Background: Incorporating professional development into undergraduate psychology coursework is an ongoing area of improvement for educators. Objective: We present a novel activity encouraging students to explore various professional skills and roles for which their psychology major prepares them through application to real-world issues. Method:…

Introduction: Students in higher education courses need to practice vital groupwork skills that are increasingly relevant in today's collaborative workplace, which often occurs through small group coursework. Statement of the Problem: The process of forming small groups with students who are committed to the topic and goals is frequently…

Introduction: Research suggests benefits for incorporating popular press books into courses to encourage critical thinking and student-instructor interactions about concepts. Objective: This article offers a summary and critique of "7 ½ Lessons about the Brain" by Lisa Feldman-Barrett along with pedagogical strategies for integrating the…

Background: Researchers suggest benefits for cooperative learning, but often fail to control for choosing to engage cooperatively, ACT scores or early course performance. Objective: To observe the effects of choosing cooperative work on exam performance in an Introduction to Psychology Course, while controlling for early exam performance and ACT.…

Background: Prior research has shown that pre-service teachers' learning of theory is enhanced when teacher educators model the instructional approaches that they advocate as effective. Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare undergraduate learning outcomes in a course using Team-based Learning (TBL) with those in a traditional,…

Introduction: Class participation is a common component of many college classes and is typically defined as involving students' active, oral engagement in class. Statement of the Problem: Class participation is often an under-utilized pedagogical tool for skill-building and development. Literature Review: We present an evidence-based framework…

Research on team-based learning (TBL) generally supports its effectiveness over "traditional" lecture. In practice, however, lecturing rarely consists of teachers exclusively talking at their students, as many incorporate a variety of strategies to encourage active processing. This study compared an interactive lecture style with TBL on…

The current study investigated whether collaborative quizzing impacted quiz performance, overall grades, exam grades, pass/fail rates, and attendance in upper-level psychology courses. Students enrolled in two sections of upper-level psychology courses completed collaborative quizzes, whereas students enrolled in two noncollaborative sections…

To evaluate a demonstration involving active and cooperative learning, 40 students in a cognitive psychology course and 132 students in an introductory psychology course completed a brief multiple-choice pretest on referential communication. Two days later, randomly assigned students either participated in a classroom referential communication…

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)…

This research study focused on the use of cooperative groups to facilitate class-wide participation, especially for initially low participants. Undergraduates from three sections of a relatively large educational psychology course recorded their class participation in all course units. Four of the five units in each section offered either…

This study investigated the influence of team-based learning (TBL) methods on exam performance and student satisfaction in an introductory psychology class. Fifteen instructors teaching 29 sections (with a combined enrollment of approximately 1,130 students) were randomly assigned to use TBL for 7 of 12 major topics or to use lecture. All students…

We investigated whether students in psychology-based learning communities (LCs; i.e., cohorts who took introductory psychology and English together) performed better on psychology tests than those in standard classes. There were two types of LC; in one (connected LC), we created links between English and psychology by using English class readings…

We developed a two-semester series of intensive (six-contact hours per week) behavioral research methods courses with an integrated statistics curriculum. Our approach includes the use of team-based learning, authentic projects, and Excel and SPSS. We assessed the effectiveness of our approach by examining our students' content area scores on the…

This study describes the use of a collaborative learning approach in a psychological statistics course and examines the factors that predict which students benefit most from such an approach in terms of learning outcomes. In a course format with a substantial group work component, 166 students were surveyed on their preference for individual…