Social justice is an American Psychological Association (APA) ethical principal which is often taught in content courses (e.g. social psychology, developmental psychology, introductory psychology) but rarely covered in psychological statistics courses. This is problematic, as psychology students may assume that bias is not an issue when…

The present study piloted a cognitive exercise program in a college classroom to enhance learning of lecture material. Undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology (N = 68) completed variations of letter-number cancelation tasks with spoken instructions in 5-min sessions prior to lecture during four nonconsecutive class periods.…

In two studies, we demonstrate an engaging classroom activity that facilitates student learning about Kohlberg's theory of moral development by using digital resources to foster active, experiential learning. In addition to hearing a standard lecture about moral development, students watched a video of a morally provocative incident, then worked…

Background: Faculty might disclose personal information in order to illustrate a concept related to course material. However, the impact of self-disclosing potentially personal information (e.g., medical or mental health) is unclear. Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine how students perceive professors who self-disclose personal…

Three hundred thirty-three Introductory Psychology (IP) students from a 4-year university, 2-year community college, and a technical college provided survey data. Student self-reports significantly differed across schools on hours studied during exam weeks, textbook helpfulness, importance of lecture and class activities, quality and importance of…

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…

Because 98% of teachers use textbooks for the introductory psychology course and the majority of introductory teachers do not assign reading beyond the textbook, examining the topical coverage allocation pattern in introductory textbooks versus that in introductory course lectures is important for our understanding of how introductory students are…

In this study, I examined the effects of offering supplemental video lecture recordings to students in a face-to-face introductory psychology course. I employed a quasi-experimental design, in which one section had lectures recordings available (recordings of the face-to-face lecture) and one section did not, and I examined whether class section…

On their first class day, introductory psychology students took a 14-question multiple-choice pretest on several principles of memory including primacy, recency, storage, retrieval, counterbalancing, and the free-recall method. I randomly preassigned students to come at one of two different times to the second class, 2 days later, when they either…

This project describes the results from a large enrollment introductory psychology course specially designed to improve performance of first-year students. The main objective of the project was to identify early indicators of student success to inform future teaching and promote classroom engagement. Variables representing academic preparation,…

Chickering and Gamson's notable summary of the best practices of undergraduate teaching include promoting active learning, cooperation, and student-faculty contact. The present study hypothesized that online delivery of lecture prior to course meetings allows more in-class time to achieve these goals. Students in a control group received a…

Previous findings suggest some advantages to using an online format to deliver declarative knowledge and to using class time for active learning and discussion. During 4 weeks of an introductory psychology course, students were assigned on alternate weeks to attend one of two lecture formats: in-class lecture or online video lecture with an…

Previous literature has focused on students' perceptions of participation in experiments, but has not measured the effect of participation on learning. In Study 1, students rated their perceptions of learning about psychology; they compared the classroom experience to experiment participation, reading about psychology, or summarizing a journal…

To determine whether a classroom experiment improved the learning of experimental method, at the start of the semester 2 introductory psychology classes took a 10-question multiple-choice pretest on experimental method. Two days later, before the instructor covered the relevant material in the course, 1 class took part in a classroom experiment on…

Students often come into the introductory psychology course with many misconceptions and leave with most of them intact. Borrowing from other disciplines, we set out to determine whether refutational lecture and text are effective in dispelling student misconceptions. These approaches first activate a misconception and then immediately counter it…