Background: Multimedia creation and curation for assignments have the potential to engage students in deeper learning. Objective: This study explored whether the same homework assignments delivered in paper versus multimedia format resulted in different student experiences. Method: Introductory psychology students submitted either traditional…

Background: Access to professors willing and trained to teach courses related to specific ethnic groups may be difficult for many universities to provide. This may partially explain why many psychology departments do not offer undergraduate courses that focus on the unique perspectives of specific ethnic groups. Objective: This study offers…

Background: Instructors often try to promote student engagement with discussion boards in learning management systems (LMS) like Canvas. Although convenient, alternatives like the social media platform Reddit may be more effective. Method: A non-randomized controlled trial compared the use of Canvas and Reddit in two sections of two undergraduate…

Intercultural competence--the ability to successfully interact and communicate sensitively with members of other cultural groups--is an essential skill in multicultural societies and an increasingly globalized world. A quasi-experimental study revealed that completing a cross-cultural international psychology course increased college students'…

Background: Acquisition and generalization of data analysis skills are perennial challenges for psychology students. Teaching advanced data analysis in a psychology-specific context might improve students' learning. Objective: At a mid-sized public university, we evaluated student outcomes after a new quantitative psychology course taught in the…

Interdisciplinary pedagogy can enhance Introduction to Psychology curricula. We developed an interdisciplinary project to make meaning in a learning community (LC) clustering Introduction to Psychology with Introduction to Criminal Justice. Our purpose is to describe the project as a model and report on students' evaluations of the project and…

Objective: How do learning communities influence academic performance in Introductory Psychology? Method: The present research examines the relationship between participation in first-year students learning communities and academic performance across a variety of course requirements (midterms, finals, papers, and class participation) in…

Background: 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. Objective: This study examined whether distributed practice could improve performance and attitudes in statistics, a subject that students report finding…

Background: Recent evidence suggests PechaKucha--a presentation style utilizing simplified visuals, narration, and rigid time constraints--may promote various learning outcomes and instructor goals better than traditional PowerPoint presentations. Objective: The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of students' PechaKucha compared…

What do university students understand about faculty work? Undergraduate (mostly first-year) students (N = 317) at a research university gave definitions of tenure, estimated how much time faculty spend teaching, and rated fictional faculty members. Most students could define tenure but could not describe how it is earned or its role in academic…

Promoting undergraduate engagement is an important and challenging obstacle at large research-focused universities. Thus, the current study evaluated whether a peer-led program of student-geared events could improve engagement among a diverse group of psychology students early on in their degrees. We randomly assigned interested second-year…

Motivation and game research continue to demonstrate that the implementation of game design characteristics in the classroom can be engaging and intrinsically motivating. The present study assessed the extent to which an industrial organizational psychology course designed learning environment created with meaningful gamification elements can…

Background: Multiple-choice item (MCI) assessments are burdensome for instructors to develop. Artificial intelligence (AI, e.g., ChatGPT) can streamline the process without sacrificing quality. The quality of AI-generated MCIs and human experts is comparable. However, whether the quality of AI-generated MCIs is equally good across various domain-…

I examined concerns surrounding teaching culturally diverse students and attitudes toward incorporating diversity content into courses, held by a national sample of psychology educators (N = 91). Findings indicated that as instructors' personal acceptance of culturally diverse students increased, instructors' level of "backlash"…

Although previous research has demonstrated that guided testing (i.e., self-testing) and question generation effectively increase retention compared to control methods, no work has simultaneously implemented both strategies in the classroom. In a semester-long study designed to maximize experimental control in a naturalistic setting, we adapted…