Background: Psychology has seen a recent explosion in the use of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) to understand cognition. The prevalence of techniques such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in published research has grown immensely in the past decade; however, there has been little effort to incorporate these techniques into…

Introduction: APA's 2017 Multicultural Guidelines ask teachers to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across the psychology curriculum. Statement of the Problem: However, there are few resources outlining best practices for DEI instruction outside of diversity/multicultural courses. Moreover, instructors for skill-based courses such…

Introduction: Designing and conducting an intervention study is an arduous task for students that requires strong teaching and mentoring practices from psychology instructors. Statement of the Problem: Most research methods textbooks simply describe how an intervention is incorporated into a research study design (Johnson & Christensen, 2016),…

Background: Utility-value (UV) classroom interventions typically involve students completing assignments that involve writing about the usefulness of the course material. They are widely recommended and have received some empirical support. Objective: This study tested the effectiveness of a UV intervention in an online research methods course. It…

Background: Online crowdsourcing platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), have become popular alternatives to the ubiquitous student samples used in psychology research. r/SampleSize, an alternative pool on the website Reddit, allows for online participant recruitment without compulsory or immediate payment, making it potentially useful…

Introduction: This paper merges two neglected components within the psychological sciences broadly and research methods courses specifically: Critical whiteness and qualitative methodologies. Statement of the Problem: In psychology programs, regardless of discipline, research courses remain one area where issues of race and racism, such as…

Introduction: The replication crisis in the behavioral and social sciences spawned a credibility revolution, calling for new open science research practices that ensure greater transparency, including preregistrations, open data and code, and open access. Statement of the Problem: Replications of published research are an important element in this…

Identifying impediments to learning can help both instructors and students. In this study students (N = 222) from across the nation listed concepts from research methods they found the most challenging--"potholes" or impediments to learning, and also rated the difficulty of various concepts from the class. We also measured student…

Courses including lab- or experiential-based learning may shy away from an online lab format. Using an empirically driven approach, an online research methods in psychology lab section was developed and compared to a face-to-face lab section. Results indicated that there were no differences in student knowledge regarding the American Psychological…

Reading and critiquing journal articles is a way in which instructors can promote learning and critical thought among students, particularly in the undergraduate research methods course. However, articles that have survived the peer-review process are often lengthy and have only nuanced drawbacks, rendering them less useful for such pedagogical…

When a psychologist announces a new research finding, it is often based on a rejected null hypothesis. However, if that hypothesis is true, the claim is a false alarm. Many students mistakenly believe that the probability of committing a false alarm equals alpha, the criterion for statistical significance, which is typically set at 5%. Instructors…

Background: College students majoring in psychology often report low interest and engagement in statistics and research methods courses. Objective: The purpose of the current study was to examine potential benefits of integrating movement with learning activities in Introduction to Statistics and Research Methods courses at the college level.…

In this article, the author describes an exam review activity in which students answered questions and solved puzzles in order to escape the review session. In a general psychology (100-level) course and research methods in psychology (300-level) course, students solved a series of puzzles and review questions. This format is similar to popular…

A project was developed to introduce the core principles of repeated-measures designs. Using the levels of processing approach to memory, students are prompted to engage in either shallow, moderate, or deep processing of 54 common nouns. An unexpected recall task then measures the number of words remembered in each condition. Data from 293…

Psychology teachers have likely heard about the "replication crisis" and the "open science movement" in psychology, and they are probably aware that psychologists have proposed new standards for research practice. How should our psychology courses reflect these new standards? We describe several modern practices that have…