Recent research compared the use of case studies to online discussion boards to teach about anxiety disorders. The current study extends this research to mood disorders, reports pretest and posttest scores on four learning outcomes, and compares midterm exam scores from Fall 2016 and Fall 2017 when case studies and online discussion boards were…

Laboratory studies have established a negative relationship between the color red and academic performance. This research examined whether this effect would generalize to classroom performance and whether anxiety and negative affect might mediate the effect. In two studies, students taking classroom exams were randomly assigned an exam color. We…

Three groups of undergraduates (42 senior graduating psychology majors, 27 first-year premajors taking introductory psychology, and 24 first-year, high-performing nonmajors taking introductory psychology) completed the Psychology Major Field Test (MFT) and a short-answer (SA) essay test on reasoning about core knowledge in psychology. Graduating…

Surveys in 2 undergraduate psychology classes (N = 86) found that students felt less comfortable taking all-essay tests than taking multiple-choice or short-answer tests. The dominant examination format for students in university and in high school had been multiple-choice tests. We describe measures to encourage essay writing in large classes.…

We investigated the use of quizzes administered prior to lecture (i.e., prelecture quizzes) and compared them to no-quiz control groups. In previous research, the success of administering quizzes after covering a topic (i.e., postlecture quizzes) was contingent on the quizzes and the subsequent exams being of similar level and content. However,…

To obtain information on the efficacy of college essay tests a study was undertaken to determine strategies used by students in answering essay tests. Expressing a similar opinion to the teacher's is the most common strategy. This finding casts doubt on the assumption that essay tests provide opportunity for students to exercise creativity and…

The two experiments described show that college students in psychology can slant their essays in the direction of originality when the teacher's expectations are made clear to them. (Author/RM)

Describes the essay test feedback technique of selecting a very good, or full-credit, essay answer from a student in class and distributing an anonymous copy of it to all class members. Reports that the results of a student assessment of the technique indicated that this form of feedback is helpful. (DSK)

Reports that a goal and item analysis of eight history and systems of psychology textbooks and their accompanying test item files showed that the majority of the essay test items are too narrow in scope to measure the commonly stated course goals. Presents some integrative and goal-relevant essay questions to rectify this shortcoming. Includes a…