The purpose of this study was to trial a virtual reality role-play experience where students played the role of a student counsellor.

Seventy-three undergraduate psychology students played the role of a student counsellor interacting with a virtual client in two role-plays, one via desktop and one via head mounted display (HMD). Students provided feedback on their experience.

70% of the students found the experiences very interesting, engaging and immersive, with 82% preferring the HMD mode of presentation. The virtual characters were believable as distressed clients with 96% of students perceiving greater negative than positive emotion expressed by the characters. Most of the students (64%) mood improved from the beginning of the experience to the end, however 14% experienced a decline in mood. The students agreed (95%) that the experiences would be a valuable experience to a psychology course.

Our results provide evidence that the virtual role-play experiences are well-liked by students.

The approach presented in this paper represents a practical method to provide virtual role-play experiences to both on-campus and online undergraduate students.

Developing greater multicultural competence is predicated on developing continual awareness and education about issues relevant to marginalized identities. One way to promote this competence is by engaging in productive intergroup dialogue with individuals representing a diversity of perspectives.

Intergroup dialogues can be difficult and require training and skill to keep them collaborative and not adversarial. The challenge for instructors is how to build in the kinds of activities necessary to help students become effective collaborators.

We review the definition of multicultural competence and note the under-emphasis on developing culturally relevant skills. With that in mind, we discuss the importance of difficult dialogue in advancing multicultural competence and briefly discuss what effective collaboration entails.

Finally, we discuss a model for building this type of skills training into psychology courses using an online, chat platform designed to help develop collaborative skills called CREATE.

We provide recommendations for inclusion of the CREATE system in psychology courses as a strategy for facilitating multicultural awareness and skills.

Creating a multiculturally aware and inclusive class is critical with students. The lack of face-to-face contact with asynchronous courses limits instructors’ ability to form relationships with students. A myriad of teaching research provides strategies for incorporating multiculturalism, social justice, and identity into synchronous courses; however, considerably less research exists with asynchronous courses.

The purpose of the current article is to provide strategies for incorporating multiculturalism and issues of identity into asynchronous courses with a social justice lens.

I review several published topical and review articles and offer suggestions and strategies that I have used in my own courses and/or in courses I have been involved with.

I discuss the importance of incorporating multiculturalism and identity while maintaining justice in asynchronous courses. Moreover, I offer suggestions and strategies for doing so, from prior to class starting to navigating instances of microaggressions.

This article builds off and infuses components of counseling psychology into the teaching of psychology to advance instructors’ cultural awareness, skills, and competence with asynchronous online courses.