Introduction: Artificial intelligence (AI) presents challenges and opportunities for higher education. The challenge is to incorporate the benefits of AI while minimizing its potential for misuse and undermining of learning. The opportunity is that AI allows instructors to assess learning authentically by fostering creative, engaging, realistic,…

Background: With the arrival of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) tools, psychology educators are rethinking their assessment practices. Objective: This paper describes one approach to integrating genAI into an assessment designed to promote psychological literacy. Method: Students used ChatGPT to generate a media release about a…

Although many psychology departments and instructors are aware of the "American Psychological Association Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major Version 2.0," they are often less aware of the means by which to assess student mastery of the recommended goals. Our purpose is to discuss general principles for assessment, offer a…

Goal 3 of the "APA Goals for Undergraduate Major in Psychology" specifies three dimensions of character development deemed central to the major. The purpose of this article is to review the current state of practice that addresses how we measure student learning in ethical reasoning, interpersonal relationship-building, and…

The challenge of teaching communication skills outlined in Goal 4 of the "APA Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major" is that it occurs in many contexts and the communicator must adapt the form to match both context and purpose. We created a taxonomy of dimensions and kinds of communication that represents the various contexts…

The Summit on the National Assessment of Psychology was held on June 2016 to chart a path for assessing student achievement of the goals of the undergraduate psychology major. Our subcommittee was charged with identifying evaluation strategies and tools for students' professional development, which included applying psychology to various careers;…

A robust literature has explored multiple facets of the introductory psychology course, but few studies have examined its purposes, student learning outcomes (SLOs), and assessment practices. The second iteration of the Undergraduate Study in Psychology gathered data on these facets in a nationally representative sample of associate (n = 62) and…

Goal 2 of the "APA Goals for Undergraduate Major in Psychology," Scientific Inquiry and Critical Thinking, addresses the development of scientific reasoning and problem-solving, including effective research methods, in undergraduate psychology students. These skills serve as the foundation of not only introductory courses but also the…

In 2011, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology commissioned a presidential task force to document teaching criteria for model psychology teachers in undergraduate education. The resulting list of criteria reflects activities related to face-to-face course interaction and online teaching, training, and education; course design; implementation…

This is a personalized review of programs designed to assess student learning outcomes (SLOs) in higher education. In the last 30+ years, there have been few changes in the basic principles and premises. We assess SLOs for the purpose of improving teaching and learning. Although content area knowledge is important, other goals such as enhancing…

Social presence (represented by salience of instructor and fellow students) in an online teaching environment has been shown to influence perceptions of course activity and self-estimates of learning. An experiment is described here in which teacher presence is manipulated via personalized messages from the teaching assistant throughout the…

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…

Group projects are often used in psychology courses to prepare students for future collaborative work. However, psychology alumni report that their education did not adequately prepare them for collaborative work. To better understand these perceptions, this study examined how instructor contributions (involvement and evaluation techniques)…

The scoring instrument described in this article is based on a deconstruction of the seven sections of an American Psychological Association (APA)-style empirical research report into a set of learning outcomes divided into content-, expression-, and format-related categories. A double-weighting scheme used to score the report yields a final grade…

Minimal research to date has evaluated the impact of Survey-Question-Read-Recite-Review (SQ3R) implementation (i.e., surveying prior to reading, generating questions, reading to answer said questions, reciting, and reviewing information) on content retention and student performance. Existing research is anecdotal or lacks ecological validity. The…