Cognitive psychologists have found that taking practice tests improves students' learning, and some claim that tests that require recall are more effective than those that require recognition. This study examined whether recognition (i.e., multiple-choice) quizzes were as effective as cued-recall (i.e., fill-in-the-blank) quizzes for improving…

Teaching is a skill that can and should be taught in graduate education. Fortunately, many departments offer some teacher training for their graduate students to prepare them to teach introductory and other survey courses. What is apparently still lacking is training for graduate students to teach upper-level seminar-style classes. Therefore, we…

A public service announcement is a form of public, free-space messaging in which an individual proposes an idea with the aim to influence the public's attitude toward an exciting potential (Slater 2006). In this article, the author describes implementing this method across a wide variety of undergraduate content disciplines, including psychology,…

College students' learning experiences were significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the move to emergency remote teaching during March 2020. With the present availability of vaccines, many colleges and universities are now transitioning back to in-person learning. Students will need pedagogical support during this transition, but…

The authors' scholarly reflective narrative addresses the rewards and challenges of an immersive experiential active learning pedagogy. They ask, "was it worth it?" for students and for themselves. Although research evidence makes it clear that active learning benefits student learning and engagement, designing a course to incorporate…

Objective: We piloted a low-cost, flipped model of professional development to help improve undergraduate writing. Method: An adjunct instructor first watched online videos and then discussed the materials with a trainer, and used the provided resources in a Social Psychology summer course. Results: Post-training student papers were significantly…

Students often struggle to recall information on tests, frequently claiming to experience a "retrieval failure" of learned information. Thus, the retrieval of information from memory may be a roadblock to student success. I propose a relatively simple adjustment to the wording of test items to help eliminate this potential barrier.…

In French universities, only one out of two students is successful in his/her first year. The drastic changes in the organization of work and the greater emphasis put on self-regulated learning (relying on metacognition) can largely explain these low success rates. In this regard, techniques have been developed to help students improve monitoring…

The technology policies included on instructors' syllabi vary greatly and, in some cases, may unfavorably influence students' perceptions of the instructor. To examine this hypothesis, we randomly assigned college students enrolled in psychology courses at two different institutions (N = 163) to groups in which they viewed different syllabi for a…

Academic dishonesty has evolved to keep pace with changes in higher education. Websites now advertise the service of taking online courses for students. This study examined one such online company. Representatives from the company were professional and delivered the advertised services. Two experienced faculty members who co-taught the course used…

Research has suggested that a lengthier course syllabus may increase positive impressions of instructor effectiveness. In this investigation, we disentangle the effects of adding restrictive course boundary information from the addition of course content information. Furthermore, we examine the role of instructor gender as a moderator of the…

We present a reciprocal student-instructor interview activity as a means for establishing a positive classroom environment on the first day of class. This activity allows the instructor to clearly and concisely communicate the course practicalities to students while simultaneously providing students with the opportunity to share their…

We present our case study of an interdisciplinary team project for students taking either a psychology or computer science (CS) course. The project required psychology and CS students to combine their knowledge and skills to create an online cognitive task. Each interdisciplinary project team included two psychology students who conducted library…

This article describes a new 14-step process for using student evaluations of teaching to improve teaching. The new process includes examination of student evaluations in the context of instructor goals, student evaluations of the same course completed in prior terms, and evaluations of similar courses taught by other instructors. The process has…

Educators often focus on enhancing student motivation and engagement. This article describes an activity with these aims, in which undergraduates (a) learn about theories and research on means of persuasion and (b) in small groups design and record a public service announcement (PSA) video, write a brief paper that outlines the theories used to…