We assessed the benefits of employing microthemes--short in-class writing assignments designed to facilitate active learning--as pedagogical tools in psychology courses. Students in target course sections completed 10 in-class microthemes during a semester. We designed the microthemes to serve as active learning assignments that would enhance…

This study evaluated how effective an online academic integrity module was at reducing the occurrence of plagiarism in a written assignment for a university course. In a preintervention comparison group, plagiarism was detected in 25.8% of papers submitted, compared with only 6.5% in the group that completed the academic integrity module. The…

Can short, ungraded, free-writing assignments promote learning of course material? We randomly assigned introductory psychology recitation sections (N = 978 students) to writing or thinking conditions. For all sections, teaching assistants presented students with a discussion topic based in current coursework. Students either wrote or thought…

This article evaluates a writing assignment in which social psychology students gathered examples from outside the classroom (e.g., cartoons, movies) and analyzed them with course material. Compared to a control group, students who completed the assignment learned that it was easier to apply social psychology to the real world. A follow-up survey…