Engaging a large cohort of students with teaching content is a difficult task for any educator working in higher education. When students are not receiving feedback about their participation efforts, this can lead to decreased engagement. Polling activities, such as hands up responses, can be used to address this but students cannot respond…

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…

Background: Much work has focused on "inattention" in the classroom, examining how episodes of task-unrelated thought (i.e., mind wandering) and engagement with various forms of media (e.g., media multitasking, smartphone use) influence retention of lecture material. However, considerably less work has examined factors that may…

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a shift to online teaching, which has dramatically affected all facets of the student experience. In this practice report, we reflect on the synchronous delivery of a popular final-year module "Face Perception" in a United Kingdom (UK) psychology undergraduate degree. In the module, students learned via…

This study investigated the characteristics of peer discussions used to support formative assessment in lectures, facilitated by a student response system, in an undergraduate qualitative methods course for psychology students. The intent was to examine the characteristics of peer discussions in which student response systems are used to…

As enrollment in online courses continues to rise, examining quality student engagement opportunities in online settings is important for their success and well-being. The current study sought to understand students' perspectives on using interactive video lectures in fully online classes. Surveys were collected from 161 undergraduate students…

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to shape and disrupt teaching provision in Higher Education, educators have responded with a swift pivot to online teaching for the 2020-2021 academic year. The debate surrounding the pedagogic utility of pre-recorded 'asynchronous' versus live 'synchronous' lecture modality continues to grow among teachers of…

The aim of this study is to determine the effect of teaching a learning psychology course in different ways on students' academic success and attitudes towards the course. The experimental research method was used in this research. The participants were students in the second year of a psychological counseling and guidance program in a state…

Guided notes covering lectures have been shown to improve note quality and increase scores on quizzes covering lecture material. We sought to determine whether guided notes would also be beneficial in helping students prepare for quizzes covering assigned readings. We evaluated the efficacy of guided notes for reading assignments on…

Escape rooms are becoming prevalent in their use as a form of playful learning and gamification in higher education, often used for a multitude of purposes to enhance students' higher education learning experiences. Whilst studies have reported their valuable uses in a range of contexts, they have often focussed on undergraduates and fewer have…

Validity is an important issue when measuring teaching quality using student evaluations. This study examined the effects of psychology students' subjective clarity about study contents and their prior interest in the subject as variables possibly biasing the evaluations of psychology courses. German students (N = 292) evaluated lectures and…

In the past 20 years, the landscape of Higher Education in the United Kingdom has changed considerably. With the prospect of tuition fees spiralling above £9,000 per year, per student, it is important to explore the impact this has upon the student experience. In spite of the vast financial investment current students make towards their education,…

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.…

Undergraduate research (UR) is a high-impact practice associated with many positive student outcomes. However, extending UR opportunities to all students is not practical for all psychology programs. Classroom-based UR experiences (CUREs) provide a scalable solution to this problem, but there is a paucity of empirically validated, authentic CUREs…

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…