Society for the Teaching of Psychology "This is How I Teach" Blog

Jennifer McCabe (she/her): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 13:16:26 GMT

School name: Goucher College

Type of school: Small liberal arts college

School locale: Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? In-person

How many years have you taught psychology? 20+ (nearly 18 at Goucher)

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology, Human Learning & Memory, Cognitive Psychology, Seminar in Cognition, Teaching, and Learning

Specialization (if applicable): Cognitive psychology (applied memory)

What size classes do you teach? 15-25

What is the best advice about teaching you’ve received? I don’t know if or when someone explicitly gave me this strategy as advice, but I find it incredibly helpful to get in the habit of taking a few minutes right after each class period to re-save my slideshow (or agenda or whatever I’m using to guide class) from that day with next year’s date, then add comments and reminders for myself of how I want to update things based on how the class went. This is a piece of concrete advice I give to any instructors who ask. We forget we forget, so don’t count on remembering to do something differently next semester (or a year(s) later) if you don’t write it down!

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? Inclusive Teaching, co-authored by my grad school buddy (from UNC-Chapel Hill) Viji Sathy along with Kelly Hogan. It’s just an outstanding resource with both deep dives into why inclusive teaching is important and some really helpful practical advice, a lot of which anyone can start implementing tomorrow in class.

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? I still prepare as much as ever, but I wish I knew back then that the more I embraced flexibility and “the unknown” during class, the more fun and engaging the whole enterprise will be. Sometimes the best classes are when things deviate from my plan and end up in an unexpected place with new insights and deeper learning. Also to relax and be my authentic (nerdy) self in the classroom.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. My area of specialty is learning strategies and metacognition, so of course I love that (and I get to teach an entire seminar class about it, which is amazing!). Aside from this, one of my favorite topics is sleep. It’s fun to help students discover what actually happens during a third of their lives and how important it is to health, well-being, and memory.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. In Human Learning & Memory, I assign a Procedural Memory Project in which students choose a complex motor skill to work on for three weeks, form a practice plan based on the learning strategies we discuss in class, and keep a log and performance graph documenting their progress. They submit two video logs (VLOGs), one at the start and one at the end of the project. These include discussion about the skill and how the project relates to class topics, along with a video documenting their current state. It’s neat to watch them learn to juggle, knit, shoot free throws, shuffle cards (etc.)! And they can try out strategies then reflect on how it all went and what they might do differently in the future. I especially like this project because it helps encourage a growth mindset – that we can all get better at all kinds of things with strategic practice and motivation.

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it? A class on psychology in musical theater!

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Enthusiastic, organized, collaborative

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? I care deeply about student learning and well-being.

What’s your workspace like? I’m an organized person. If you catch me at the start of the semester, my office reflects this, but by those final weeks, all bets are off, and it can get to be something of a disaster zone. It’s also full of books and family photos, and snacks for visitors!

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? I’m always looking for ways to make class time more fun and engaging. Though it heightens my anxiety somewhat to change the routine way I’ve been teaching a given topic (sometimes for years!), I embrace the excitement of trying out a new demonstration or discussion topic.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? They might be surprised to learn how long it still takes me to prepare for every class, and that I still experience some anxiety when entering the classroom, even after teaching for over two decades!

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Recently I’ve enjoyed Heart the Lover by Lily King, Buckeye by Patrick Ryan, and Wreck by Catherine Newman. Reading is my absolute favorite pastime!

What tech tool could you not live without? Todoist app and Outlook calendar!

Alison Kelly (she/her/hers): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:48:27 GMT

School name: University of North Dakota

Type of school: 4-year public university

School locale: Grand Forks, ND, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online ? In-person and online asynchronous

For how many years have you taught psychology? 16 years (Yikes, I’ve been at this for a while!)

Classes you teach: Introductory Psychology, Cognitive Psychology (undergrad and grad), History and Systems of Psychology, and Interrogations and Confessions (grad)

Specialization: Experimental/Forensic

What size classes do you teach? Anywhere from 35 to 220 students

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? I highly recommend Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty by Elizabeth Barkley and Claire Major. I spent a lot of time with that book as a newer faculty member, and it informed a lot of my teaching choices. The book does an amazing job of laying the foundation for how closely connected student engagement and motivation are and includes many helpful techniques and strategies to use in the classroom (both online and in-person).

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? Things rarely, if ever, go perfectly every time you teach a course. Having self-compassion when things flop and being open to making improvements the next time around is so important! I also used to spend a lot more time trying to make things perfect in my courses and have learned to accept that sometimes “good enough” is good enough.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I developed a Social Psychology of Taylor Swift course in Summer 2024 and taught it again this past summer. Students learned about topics like nostalgia, empathy, revenge, allyship, and sexism through the lens of Taylor Swift’s life and music. There were some really great journal articles and Speaking of Psychology podcast episodes that I used for most of the course content. I also assigned some popular media articles and had students listen to specific Taylor Swift songs that overlapped with the topics we covered. It was so much fun to develop the course, and students were so active and engaged with the course material and with each other!

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. In my History and Systems course, I have students do an introspection activity when we cover Wilhelm Wundt and his analytic introspection method. I bring in two different stimuli (e.g., chocolate, a balloon, a fuzzy pom-pom, etc.) and give students detailed instructions that are similar to what Wundt would have used with his trained introspectors. Students usually enjoy this activity, and it really underscores what early forms of data collection looked like, as well as the limitations of self-report methods.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Inclusive, engaged, and innovative

What’s your workspace like? I try to make my office feel warm and cozy so it’s a place where I actually want to spend time. I have artwork from my kids, plants, a candle, and psychology-themed décor. I also have a big window that lets in a lot of natural light, which is much needed during the long, cold winters up here in the frozen tundra!

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened. I had my History and Systems students help co-author an Open Educational Resource focused on the contributions of early eminent marginalized psychologists. They worked in groups to write the chapters and made the decision about whether they published their work in the final OER. The project was done in online asynchronous courses, so there was a bit more scaffolding on my end to make the project manageable. I was worried that only a few groups would want to publish their work, but a fair amount ended up deciding to. I’m proud of what students were able to contribute and find open pedagogy to be so rewarding. The OER is still being revised and added to, and my hope is that it will end up being something others can use. A shout out to fellow STP member Brittany Avila and her former students for also contributing to this project!

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I’m currently reading Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. It’s a historical fiction novel set in the 80s based on the first women in NASA’s Space Shuttle program. It’s a good mix of science, suspense, and romance. The book also accurately portrays the common barriers for women in STEM fields—especially during the 80s.

What tech tool could you not live without? I use Perusall (a free social annotation platform) in most of my courses. It’s been a game changer in terms of adding another layer of accountability for students to actively engage with their assigned course materials, and in getting them to interact with me, my teaching assistants, and each other. I also love that I’m able to more easily see which parts of the course material students are either resonating with or struggling to understand. This has been especially helpful in my online asynchronous courses. I’m not usually a tech tool evangelist, but Perusall is worth checking out!

Jessica LaPaglia (she/her/hers): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:27:29 GMT

School name: Morningside University

Type of school: Private liberal arts institution

School locale: Sioux City, IA, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? In-person

For how many years have you taught psychology? 16 years

What classes do you teach? Cognitive Psychology, Research Methods, General Psychology, Forensic and Legal Psychology, Brain and Behavior

Specialization: Cognitive

What size classes do you teach? 16-40 students

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? What Inclusive Instructors Do by Tracie Marcella Addy, Derek Dube, Khadijah Mitchell, and Mallory SoRelle

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? If you are having fun while teaching, your students are more likely to have fun while learning. If any one class period feels a bit boring, change it up!

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I love teaching my students in General Psychology and Cognitive Psychology about the science behind learning and giving them tips for studying for exams.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. When I teach Forensic and Legal Psychology, we do a lie detector demonstration. Four students steal an item from my bag, and we measure their heart rate, respiration, and galvanic skin response as they respond to questions. Then we examine their data and try to figure out which item they stole.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Curiosity, authenticity, and engagement.

What’s your workspace like? I, sadly, don’t have a window in my office, so my walls are covered in colorful artwork from my kids. I also keep thank you notes from my students out to remind myself why I work so hard.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? Next year, I will be teaching a new psychology communication class focused on improving students’ written and oral communication skills. Although I have plenty of experience teaching APA-style writing, teaching students how to present research will be a new and exciting challenge for me.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Most of my free time is spent reading for fun. I especially love reading fantasy. I recently read Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, and I recommend it to anyone in academia.

Lora L. Erickson (she/her/hers): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 18:27:28 GMT

School name: The Chicago School

Type of school: Midsize (6,100 students including undergraduate and graduate) Public University with multiple campuses (metropolitan and online) in the U.S.

School locale: Anaheim CA, Chicago IL, Dallas TX, Los Angeles CA, San Diego CA, Washington, D.C., and Online

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online? Online, Masters of Arts in Applied Psychology program

For how many years have you taught psychology? I have been teaching psychology for nearly 18 years.

Classes you teach: Professional Ethics in Psychology, Diversity & Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Trauma & Crisis Intervention, Emotional Intelligence & Leadership, Global Issues in Suicide, Social Media & Cyberbullying

Specialization: Trauma

What size classes do you teach? Approximately 10-20 students per class

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Assume the best about students.

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? APA Style format is hard for nearly all writers, no matter what their educational level!

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I really enjoy teaching about trauma. I am a licensed therapist (IL, CO, FL) in addition to being a professor, and I have several trauma specializations such as EMDR, CPT, and TF-CBT. I love getting to teach students about the impact of trauma on the brain, trauma responses, and trauma interventions.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. When I teach professional ethics, I have the students create Venn Diagrams of two ethical decision-making models of their choosing. This activity promotes creativity, as well as results in a visually appealing way to become familiar with multiple models of professional ethical decision making.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Warm, interactive, and productive

What’s your workspace like? It’s full of animals! Since I work remotely, I have a home office. I have two dogs, one a trained therapy dog (Daphne), and the other a hurricane rescue dog from FL (Pavlov). I also have an axolotl in my office, and he is very active and engaged with the sound of my voice. I have my diplomas, pictures of my husband and children, and a small succulent. I also keep chapstick on hand (CO is DRY!), lotion, warm socks, and a heated blanket.

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened. While I primarily teach graduate students, I was able to lead a group of undergraduate students at a recent APA Convention workshop for CE credit. None of the students had any experience at professional conventions and limited public speaking opportunities. The crowd that showed up for this presentation was standing room only in a large conference room, and everyone was so kind to the students and myself. The students did great, and it has become a core memory for us all!

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? I am working to create more ways for students to evaluate themselves as a component of various assignments. Self-evaluation is such a critical part of professional development, and it increases the connection that they have to the learning material in a unique way.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I love American Football. I am a huge fan of the Denver Broncos and the Detroit Lions.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I just finished The House of My Mother by Shari Franke, and I am currently reading Sociopath by Patric Gagne. If you can’t tell, I love memoirs!

What tech tool could you not live without? My Apple Watch. I am very interested in and engaged with daily movement, fitness, and exercise as a way to prioritize my physical and mental health. This orientation supports me to have the energy and focus needed to best educate and care for others.

Patricia Y. Sanchez (she/her): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:20:06 GMT

School name: University of Toronto St. George

Type of school: 4-year public university

School locale: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? In-person, synchronous

For how many years have you taught psychology? 6 years

Classes you teach: Statistics I, Social Cognition, Psychology and the Law, Intergroup Relations

Specialization: Psychology and law; social psychology; teaching of psychology

What size classes do you teach? Typically 50 students (except for Statistics I, which is 200)

What's the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Be clear about the intention behind every policy, every assignment, and every piece of information you hope to teach. Students should know why they are learning something and the rationale behind how they are being assessed. Also, If there’s 10 minutes left in class, spend that time clarifying things that were already covered. Don’t try to cram in new content.

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? Setting boundaries is key. I used to think I needed to be available to students whenever they needed me, and this caused burnout very quickly. I am best at teaching and being there for students when boundaries are clear and respected.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I love teaching Psychology and Law. It’s an applied topic so it always feels timely and important. Specifically, I love teaching about eyewitness memory and false confessions. Although these are often heavy and serious topics, it feels like I am doing a public service by giving students real-world examples of the psychological research discussed in class. Specifically, I focus on how one’s innocence may counterintuitively put someone more at risk for harm in legal settings. Know your rights! Speak to a lawyer!

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I love doing in-class discussion groups, especially in Social Cognition. It gives students a space to talk about what they’ve learned and read in a semiformal and comfortable environment. It’s also reliably a way to see the students smile. (My jokes don’t always land)

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it? I was fortunate to teach one of my dream courses when I taught a Social Psychology seminar in Winter 2025. The topic was Social Psychology and the Media. Media is a pervasive influence on us, and it was virtually impossible to delve as deeply as I would have liked in 13 weeks. However, I loved sitting down to discuss research findings in this area along with the philosophical questions that psychology research has been limited in answering. One of the key takeaways is that our interactions with media are so deeply complex that classic methods in psychology research may usually fall short to truly understand how and why media affects our lives.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Effective science communication to various audiences is key.

What’s your workspace like? A place for all my doodads and knickknacks that don’t have a place in my home anymore.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? Figuring out how to give students the feedback on their writing that they need to excel on their exam essay questions (and essays in general). I don’t have the capacity to sit down with each student to go over their writing. I’ve always recommended students go to the writing center, or meet with their TAs. I also usually have a scaffolded structure to major writing assignments (including draft and peer review steps). But even so, I’m always trying out new strategies to give students more reliable and timely feedback on their smaller writing assignments.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

What tech tool could you not live without? PowerPoint… I use it for everything!

Sara Tze Kwan LI (she/her/hers): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:22:19 GMT

School name: Hong Kong Metropolitan University

Type of school: Government-established self-financing university

School locale: Hong Kong, China

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? In-person

How many years have you taught psychology? 6 years

Classes you teach: Psychology of Language, Cyberpsychology, Lifespan Developmental Psychology, Rehabilitation Psychology, Mental Health First Aid, Applied Research Project, Psychology Honors Thesis, Practicum and Experiential Learning Seminars

Specialization (if applicable): Music cognition, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology

What size classes do you teach? About 30-100 students for lectures, 30 students for tutorials, and 1-2 students for research-related courses

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? Organizing teaching materials (e.g., topics with PowerPoint slides) into manageable chunks, ideally every 30 minutes to an hour, would be beneficial. This approach can help sustain students' attention and interest. In addition, incorporating interactive or surprising elements within each chunk can enhance engagement. For instance, while discussing executive function and inhibition, students could participate in a few trials of the flanker task in class. This hands-on experience will help them remember the learning materials, with a specific example.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. My favorite course to teach is Psychology of Language. This course refers to the study of psychological processes involved in language, such as visual word recognition, language comprehension, language production, bilingualism and multilingualism, etc. This subject represents my passion for psychology upon graduation from my Bachelor’s degree. Teaching this course allows me to revisit many tiny yet happy moments that guided me in navigating the field. At the same time, it shows students the diversity and vibrancy of various subfields in psychology.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. One of my favorite in-class activities is asking students to step into the role of key opinion leaders (KOLs) and design a quick livestreaming e-commerce session to promote and sell a product. This signature activity is a highlight of the topic ‘Consumer cyberpsychology’ in the Cyberpsychology course, offered to senior-year psychology students as an elective.

In this class, I bring a selection of products for the students, such as fragrance, paper clips, etc. They first form groups and participate in a lucky draw to select one of the products. Each group then has 10 minutes to develop strategies to promote and sell their product as key opinion leaders (KOLs) in a livestreaming e-commerce session. When time is up, they present their strategies and "sell" their product in front of the class.

In general, I observe many creative and inspirational strategies to boost sales during the presentations, such as offering professional tips in selecting suitable fragrance etc. Afterward, we compile the common sales strategies proposed by all groups and compare them with existing research. This allows us to examine whether and how the students' strategies align with findings from previous studies. Through this approach, students gain a deeper understanding of the research by engaging in hands-on, experiential learning experience.

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it? My dream course to teach is Music Psychology, the field I studied in my PhD. This course explores how humans interact with music through various psychological processes. Possible topics include music reading, music therapy, musical perception, memory, aesthetics, training, and performance, etc. In particular, students will be able to gain hands-on experience in psychological research in music cognition. Proposing this course aligns with my teaching philosophy of showcasing the diversity and vibrancy of various subfields in psychology. In particular, I aim to foster the growth of music psychology, as an emerging and comparatively new subfield in psychology, through teaching as a form of advocacy.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Student-centered, experiential, experimental

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Learning by doing in applied contexts

What’s your workspace like? My workspace is a cozy room at the University. A corkboard on the wall showcases a big cartoon world map that I brought from South Korea, which always reflects upon my journey in life. In addition, I posted notes and memos that students and colleagues gave me. There are some postcards that I received or brought from other places in the world. The two magazine pages ‘Art and the Mind’ were from the APA’s Monitor on Psychology, reminding me of my goal to contribute more to art and aesthetics. On the table, there are three awards, which are the President’s Awards for Excellence in Inspirational Teaching 2022-2024, from the HKMU. The recognition motivates me to keep up with the good work and passion in teaching.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? I am now trying to foster students’ research competency through classroom-based teaching. This idea stemmed from my observation that many students need guidance to develop their research skills but often lack the opportunity to explore research in structured settings. Thus, I incorporate lab-based sessions in my course, Psychology of Language. Students were introduced to online experiments related to the topics covered during tutorials. For example, in visual word processing, students work on a lexical decision task, which is a behavioral task that requires participants to judge whether a word stimulus is a real word or a non-word on a computer. This first-hand experience allows students to understand how an online experiment works. In addition, my assignment design also aims to help students develop some possible research ideas. For example, students are asked to observe some daily scenarios related to the psychology of language, and develop a research question and a short proposal under guidance. This approach aims to enhance students’ research competency and highlight the application values of the psychology of language in real life.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I am a big fan of maps and map reading. I enjoy navigating a city through maps, both in paper and digital form. It symbolizes and visualizes a journey of exploration to the unknown.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Atomic Habits by James Clear. My leisure reading is pretty much about psychology and personal growth. I am amazed by how Clear explains why tiny changes make a big difference in the four laws. This is definitely a recommendation for my students too.

Jill M. Swirsky (she/her): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach (now)

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 13:39:58 GMT

**Editor's Note: Jill first contributed to this blog in 2019 when she was a graduate student, so she is contributing again as her approach to teaching has developed a great deal in the intervening years.

School name: Holy Family University

Type of school: small private, Catholic, liberal arts

School locale: Philadelphia, PA, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? In person

For how many years have you taught psychology? 10 years

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology, Child Development, Adolescent Development, Lifespan Development, Psychology of Popular Culture, Research Methods, Teaching of Psychology

Specialization: Developmental

What size classes do you teach? 20-30 students/course

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that it’s okay not to know everything. When I was starting out, I felt an enormous pressure to be the expert at all times and to ensure that every lesson went smoothly. The reality, though, is that teaching (like life!) is unpredictable, and things don’t always go as planned. I’ve come to realize that there are great opportunities for growth in those moments. Not knowing an answer can actually be a powerful teaching opportunity: it allows me to model curiosity, resourcefulness, and the process of “looking it up” rather than pretending to have all the solutions. Similarly, when an activity or assignment doesn’t land the way I hoped, it becomes an authentic chance to model resilience and how to reflect, adapt, and move forward when things don’t go our way. They can also be really fun moments that help humanize me as an instructor, it’s all about your perspective. These experiences have shown me that the classroom is not just about delivering information; it’s also about demonstrating how learning, problem-solving, and perseverance look in real time.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. One of my favorite courses to teach is a class I developed at my university called The Psychology of Popular Culture. I’ve been teaching it through the lens of musical theater, which has been both engaging and a lot of fun. Each week, we focus on a different show (a few examples I’ve used are The Sound of Music, Mamma Mia!, Hairspray, Grease, and Come From Away - although there are lots of others!) and explore the psychological themes that emerge from its story. You’d be surprised by how much psychology is embedded in popular culture, especially in musical theater, from identity formation and family dynamics to prejudice, resilience, and moral decision-making.

One especially memorable discussion came after we watched Waitress. The show addresses difficult and complex topics, and at first the students were hesitant to engage. Their initial reactions to issues like infidelity were very black-and-white. But as the conversation continued, they began to recognize the nuanced realities behind human relationships and the many contextual factors that shape people’s choices. By the end of class, several students commented that the discussion opened their eyes to complexities they had never considered before.

That’s what I love about using popular culture to teach psychology. Because the material feels familiar and accessible, it lowers students’ defenses and invites them to engage with challenging ideas in a safe, meaningful way. It also makes abstract concepts more concrete - students can immediately see how psychological principles are playing out in the stories they’re watching. In that sense, pop culture becomes more than just entertainment; it’s an entry point for critical thinking, empathy, and deeper understanding of human behavior.

I also serve as editor of the Pop Culture Corner blog (hosted by Psi Chi), where many of my students have the opportunity to submit their final papers for publication. It’s incredibly rewarding to see their creativity extend beyond the classroom and reach a wider audience, giving their work a life after the course ends. (Check it out and feel free to encourage your students to submit if they are doing anything pop culture related!)

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. Building on what I shared earlier, one of my favorite assignments is something I call the Psych in the Media Paper. For this assignment, students sign up for a week of specific course content (for example, Memory in an Introduction to Psychology class) and then select a fictional source such as a book, movie, TV show, musical, or video game to connect with that week’s material. For instance, during our Human Development unit, a student might analyze parenting styles as portrayed in the Harry Potter series, or for Social Psychology, they might explore peer relationships in Mean Girls.

I enjoy this assignment for several reasons. First, it gives students a creative and engaging way to apply psychological concepts to stories they’re already familiar with, which makes the material feel more relevant and approachable. At the same time, because they’re working with fictional examples rather than their own personal experiences, it creates a sense of safety and distance that allows deeper reflection without feeling overly vulnerable. Second, it’s an incredibly versatile assignment. I’ve successfully used it in introductory psychology, lifespan and developmental psychology, and it would also work well in courses like social psychology, psychology of gender, etc.

In practice, students write a short paper applying course concepts to their chosen topic, and they also record their selections on a Google form. Over the years, this form has grown into a spreadsheet of nearly a decade’s worth of submissions which showcases the incredible creativity and diversity of connections students make between psychology and popular culture. It not only shows how versatile psychology is, but also how powerfully students engage with learning when they can approach it through the lens of stories and media that matter to them.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Goofy, Engaging, Innovative

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Authoritative teaching: firm but supportive

What’s your workspace like? My office is bright and colorful. One of the things I love about my office is the large table which makes it a great gathering space for colleagues and students.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. This doesn’t really qualify as an embarrassment or a disaster, but it was definitely a funny, lighthearted moment. On the very first day of my Senior Seminar course, while I was reviewing the syllabus, the “O” key on the classroom computer somehow got stuck. No matter what I did, the computer just kept typing out a long stream of “ooooooooo” across the screen. I tried everything - closing the browser, restarting the computer - but nothing worked to fix it. The students were cracking up, joking that the classroom must be haunted. It turned into a silly shared moment that helped break the ice and set a relaxed, welcoming tone for the semester.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? One area I am continually working to improve is finding the right balance between rigor and flexibility. Early in my career, I assumed this balance would eventually come naturally, but I’ve realized it is something that constantly shifts depending on the course, the students, and the context of the semester. My focus now is on intentionally designing flexibility into my courses in ways that maintain academic rigor.

For example, I allow students to drop their lowest weekly assignment grade. This practice acknowledges that “life happens,” gives students room to manage their own time, and eliminates the need for me to make case-by-case judgment calls. It also allows me to uphold high expectations for the quality of their work, since the flexibility is built into the course structure rather than coming at the expense of rigor.

Ultimately, my goal is for students to feel both challenged and supported. I’ve come to see that flexibility and rigor aren’t opposites; rather, when approached thoughtfully, they can actually complement each other and enhance the overall learning experience.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I’m currently reading The Nobleman's Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks which is the third book in the Montague Siblings series by Mackenzi Lee. They are clever, quirky, and relatively quick reads with great LGBTQIA+ representation.

What tech tool could you not live without? Canvas, and the Google suite (Drive, email, calendar)

Jennifer Fredricks (she/her): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 13:00:40 GMT

School Name: Union College

Type of school: Small liberal arts college

School locale: Schenectady, New York, United States

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous): In person

How many years taught Psychology: Over 25 in both Psychology and Human Development Departments

Classes you currently teach: Developmental Psychology, Educational Psychology, Adolescent Development, Upper-Level Seminar on Child and Families

Classes you've previously taught: Statistics, Child and Family Policy

Specialization: Developmental/Educational

What size classes do you teach? 15-40 students. Smaller for seminars. Typical size of course is 25-30 students.

What is the best advice about teaching you’ve received? Teaching is about developing relationships. I learned this from my father who was an accounting professor and was deeply beloved by his students. I watched how he tutored his students, helped them to get jobs, and was even the godparent for some of his students’ children. Getting to know my students and letting them get to know me has been the most rewarding part of teaching and critical for student success.

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? I recommend new teachers familiarize themselves with the research on the causes of student disengagement and how to create more engaging classrooms. I am a big fan of James Lang’s work and recommend two of his books, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning and Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What to do About It? My book, Eight Myths of Student Engagement: Creating Classrooms of Deep Learning is also a resource for new teachers.

What do you wish you knew about teaching when you were starting? Less is more. In my early years of teaching, I focused primarily on transmitting information to students. I was spending so much time on lecture preparation and was not getting the motivational and cognitive gains I had hoped for students. They were bored and only had a surface understanding of content. Now, I teach less content in greater depth and in a way in which students are more active in co-creating this knowledge. As a result of these changes, my classrooms are more engaging, students understand content more deeply, and it takes me much less time to prepare.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach: In educational psychology, my favorite topic to teach is metacognitive learning strategies. Many of my students are using ineffective study strategies and tell me that they wish that material on study strategies and metacognition was offered to all students and that they had learned these strategies earlier in their educational career.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity: In several of my courses, I have students conduct interviews with individuals at different stages of the lifespan and connect these interviews to course content. My students have interviewed siblings, parents, friends, teachers, and/or grandparents. I have enjoyed seeing how effectively these interviews help them to see content in action as well as get to know their family and friends more deeply.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Relational, student-centered, and engaging. My goal is to develop relationships with each of my students and get to know them as individuals in so they can grow as both learners and as people. I aim to create a student-centered classroom where my students are expected to be active participants in learning and take greater ownership of their educational experiences. Finally, I try to include both the academic and social features of engaging classrooms in my own teaching.

Tell us about a teaching "win" you've had and the context in which it happened: In my developmental psychology course last year, I asked students at the beginning of the term to set two goals related to participation and two goals related to their writing and reflect on their effectiveness in meeting these goals throughout the term. I was surprised by how positively students responded to the goal setting and reflection activities, how easy it was to implement these activities in the classroom, and how much both their participation and writing improved.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? Like many faculty, I am trying to figure out what is AIs appropriate role in the classroom. I have been reflecting on how can I integrate these tools in my courses in a way that can support student learning but not offload student thinking. This year, I changed the language in my syllabus and some assignments to try to better achieve this balance.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I think students would be surprised that, even after over 25 years of teaching, I still get nervous before the first day of classes. I also think they would be surprised by how much I learn from them and how happy I am when they achieve success.

Justina M. Oliveira (she/her/hers): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 18:21:29 GMT

School name: Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU)

Type of school: Private not-for-profit

School locale: I teach on their campus which is in Manchester, NH, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? In-person

How many years have you taught psychology? 10 years at SNHU; 5 years during Graduate School at Baruch College, City University of New York

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology, Social Psychology, Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Specialization: Industrial-Organizational Psychology

What size classes do you teach? 30 students per class

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? See the students as an individual. They are a whole person, with varying responsibilities, concerns, motivations, and passions.

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? I’m all about free open-source materials lately, so I’m going to unabashedly say new teachers should check out the totally free e-book I published through OER Commons called Photography’s Power and Potential for Teaching Psychology. So many students learn well from storytelling and visuals, so I created this book to help all students and educators alike.

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? Focus on skills-building and engaging activities. These will matter most for retention of information and motivation.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I love to use the arts within my psychology courses. We use poetry, music, and photography quite a bit. In Social Psychology, I have students take their own photos of topics we cover in class (e.g., discrimination, altruism, conformity), and we do a gallery viewing class day of their work. Students get to guess what topic each photo is about, and we have fun discussing the choices the photographer/student made to get their theme across to others (lighting choices, angles, contrasts, color choices, etc.).

What are three words that best describe your teaching style?

Creativity, active learning, civic engagement

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. On my 1^st day of class as a teaching assistant for Research Methods back in graduate school, when I sat in my chair after introducing myself, the chair broke, and I crashed to the floor! I stood up and said, ‘well now you know a little more about me…I’m clumsy, and I can laugh at myself!’ We all had a good laugh and moved on. I like to think I single-handedly broke the ice for the whole class that day J.

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened. A huge teaching win for me is when I organized a student exhibit in a gallery space to showcase my students’ original photography and poetry as it relates to Social Psychology last fall semester. Seeing people engage with those creative students and their work during the opening event at the gallery made me so proud of them and of what can be accomplished when we encourage creativity as connected to psychology!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I speak 3 languages and have traveled to about 40 other countries (often with only a backpack)!

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Joy Harjo’s memoir titled ‘Poet Warrior’. She is a powerful poet of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was a Poet Laureate of the U.S.

Kendal A. Smith (she/her): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 17:58:25 GMT

School name:

Texas A&M-Central Texas

School locale: Texas, United States

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? Mostly online synchronous and asynchronous, as well as a few in-person and hybrid courses

How many years have you taught psychology? 4 years

Classes you teach: Cognitive Psychology, Psychology of Learning, Animal Behavior, Writing in Psychology, Program Evaluation Fundamentals, Psychology Major Seminar

Specialization: Comparative Cognition and Behavior

What size classes do you teach? 20-30 students

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out?

As someone with a special interest in Cognitive Psychology, I have to choose Roediger. So much of his research on the testing effect and retrieval practice has direct implications for classroom assignments, as well as helping students fully understand the benefits of studying and conducting multiple study sessions. I do a classroom activity in my memory chapters that fully involves retrieval practice, and students consistently give feedback that they wish they had been taught from a much younger age research-based strategies for HOW to study.

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting?

Not to be scared of feedback. No one is ever going to get to a point in their teaching career where they can’t grow and learn more, and one of the main ways we experience this growth is by receiving and implementing feedback. I used to fear supervision or evaluation processes because it was all about getting the highest score possible. Now, I seek out opportunities to get feedback or input from both my colleagues and my supervisors. Even if I have confidence in how to implement an assignment or how to frame a certain concept, other faculty have different past experiences and have fresh perspectives to offer that can only help me improve what I’m doing. Feedback is one of the most valuable tools in our job.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Animal Behavior. It’s one of those courses where, although it’s heavily theory-based, the concepts are easy to apply to real-world situations. The activities and assignments that I use in this course are so much fun and allot a number of opportunities for students to take agency of their work and creatively explore a topic they’re particularly interested in and motivated to investigate.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

For my online classes, I love doing a priming question at the beginning of class related to the topic for that day, but I try to incorporate a camera-on aspect to the activity. For instance, in a Careers class, if we talk about professionalism, then the opening activity could be a competition to see who can set the most professional background from the stock photos on Teams or Zoom. Another example would be in Psychology of Learning, if we’re discussing metacognitive strategies, I’ll list each strategy one by one and tell students to turn their cameras on if they do that strategy. Not only does it give them an opportunity to get their opinions in the room early in class so they’re sharing with others, I find that those classes tend to result in more discussion overall.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Lead by example and work alongside your students

What’s your workspace like?

It’s a little bit of a contradiction, but it illustrates so many different facets of my personality very well. There’s really no overarching theme other than me: I enjoy all of the things that decorate my workspace. I have spooky little trinkets, such as pumpkins and skeletons, colorful and unique art prints of brains and synapses hanging on my wall, brain bookends, and dolphin and whale paperweights and memorabilia. And, of course, I have reminders from my children, including pictures and scribblings they’ve left me on my desk.

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened.

At the beginning of the semester, one of my students was so shy and withdrawn that she refused to record herself, rarely spoke, and consistently submitted assignments late or not at all. I decided to reach out to her directly through a personal email expressing concern, offering flexibility, and inviting her to attend office hours so we could discuss how I could better support her. To my surprise, she responded with gratitude and scheduled a meeting. During that conversation, she shared that social anxiety made it difficult for her to participate in class or ask questions, but she was deeply interested in the material. She also told me that a past professor would sign his emails off with “In frustration,” which created a major block in her willingness to reach out herself when she was struggling, as she didn’t want to feel as though she were a burden. After much reassurance, I worked with her to build a plan that included alternative participation options and regular check-ins with me. She began attending office hours consistently, started turning in high-quality work, and eventually began contributing to class discussions. Not only was she ultimately successful in the course, she was even offering to help peers understand challenging concepts. This experience reminded me of the power of personalized outreach and the importance of creating a safe, supportive environment for students who may not initially feel comfortable engaging.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Many of my students come to me seeking advice about how to overcome stage fright and social anxiety when giving class presentations. What they don’t know is I still get pretty nervous before every single lecture or research talk. I’ve just gotten much better over the years at masking these anxieties and successfully have created a façade of composure and confidence. They are always shocked when they learn this about me.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?
Right now I’m reading The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz with my neighborhood book club and Shark Heart by Emily Habeck on my own

What tech tool could you not live without?

My Google calendar app! Between meetings, university events, my kids’ extracurriculars, and my own social outings, I would *never* be able to keep track of it all without my calendar always at my fingertips.

Desh Nendze (she/her/hers): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Tue, 13 May 2025 16:23:04 GMT

School Name: Norfolk State University

Type of School: 4-year Public Historically Black College/University (HBCU); NSU offers undergraduate, masters and doctoral degree programs.

School locale: Norfolk, Virginia, USA

Role: I teach in-person, hybrid, and asynchronous online courses with in-person and online office hours.

How many years have you taught psychology? I began teaching psychology as an Adjunct Instructor at NSU in the Fall of 2021, and have been teaching full-time since Fall of 2023.

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology, Basic Principles of Psychology, Writing in Psychology, Military Psychology, Sport Psychology, Systems (History) of Psychology, Psychology Seminar (Senior Capstone), CyberPsychopathology.

Specialization: Military Psychology, Sport Psychology

Average class size: 20-35 students each semester

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice about teaching that I have received is to be myself and let the students see my passion for the field of psychology. At first as a new instructor, I was unsure about this advice. But as time went on, I see how being myself impacted the students and how my passion for psychology motivated and inspired students. I feel it is an honor to help develop future psychology clinicians and researchers and thoroughly enjoy my job.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Military Psychology. I love to educate students on military culture, commonly seen diagnoses, and current therapy interventions. As a military veteran, I enjoy sharing ways in which future clinicians can best help this population.

What are 3 words that describe your teaching style?

Motivating, Flexible, Practical. I love to motivate students to be all that they can be in the psychology field. I think it is important to be flexible in teaching. Not all students/classes learn the same way, so I like to vary the course activities, so everyone has a chance to shine. And lastly, I like to show the practical application of our concepts in class so they can see how what they are learning will apply in their role in the field.

What’s your workspace like?

I love my office! It has a floor-to-ceiling wall of windows and a large desk that has built-in shelves, and a bookcase. I try to keep a calm, inviting environment so it is pleasant for students as they visit for office hours.

What is something you are currently focused on improving:

Currently I am focused on AI to incorporate it in the classroom. I teach Writing in Psychology, and I feel it is important that students understand the pros and cons of AI before they enter the field. I want to make sure our students are as prepared as possible, so I set them up to succeed in their career.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I don’t really have time to read for pleasure, so it takes me awhile to get through a book, but right now I am reading The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt.

Ken Keith (he/him/his): I am a member of STP, and this is how I retire

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 18:57:48 GMT

How long did you teach psychology?
Approximately 40 years

Where did you teach?

I first taught psychology as a graduate assistant in the 1967-68 academic year at Kansas State College of Pittsburg (Now Pittsburg State University; KS; USA), and then again as a doctoral student at the University of Nebraska (NE; USA) in the 1971-72 academic year. From 1973-76 I taught behavioral science at the University of Nebraska College of Dentistry (NE; USA), before joining the staff of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (NE; USA), where I served as assistant professor of medical psychology and research coordinator for the Family Rehabilitation Program. While at the medical center, I supervised graduate students and taught a few graduate courses in behavior analysis for the university’s extension division. Then, in 1980, I joined the faculty at Nebraska Wesleyan University (USA), where I remained until moving to the University of San Diego (CA; USA) in 1999. I retired from USD in 2012.

My early jobs were in medical centers, but when Connie and I would drive past the Nebraska Wesleyan University campus, I would sometimes remark that I should probably be working at a place like that—an opportunity that came in 1980. Nebraska Wesleyan and the University of San Diego are liberal arts universities, and both provided environments and opportunities that I loved. I was fortunate to have the early career experience in a large research-oriented environment, in large part because it allowed me to move on to liberal arts settings, knowing that I no longer aspired to be a medical center research psychologist. And, of course, the liberal arts schools where I spent the rest of my career provided ample opportunities for research and writing.

I also had the good fortune, on sabbaticals and summer assignments, to teach at St. Clare’s College Oxford (UK), Kwansei Gakuin University (JP), and in London (UK) and Guadalajara (MX).

What did you find the most rewarding about teaching?

This is a tough question, because it’s difficult to know where to start. Abraham Maslow once spoke about his view of the significance of the university commencement ceremony. Marching in the line at commencement, he said, he realized that the great scholars of the past were somewhere up there, ahead of him in the line. And all the great scholars of the future were also in the line, somewhere back there, following. Maslow may have been wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about this one; teaching is a serious business and a great privilege. We are entrusted with some of the brightest members of the next generation, and we are given the opportunity to help them develop skills that will make them more careful thinkers, more critical consumers of information, and, we hope, better citizens.

In part due to the influence of my doctoral advisor (Jay M. Toews), and in part based on my own experience, I came to believe that no one really teaches; the best among us are simply skilled at providing environments in which others can learn. That, I think, allows (and perhaps requires) an atmosphere of collegiality, a sense of freedom that makes learning more important than grades, discovery more important than convention. If there is a single rewarding aspect to teaching, perhaps that is where it lies—in seeing students truly become learners. That can result in joy, not just for students, but also for faculty. In the end, the answer to the question is easy; it is students who are the most rewarding thing about teaching.

How did your teaching change over the course of your career?

My teaching changed in important ways both practical and attitudinal or philosophical. The practical changes came in many ways, but most often in my exposure to others whom I saw as fine teachers. This happened sometimes in my colleagues’ writing—their ideas in books and journals such as ToP; sometimes in personal exchanges at meetings or social gatherings. STP was important in this respect; at an early point, I was ready to resign my APA membership, when my friend Ludy Benjamin made clear to me that I was delinquent in my failure to be a member of Division 2 (STP). A pivotal period occurred in the 1980s, when I had opportunity to participate in several writing-across-the-curriculum workshops, and I began to see writing as a learning tool rather than simply a testing tool. I learned that there is a scholarship of teaching and learning, and that teaching well requires more than just some sort of affinity for it.

In broader, more philosophic ways, my teaching evolved as I became more comfortable with it over the years. I learned that a teacher need not know everything, and need not fear saying so. I learned, and tried to convey to students, that often the best answer to a scientific question is “It depends,” or “I don’t know; let’s try to find out.” When I learned to see students as partners in personal and scientific ventures, I became a better teacher. When I learned that students respect a good example more than an authority, I became a better teacher. And when I learned to accept my own limitations, I became a better teacher.

How did you make the decision to retire? How long have you been retired?

This was somewhat complicated, but perhaps not for the typical reasons. I loved my job, rarely experiencing a day when I didn’t want to get up and get to work. In fact, I would sometimes tell students about Lou Gehrig’s famous “luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech, and explain that, with all due respect to Mr. Gehrig, he hadn’t met me. I expected to teach as long as I had good health, felt on top of my game, and enjoyed it.

Then came Sunday, September 12, 2004. Lying on the floor with a cold drink after mowing the lawn at our San Diego home, I reached over to scratch an itch high on my left side, and in the process noticed a couple of good-sized lumps that should not have been there. I mentioned it to Connie, who insisted that I call the clinic on Monday morning. The short version is that I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and over the next three years I had chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, culminating in a stem cell transplant in early 2007. I worked through nearly all this time, still loving it, missing only the semester of the transplant. Ultimately, I emerged healthy, and continued to teach. But I had learned an important lesson: I will not live forever, and if I want good time with family and friends, I need to make that time. So, in 2012, at the age of 67, I decided it was time, and Connie and I retired back in Nebraska. The result is that I have been happily retired now for nearly 13 years.

What activities (personal and/or professional) do you most enjoy in your retirement?

The most important aspect of retirement has perhaps been the increased opportunity for time with family and friends. We’ve had good years with children and grandchildren, travel with friends, and the luxury of enjoying these things without the pressure of being prepared for class on Monday. I doubt that many people who have not done it realize how all-consuming the life of an academic can be, and being free from that, as much as I loved it, has been great.

Nebraskan Ted Kooser, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, a few years ago published a book titled Local Wonders, in which he wrote about his observations in and around his home region, known locally as the Bohemian Alps. And my old friend, novelist Kent Haruf, wrote, as he approached the end of his life, about the tightening of the circle of his activities and the transition from a larger view to a more local perspective. I guess I see a similar trend in my own life, as I have gradually withdrawn from national organizations and activities to a more local focus.

Early in my retirement, my attention remained on a number of activities of national scope. I completed The Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural Psychology (2013), a handbook for the teaching of culture across the curriculum (2018), and a second edition of my cross-cultural psychology book (2019). I co-authored three books on aspects of intellectual disability, two of them with my daughter Heather Keith (2013, 2020) and one with long-time collaborator Bob Schalock (2016). My longstanding buddy Barney Beins and I wrote a book on scientific literacy (2017), and in 2017 I served as president of STP. But as time has moved along, my writing interests have gravitated closer to home, including two memoirs, one about our decades-long love affair with Japan (Letters From Japan, 2020), and one intertwining my own experience with lymphoma with the life and times of the 19^th-century physician Thomas Hodgkin (Doctor Hodgkin and Me: A Cancer Survivor’s Notebook, 2021).

The opportunity for travel as a leisure activity has been especially good. In addition to U.S. travel with family, I’ve made long-distance walks in England with my son David; spent time in London, Oxford, Cornwall, and Scotland with children and grandchildren; and taken European river cruises with Connie and good friends. These activities have been especially gratifying.

I’ve also branched out in my reading and writing interests, and am now working, as part of a team, on a book about the obscure US Navy tradition of writing the midnight ship’s log on New Year’s day as a poem—a project initiated by friends and colleagues Dave Johnson and Gary Guinn. I maintain two or three other interests that go beyond the local: First, I continue to edit a monograph series (Elements of Psychology & Culture) for the Cambridge University Press—an activity that keeps me in touch with interesting psychologists around the world. Second, I have served for some years as a member of the advisory board for the Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron. And finally (and most important), I have weekly Zoom meetings and annual in-person gatherings with a group of long-time friends and colleagues; we call ourselves the Psychology Boys. The Psychology Boys are all former leaders and officers in STP, but the thing that matters most at this point in our lives is the friendship and camaraderie of our little group.

The final way that my circle has tightened is very much local. Connie and I now live in a 55+ community, and very much enjoy a variety of neighborhood activities: monthly potluck dinners, weekly coffee gatherings, monthly card games, and such. Beyond the neighborhood, we now have more time for old Lincoln friends, more activities like plays and concerts, and enrollment in interesting classes in the University of Nebraska OLLI program (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute; a nationwide program for seniors).

What advice would you give people who are not yet retired?

I don’t know whether I can give advice, but I can offer some observations. First, I think there is a temptation to believe that, when we are gone, our departments will go to hell in a handbasket; they will not. They will change, but they will go on, facing the challenges of their time, just as we faced the challenges of our time. When he knew that he was dying, Kent Haruf wrote to me, saying that the world would go on—people getting up, eating, going to the post office or library—without him. Similarly, our departments will go on, and the best thing we can do for those who follow us is to refrain from looking over their shoulders and offering unsolicited advice. And the best thing we can do for ourselves is to avoid the stress and strain of agonizing and worrying about whether they are doing things the way we would. I had my time; now they are having theirs.

Second, look forward, not back. It’s wonderful to share memories and tell tall tales about the past. But remember this: There is life after retirement, and it can be productive, satisfying, and fun. It can be invigorating to learn new things, try new activities, and engage with new people. Which leads me to . . .

Third, stay active. It would be easy in retirement to stretch out on the couch, a beer in one hand and a bag of Doritos in the other, and spend your days watching cable TV and football. But retirement age brings with it increasing health and wellness concerns—whether you’re a walker, biker, runner, or yoga enthusiast, keep at it. Take care of yourself, stay interested, and remain active; you will not pass this way again.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I tend to be an eclectic reader, moving back and forth between fiction and nonfiction, from serious literature to murder mysteries, from new books to old favorites. At the moment, I’m reading a new book, Accidental Shepherd, by Liese Greensfelder, published by the University of Minnesota Press. Liese is the spouse of a friend, and the book is the story of how, as a college-age young adult, she went to Norway for a summer job on a farm, only to find that the owner was hospitalized with a stroke, requiring her to take over the farm. A good read.

I’ve also recently read a couple of Ann Cleves’s Vera murder mysteries, and a new nonfiction work, The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore. The latter book is by Evan Friss, a history professor at James Madison University. A book that I read a while back, and that I can highly recommend if you have any interest in World War II, or in military history, is Dave Johnson and Gary Guinn’s Midwatch in Verse: New Year’s Deck Log Poetry of the United States Navy, 1941-1946. If you were to ask me again in a month, it’s hard to predict what I might be reading!

Jenna N. Laurin (she/her/hers): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 19:10:38 GMT

School name: Minnesota State University Moorhead

Type of school: Midsize (4,410 students including undergraduate and graduate) Public University

School locale: Moorhead, Minnesota (US)

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? Mainly in-person, but I also teach some flexible and asynchronous online courses

How many years have you taught psychology? I am currently in my 5^th year, 2^nd year full time post-grad

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Social Behavior, Experimental Methods, Psychology of Women, Child/Adolescent Psychology, Adulthood & Aging, History & Systems of Psychology

Specialization: Experimental Psychology

What size classes do you teach? 40-70 students, smaller for our research & capstone courses (about 15)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? In grad school, my advisor told us that you’re not going to have the perfect class the first time. And I have found this to be true, especially because students in each class are so different. No matter how many times I’ve taught a course, there are always things I’m changing. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that that’s okay, because that’s how we learn and develop!

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? I took a Teaching & Learning course in graduate school and we read Small Teaching by James Lang. I really enjoyed the evidence-based approach and the detail the author provided in describing why certain teaching methods were important or beneficial for students.

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? That you don’t have to know everything! I used to worry about students asking me questions I didn’t know the answer to – now I love when it happens because it means they are curious about the course material and they are thinking about it on a deeper level. I’ll tell them if I don’t know the answer, but I also make sure to research their question and follow up with them during the next class period. I love that we all get to learn something together when this happens.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I really enjoy teaching about social psychology – whether it be the class itself, the subdiscipline in General Psychology, or social development in the developmental courses. Partly, I think it’s so fun because it’s so relatable. I can give real life examples and I can see the look on students’ faces when they “get it.” They’re also pretty quick to come up with examples themselves. It is a great topic when learning can truly be fun because they have had those experiences, and now they can use science to explain them!

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. When I teach Social Behavior, I include a final paper rather than a final exam. The students and I watch the first few episodes of When They See Us (a docuseries about the Exonerated 5). They then have to write about three concepts we learned about in class that they observed in the series. I always assume that most students will write about obedience and discrimination, but without fail every semester I get a student who writes about a new concept I never made the connection to. It is one of my favorite assignments to grade because they are all so insightful!

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it? I would love to teach a course on psychology in the media. I’m a reality TV fiend, and I’m always thinking about ways course content can relate to shows, like social psychology and Survivor or Big Brother. Stand-Up Comedy sets like Hasan Minhaj’s Homecoming King relates to the psychology of prejudice and discrimination. America’s Next Top Model and psychology of women… the connections are limitless!

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Approachable and relatable. I always want students to know that I’m cheering for their success, and I genuinely want them to do well - so please let me know if you have questions! I also try to be relatable. I think students remember information better if they can relate it to things they are interested in. You’ll often catch me making references to celebrities or movies to try to connect the material to real-world examples.

What’s your workspace like? It’s colorful and sort of maximalist! I have a lot of pictures and little signs in my office. I recently added a wall with embroidered quotes from Taylor Swift songs. I want my space to feel inviting to students so they feel comfortable talking with me rather than a sterile office where they feel like they have to be very serious all the time. I think showing students that I’m human just like them (I have pictures of my friends on the walls, I display my family pets in little picture frames, I like Taylor Swift too!) helps them feel more comfortable approaching me and can open the door for more productive conversations.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. The first time I taught social psychology, I tried to do a demonstration on priming, and it didn’t work! I showed students a list of words all relating to a topic (court, ball, racket, shoes, etc.) and asked them to try to remember as many as possible. A couple minutes later when I asked them to recall the words, nobody wrote down tennis. I was embarrassed that my attempt to prime them didn’t work, and I worried that they wouldn’t understand the concept. I explained the concept and noted that sometimes people will falsely recall “tennis” because all of the other words related to it. They all seemed to do fine on the next exam, so I don’t think I failed too badly!

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened. When I was in graduate school, I taught social psychology one semester and advanced social psychology the next. I had a couple of students who took both classes with me, one of whom was a fantastic student and researcher. I saw her the next year presenting at our University’s psychology conference and told her how much I hoped she would go on to grad school because of how successful she is. She told me that she was applying to social psychology programs because of my courses. That is a feeling I will never forget!

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? I am currently working on making all of my assignments more transparent. I want to add learning outcomes/objectives to all of my assignments in each of my courses to help students understand the reasoning for their work and how it applies to both the material and the real world. Not only does it help with this, but it also helps students know what they should be focusing on as they are completing their assignments, making guidelines less ambiguous and hopefully reducing students’ struggles in getting assignments done.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I just finished Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz. She wrote it about her time in a cult while starring in One Tree Hill. I typically find it hard to read for pleasure because I read so much for my research, but I couldn’t put this book down!

Sarah Conoyer (she/her/hers): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 17:46:23 GMT

School name: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Type of school: Regional Public 4 year

School locale: Edwardsville, IL, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? I teach a mix of online and hybrid courses but mostly in-person.

How many years have you taught psychology? 10 years

Classes you teach: At the undergraduate level I mostly teach Psychological Tests & Measures, Intro to School Psychology, Psychopathology, Research & Experiential Learning and many classes in our school psychology graduate program that relate to assessment and multicultural issues.

Specialization: school psychology

What size classes do you teach? My undergraduate courses range from 40-50 students depending on the course. My graduate classes range from 10-14 students.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Some of the best advice I have received about teaching is to have fun and don’t hide your passion about the topic. Students pick up on enthusiasm, and I work to bring my authentic self into the classroom. This allows me to genuinely connect with students. I also received good mentorship from my doctoral advisor, and she has inspired me to continue that approach. When students know you care, they care more about their own performance and growth.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. My favorite course to teach is psychological test and measures. This class allows students to learn about the test development process, make real-world connections to statistics, and throughout the semester, students develop and evaluate a scale. It is a great experience to infuse my research interests into my teaching. My research looks at how to best identify students with academic difficulties via brief screening measures. This allows me to provide realistic scenarios in this course, and students do see the applicability of assessment. We also discuss key ethical, historical, and cultural influences on testing, and we have great discussions around these topics as well.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Innovative, Supportive, Reflective

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? High standards, supportive mentorship, and continuous instructional improvement

What’s your workspace like? My office is full of inspirational quotes, and my door is influenced by my school psychology background. I need my own reminders about growth mindset and feel like students benefit from these as well. I also have many pictures of my family and a Pete the Cat art print that say “No Worries” that I treasure.

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened.

Part of my role is mentoring and supervising undergraduate and graduate student interventionists who support elementary students that have difficulties in mathematics in a before- and after-school program. When I get to see my students in action helping a younger child learn their math facts, that is a huge win for me! Also, getting to take students to professional conferences and share that experience with them is also another huge win for me.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I just finished reading Anxious People & The People We Keep. I will admit it was via audiobook but as a working mom sometimes that is how it goes.

What tech tool could you not live without? My phone mostly, but Microsoft teams is quickly becoming extremely necessary in my day-to-day functioning. It helps me keep a lot of things in one place, and I can easily communicate with students.

Noelany Pelc (she/her/hers): I am a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 15:59:01 GMT

School name: Marian University

Type of school: Private, Liberal Arts Institution

School locale (including state and country): Indianapolis, Indiana, United States

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? in-person

How many years have you taught psychology? 12 years; 4 as a doctoral teaching assistant and 8 as a full-time faculty member

Classes you teach: Theories of Personality, Psychopathology and Interventions, Interviewing Skills, Group Counseling, Human Sexuality, and Clinical Psychology

Specialization: Clinical and Counseling

What size classes do you teach? Courses range from 35 students to 12 students in some of our skills labs. Average is around 20-24 students.

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out?

I have been inspired by, “What Inclusive Instructors Do,” particularly in moments when I feel myself reaching to meet students where they are or in the moments when I am working to cultivate a new learning community or culture. There are lovely reminders about the humanness and cultural humility that are central to the learning experience. Similarly, the resources on the Division 2 webpage offered excellent models and concrete ideas as I’ve taught new courses over the years.

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it?

I love this question! I was just having a conversation with colleagues across campus about course offerings that cultivate identity, particularly those students who hold a number of underrepresented identities. If I had an opportunity to develop and teach a course at my institution, it would be around identity development from a holistic perspective. It would be a co-taught interdisciplinary course where we have units that offer perspectives across history, culture, family, gender, sexuality, racial and ethnic identity, values, sociopolitical systems, communication, and offer students opportunities to pair each module with experiential, reflective, and discussion-related activities. On a campus where a significant number of students are first generation students, where we have a high number of heritage language speakers, international students, and students at varying stages of life, it feels like an opportunity to explore who they are within their contexts during a critically important developmental window.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style?

Inclusive, experiential, and curious

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace usually looks a bit like whatever event the Psychology Club is planning or facilitating for the week! I have a round table where I often have students chatting, working on homework, or where I plan class materials for the week. There are mementos from students across the years, favorite books and a glass jar of “grounding beads,” for students who are feeling overwhelmed. A number of my boards have stickers or items around diversity, representation, allyship or an invitation for students to feel welcomed.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching?

This year, I’ve been working on creating variations of core assessments to offer greater applicability and generalizability of the psychological concepts of each course, for students whose primary major or interest is not psychology. My institution has a high representation of nursing, business, and religious studies majors, all of whom can make meaningful links to the course material. I have been in conversation with student groups to develop assignments that bridge coursework through the methods of assessment, delivery of content, and current events relating to their fields. It’s been a fun learning opportunity!

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I tend to have a number of books in progress at any point (please don’t judge!) and at the end of the semester, the range is vast! On my nightstand right now, I’m working on: Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, The Lost Bookshop, and an assortment of fun holiday fiction that cycles through my Kindle!

Dana Kotter-Gruehn (she/her/hers): I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 18:12:15 GMT

School name: North Carolina State University

Type of school: Public 4-year

School locale (including state and country): Raleigh, North Carolina, United States

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? in-person

How many years have you taught psychology? 17 years (answering this question made me feel old!)

Classes you teach: At the undergraduate level, I mostly teach Developmental Psychology. I also oversee our department’s undergraduate learning assistant (ULA) program and teach a one-credit asynchronous online class on the “fundamentals of college teaching” for our ULAs. At the graduate level, I teach Psychosocial development in adulthood and old age, and I co-teach our department’s Teaching practicum for Ph.D. students.

Specialization: Developmental psychology

What size classes do you teach? I am lucky to mostly teach a smaller section of developmental psychology (40 students). My graduate-level classes are small (around 10-14 students).

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I don’t think there is one piece of advice that stood out to me, but overall, I would say it’s internalizing what many people have told me: Teaching is a science and an art. With commitment and work, it gets easier and better.

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out?
Brett Jones’ book Motivating students by design

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting?

I had no teaching mentor or teacher training when I started teaching. My graduate program in Germany focused exclusively on research. Teaching was considered a distraction. I am almost embarrassed to say that when I started teaching, I had no idea there were tons of books, journals, and conferences dedicated to teaching in higher education. Looking back, I wish I had been more aware of these resources. With good teacher training, I could have avoided a lot of trial and error (and reinventing the wheel). That said, I also learned a lot from trial and error.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love the session in developmental psychology when I introduce the age period of old age. Students often have negative preconceptions about old age and limited interest in this age period. I talk about demographic changes and how understanding the aging experience is relevant across fields of study (e.g., psychology, medicine, politics, design…). By highlighting the interdisciplinary nature and connectedness of studying aging, I find that many students have become more interested in this age period. They also often recognize their own aging biases, which, contrary to other biases, they haven’t necessarily explored before.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

About 10 years ago, I started using an assignment I call “Social innovation and entrepreneurship project.” I have used this assignment in classes at the graduate and undergraduate levels, typically with success. The goal of the assignment is for students to identify a societal or person/group-specific challenge related to the course topic and propose a solution for this challenge. Students work in groups and propose a product or an intervention. I am impressed by some students’ creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. Examples of projects include an intervention to reduce loneliness in older adults from a specific immigrant community or a body image intervention for breast cancer patients.

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it?

This answer is not very original but is true to who I am: an aging researcher. I taught an undergraduate-level psychology of aging class for a few semesters years ago. I would love to return to it. If I teach it again, I would like to include either a service learning and/or CURE (course-based undergraduate research) component.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style?

I didn’t come up with this and sadly do not know who to credit, but it fits my approach to teaching and grading well: “Flexibility with guardrails”

What’s your workspace like?

One word: organized. I find that I can’t work in a cluttered space. I have a desk with a desk riser (I stand most of the day), a bookshelf, a small round table for meetings, and a comfortable chair. The office is pretty sparse because my department was forced out of our offices almost a year ago over concerns about toxins in the building. Within a few days, we had to leave the building and only took what was absolutely necessary to finish the semester. We didn’t know then that we wouldn’t be allowed back into the building. We were put into whatever space was available across campus. I am slowly accumulating new things in my office to make it feel more “homey,” but many personal belongings (books, award plaques, pictures, diploma) are still in the old office, which we can’t access.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

This is not necessarily embarrassing or a disaster but funny because it highlights the importance of adjusting one's teaching to the audience. The first time I talked about introducing solid foods in infancy/toddlerhood in my developmental psychology class, I wanted to emphasize that sometimes food has to be introduced many times before a baby will accept it. To make this more relatable to my students, I asked them if they liked wine the first time they tried it. Many people don’t like wine when they first try it, but they learn to like it over time, similar to how babies don’t like a food when they first try it. Well, students were hesitant to answer my question until one student reminded me of the legal drinking age in the U.S. The drinking age in Germany, where I am originally from, is lower than in the U.S., and most university students will have experience with drinking alcohol by the time they attend college. This example would have worked in Germany but not in the U.S. My students and I had a good laugh about the not-so-appropriate example, and we decided that coffee was a better example. Nevertheless, they left that session with a better understanding of “acquired taste.”

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened.

I teach an asynchronous “fundamentals of college teaching” class for the undergraduate learning assistants in our department. Students read about college teaching and answer guided questions about the readings, connecting what they have read with their experiences as a student and teaching assistant. Almost every week, at least one student will acknowledge how much more they appreciate their professors after learning about teaching and assisting in the classroom. They see the nuances and challenges that can come with teaching, yet several still want to pursue it as a profession. That’s a win in my opinion.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching?

A few years ago, I moved away from exams and replaced them with various low- and medium-stakes writing assignments. The students engage with the course material in many ways and learn a lot through these assignments (yeah!), but it’s a bit too writing-intense. I spend many hours each week reviewing them, providing feedback, and allowing revisions and resubmissions. I want to keep the meaningful engagement with the course material but offer more formats/outlets for students to demonstrate their knowledge.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

When I teach developmental psychology, we spend some time with case studies, using theories and empirical evidence trying to explain why kids behave the way they do and explore ideas (based on science) on how caregivers or peers could react. At the end of the activity, I often summarize the very good advice we have come up with as a class. My students would be surprised to learn that I am not very good at using this excellent advice in my personal life (with my own kids).

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I just finished ADHD is awesome by Penn and Kim Holderness. I found it extremely helpful in dispelling some misconceptions I might have had about ADHD.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Google assignments.

Hypatia A. Bolívar (she/her): I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 18:49:43 GMT

School name: University of Illinois Springfield

Type of school: Small (<5000 total enrollment), public, teaching-focused, rural-serving university

School locale (including state and country): Springfield, IL, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? I teach both in-person and online asynchronous courses.

How many years have you taught psychology? I have been teaching full-time since 2020.

Classes you teach: Research Methods in Psychology, Psychology of Addiction, Applied Behavior Analysis, Psychology of Pseudoscience, Psychology of Motivation, Principles of Psychology

Specialization (if applicable): Behavior analysis, Teaching

What size classes do you teach? 25 to 30 people maximum

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out?

Teach Students How to Learn by Saundra Yancy McGuire, Specifications Grading by Linda Nilson, and Fuentes et al. (2021) in Teaching of Psychology. All are fantastic resources that encourage us to think carefully about course design (what we are teaching, how we are teaching, why we make the choices we make, and what the impacts may be on ourselves and our students). Teach Students How to Learn and Specifications Grading both encouraged me to critically reflect on giving students learning tools, supports, and autonomy in addition to whatever content I am helping them learn. Fuentes et al. has been foundational in my own journey to teach from a social justice, equity-minded, and strengths-based approach.

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting?

It will take semesters, if not years, to feel that a class you teach is solid. You will be tweaking constantly – that’s okay but remember to tweak and avoid an overhaul. And make sure you are comparing all of your classes, their schedules, and your other responsibilities simultaneously rather than in isolation! It can be easy in your early career to forget that you are teaching each class in the context of other tasks and your life outside of work.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

My favorite kinds of in-class activities are small-group activities where the students are given a practical problem to solve using class material and their own perspectives. For example, in my Psychology of Motivation course, we cover Expectancy Value Theory, which is a broad theory about motivation in achievement-related scenarios. First, we discuss research studies that have developed EVT-based interventions and review questionnaires that show how they measured key constructs in those studies. In a separate meeting, I divide them into groups, give them markers and paper with a sticky back (think a big Post-it), and ask them to draft an idea for an EVT-based intervention for an introduction to psychology class. They discuss what they want to focus on and how they would use EVT to inform their ideas. At the conclusion, they do a short “poster session” where they review each other’s ideas and ask each other questions. Ultimately, I think it helps them to practice using abstract ideas and concepts at a level that makes sense and fits into their day-to-day lives. Plus, it’s fun for me to hear them bounce ideas off of each other, share how their individual perspectives shape their ideas, and tackle some of that loneliness that college students sometimes feel.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style?

Engaging, Compassionate, Organized

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Learning is reciprocal: We learn with each other.

What’s your workspace like?

I like to have color in my office! There is art by Anna Alvarado and short inspirational quotes on the walls. There’s also a small Costa Rican flag on the wall to represent half of my heritage. A reed diffuser provides a gentle scent. Every workspace should have chocolate, so I keep some tucked away in my desk. J

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened.

One of my favorite classes to teach is focused on addiction. A teaching “win” that I am thrilled to have almost every semester that I teach the course are final reflective papers that show students have taken a more empathetic and informed view on addiction. A portion of the students begin the semester with views that bend towards a tougher, more moralistic stance, and most of them will exit the course stating they are glad to be more knowledgeable about the variables that underlie problematic substance use and behavioral addictions, how we can effectively help people seeking assistance for those conditions, and where larger systems contribute to these social issues as opposed to simply individual behavior.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching?

I am currently working on improving both my attitude towards and classroom integration of artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT. There are many challenging issues that instructors need to be aware of, but I also believe there is a space for this technology and it’s important that we engage with it with our students so we can learn together. A specific example: I am considering how to engage with AI to help students understand research methods and study design. I think AI could provide useful food-for-thought when students are developing a research question (e.g., probing for potential confounds and methodological considerations).

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

In undergrad, I got a minor in Soil and Water Science. I took an elective class called, “World of Water,” fell in love with the topic, and took enough classes to earn the minor. It has nothing to do with my research or teaching interests at the moment!

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I am currently reading Sam Quinones’s The Least of Us, which is a deep dive into the combined fentanyl-opioid-stimulant crisis that we face in the USA. He weaves together personal stories with politics and industry scandals to paint a troubling picture of the state of things, but one in which redemption and recovery are possible. He calls on us to do better to help those who are struggling. It’s not something I would say is “pleasurable” in that it makes me happy, but it is something I am reading only for myself!

Maya M. Khanna (she/her/hers): I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 12:55:49 GMT

School name: Creighton University

Type of school: Private, Jesuit, research university.

School locale (including state and country): Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.A.

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? Mostly in-person

How many years have you taught psychology? 20 (yikes…how did that happen?!?)

Classes you teach: I routinely teach courses in cognition, development, cognitive neuroscience, introduction to psychological science, research methods and statistics.

Specialization (if applicable): Cognition, development, and applying cognitive science to pedagogical practice.

What size classes do you teach? I teach classes ranging in enrollment from 10 to 65 students.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I have received many wonderful pieces of advice about teaching. One thing that has really stuck with me is to remember that students and teachers are all people. We are unique but, at the same time, have many things in common no matter our ages and backgrounds. So, don’t be scared of them, and they won’t be scared of you.

Another, more pragmatic piece of advice is that it takes 3 times to teach a subject/topic/class before you really feel like you have it down. So, do your best, but know that you will get better with practice and experience.

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out?

As a teacher engaged in research aimed to improve pedagogical practice, I keep up with new developments by engaging with the retrieval practice community. Pooja Agarwal, PhD (Berklee College of Music) coordinates a lot of the activity within this community. She curated an array of resources to help educators use what we know from cognitive science to improve their teaching – check it out at http://www.retrieval practice.org

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting?

I wish I knew earlier that I should try to get to know each of my students better and to feel comfortable letting them get to know me. I was told in my teacher training program (I was as a high school science teacher with Teach for America) to try to separate myself from my students to maintain my authority. Perhaps that was good advice for a 22-year-old woman learning to teach 16–18-year-olds, but it is not the best approach for teaching university students. Now I find that the more that I get to know my students, the more I can shape my instruction to meet their needs. The more my students get to know me, the more they understand how to communicate with me about their needs. In addition, the more we get to know each other, the more we see that we all have multifaceted and dynamic lives, and this allows us to have more grace with one another.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Occasionally, I am able to teach courses that cover cognitive development and language development, in-depth. My favorite topics are language acquisition and reading acquisition. I also like to examine how brain development relates to the acquisition of cognitive skills and the things that babies, toddlers, and children can do throughout development.

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it?

I wish I had a course every semester on cognitive development and/or language and reading development. That is a little more specialized than what is typically offered in an undergraduate psychological science major. I have offered a course like this as our Honors Seminar course, and it was a blast.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style?

Supportive, rigorous, dynamic (i.e., ever-changing)

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

A teacher’s excitement for a topic is contagious.

What’s your workspace like?

Traditional – I have a department of 12 colleagues, we each have office space as well as lab space and traditional classrooms.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I commute to work by bike. Once I forgot to bring a change of clothes and shoes. I was in a hurry and rushed out of my house without packing the outfit that I had set aside to bring. When I got to work, I was panicked, but realized there wasn’t much I could do about it. So, I just went with it. I wore my biking gear to class, and we all thought it was funny.

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened.

About 8 years ago, I had a student in cognitive neuroscience who was really struggling with the material. I knew this student well because she had taken classes with me before. We met several times to discuss study strategies (e.g., retrieval practice and distributed practice, etc.) and to discuss any questions she had about course material. She changed the way she was studying based on these strategies, and she improved her grade in the course from a D to an A! She went on to collaborate with me on research projects. She is now in a graduate program in cognitive aging, and we still text one another.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching?

I am currently trying to be more collaborative with students in my classes. I would like them to help create content to support their study habits (e.g., create practice quizzes, study guides, etc.). This is not just to reduce my workload but to help them see that they can create opportunities for practice testing, retrieval practice, and distributed learning for themselves. I want them to be active learners.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

People who don’t know me are initially surprised to learn that I have triplet daughters. However, most students know that about me even before we have class together – word of the triplet-mom spreads fast. On the other hand, most students do not know that I used to have a very pronounced southern accent. I grew up in Southern Oklahoma. I will share my former accent with them when we discuss variations in accents and dialects in units on psycholinguistics.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I am in a book club. We are currently reading, When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro.

What tech tool could you not live without?

For teaching, I rely heavily on Canvas, OneDrive, and GoogleDocs. For my research, I could not live without my experiment-design programs - Eprime and Chronos.

Christina Costa (she/her): I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 17:34:43 GMT

School name: Wayne State University

Type of school: Public Research University

School locale: Detroit, Michigan, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? I do all three!

How many years have you taught psychology? I taught middle school for two years, and have been teaching psychology as the instructor of record for 6 years.

Classes you teach: I teach introduction to psychology, statistics for behavioral sciences, learning and memory, and positive psychology

Specialization (if applicable): I am an Assistant Professor of Teaching and my PhD is in Personality and Social Psychology with a focus on Positive Psychology

What size classes do you teach? 50-150

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? I highly recommend the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast hosted by Bonni Stachowiak. She invites wonderful guests, has incredible recommendations, and I am always left inspired!

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? I wish I knew that every semester the course will evolve and get better and it doesn’t have to happen all at once! I often get very excited and inspired by other educators and want to implement everything all at the same time, but I’ve learned that changing small thing over the course of time is most sustainable.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. My favorite in-class activity is called The Brain Bracket. I time this to be around March Madness and ask students to ruthlessly pit structure of the brain against each other until we come up with a winner (surprise, surprise always the medulla). I love this activity because I get to hear students talking about importance of various structures. For the most part, they aren’t correct answers so sometimes there are productive debates. Add in some extra fun by playing ESPN-style music in the background.

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it? I would LOVE to teach an application of positive psychology class or a development course that looks at children’s literature.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Cringey humor (that’s a quote), flexible, collaborative

What’s your workspace like? I took the entire summer before my faculty position to organize and decorate my office. I felt like I landed my dream job and wanted to make it a comfortable home away from home space. Some highlights include an electric blanket, a photoshopped picture of me with the “founding fathers” of psychology, and a painting of Fiona (Cincinnati Zoo’s famous hippo—check her out).

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. When I was at a *former unnamed* university, I taught a small seminar in the basement of the psychology building, and during class we found an escaped (unalive) lab rat in the room. We named him Frank and referenced him several times throughout the semester.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? I am currently working on some projects that involve looking at how both psychology educators and students utilize AI. These folks have encouraged me to use some of these tools and strategies in my own teaching.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I think my students would be surprised to know that my nuclear family holds 5 citizenships (USA, Switzerland, Brazil, Lichtenstein, and Portugal)! We have a lot of passports at our house

What are you currently reading for pleasure? The Women by Kristin Hannah

Felice Mayes (she/her): I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 19:25:20 GMT

School name: The Chicago School

Type of school: Professional

School locale: Chicago, Illinois, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? Online, primarily asynchronous

How many years have you taught psychology? 9 years

Classes you teach: Abnormal Psychology, Alcohol and Other Drugs in Our Society: Introduction to Chemical Dependency, Behavioral Psychology, Fundamentals of Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Learning and Cognition in Children and Adolescents, Neuropsychology, Philosophical Grounding in Ethics, Theories of Personality, Social Psychology and Culture & Study Abroad Courses to Germany & South Africa

Specialization (if applicable): Teaching undergraduate psychology students, intercultural-competency skill development through study abroad courses

What size classes do you teach? Up to 25 students

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? There are so many resources in the community of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) APA – Division 2 Facebook Page.

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? I have found how I engage with students through online presence, intentional communication, and cultural humility has the greatest impact on student learning and outcomes.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. The most rewarding courses I have taught included study abroad courses to Germany and South Africa. Being able to see the student growth in intercultural competency skill development, increased awareness of the relationship between power and oppression with marginalized groups, and the positive impact of collective resilience was life-changing for the students, as well as myself.

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it? A hybrid undergraduate 5-day residency-based course in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, following a 6-week online non-synchronous course, while incorporating a combination of service-learning, experiential learning, and exposure to a variety of professions in the field of psychology and mental health. Sites of interest would include learning about play therapy from the University of North Texas in Denton, observing Child Life Specialists at Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth, participating in Equine Therapy at Freedom Reigns Counseling in Burleson, visiting the TCU Counseling Center to learn more about the benefits of their Gaming Support Community, and experiencing therapeutic art at the Art Station. Finally, included would be an opportunity to practice cultural sensitivity and cultural empathy through a service-learning project.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Empathetic, Engaging, & Encouraging. Prior to earning my PhD, I worked in the mental health field as a Licensed Professional Counselor, so my teaching style mirrors the skills I learned in building a therapeutic alliance.

What’s your workspace like? The institution I work for, The Chicago School, has a true commitment to social justice, encouraging learners to examine personal biases and allows instructors to apply real-world examples of psychological constructs through a socio-cultural lens. I would also love to note that one of the greatest benefits to the remote environment is spending time next to my Goldendoodle, Joey, as I attend Team and Zoom meetings.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. During my first year of teaching, I realized that power struggles will often times present themselves because of the complex nature of working with humans. However, I have also learned that when this happens practicing empathy and humility with learners goes much further than engaging in a power struggle.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? I once had a mentor tell me that, at times, we need to clear the way in order to assist individuals in getting to where they need to be and allow them shine, meaning they already have all the qualities needed to succeed but having opportunities can significantly impact their professional growth and development. For me, what this looks like is inviting students into scholarship opportunities for research, publication, and presentation as this is one of the best ways to allow them to experience real-world learning.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I made a C+ in my first psychology course during my Freshman year in college and earned a whopping 1.8 GPA my first semester. Giving grace is important when students are learning how to learn because you never know what that second chance might bring to the field.

Carla M. Strickland-Hughes (she/they): I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 14:48:02 GMT

School name: University of the Pacific

Type of school: Private, not-for-profit, medium-sized, liberal arts, HSI and AANHPI-serving university

School locale: California, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? In-person

How many years have you taught psychology? Seven years full-time as tenure-track faculty plus five years in graduate school

Classes you teach: Currently I teach courses in research methods and statistics and introductory and advanced classes in developmental psychology. I have also taught classes in general psychology and first year seminars focused on writing.

Specialization (if applicable): Developmental, with a focus on social cognition in adulthood

What size classes do you teach? Enrollment caps for my classes range from 20 to 100 students.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? “It’s not you, it’s the shark.” Alas, I do not remember who authored this essay. A faculty was concerned about attendance and participation in his class at a university in Hawai’i. One day, a student approached him and asked if they could leave class to go watch a shark that was caught in a tidepool, where he learned the missing students were. It wasn’t about him, it was about the shark. The moment shifted his perspective from teacher-centered to student-centered, a powerful reminder for me – ultimately my teaching is about student learning.

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? Goodness, there are so many! Here’s two classics: I recommend Even the Rat Was White and Teach Your Students How to Learn (paired with Teach Yourself to Learn).

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? Student learning is the goal, and I cannot do the learning for students. Being too hands-on or providing too much guidance can take away opportunities for students to innovate and problem-solve. Sometimes, less really is more. I need to provide the right amount of background and guidance, show how to use various tools, then get out of the way. Students rise to high expectations that are supported. Also… not everything that students do has to be graded (and, boy, do I hate grading)! Formative feedback can support learning when given before grading deadlines, with subsequent opportunities for revision.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. My favorite assignments are ones that promote student autonomy, use authentic assessment, and foster 21^st century skill development, preparing students for meaningful, dynamic careers. For example, when students collaborate in project teams, they draft group contracts and individual scopes of work specifying how they want to work together, planning how they will each contribute based on their current skills and goals. After the project, they submit reflections reviewing how each group member, including themselves, supported the project’s success. For authentic assessment in Psychology of Aging, students present projects to members of a lifelong learning community. The projects require students to review empirical research to generate “successful aging” recommendations related to a topic of their choosing, fostering psychological literacy.

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it? I would love to use my expertise in assessment and evidence-based inclusive teaching techniques to innovate a new way of teaching foundational principles for psychology science to a diverse student body. How can we use new technology, peer mentorship, and project-based learning, and other techniques to ensure all students achieve learning outcomes equitably in a sustainable, scalable manner? That’s a puzzle I want to solve! And, a boutique class on the Psychology of Star Trek would be tremendous fun.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Inclusive, evidence-based, active

What’s your workspace like? When I work from my home office – with one bookshelf of books but more bookshelves of designer euro games – my 10 year old tabby cat is my teaching assistant. Unfortunately, she sleeps on the job. During the winter, she snuggles a heated pad on my desk, and in the summer she lounges on a straw basket lid under a west-facing window. In my campus office, I have standing desk riser and two monitors, one rotated to portrait orientation for reading documents. I store my writing utensils in a chunky ceramic vase with pink and white glaze and an ill-fitted lid. The vase was a gift from the first student whom I mentored for an undergraduate honors thesis. She took a wheel throwing course in her final semester. Ceramics, she said, requires patience and planning; you cannot procrastinate or do everything “last minute.” She appreciated developing those skills in her independent research with me, and the vase is a token reminder of that lesson.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? I want to design my classes like developmental psychology to focus more on skill development than content delivery.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I was not a psychology major in undergrad. I studied art and design, mathematics, and finance. I worked full-time and went to college part-time after taking time off following my first year.

Annie Ditta (she/her/hers): I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 13:53:33 GMT

School name: University of California, Riverside

Type of school: Public, large-enrollment, research-focused (R1), Hispanic- and Asian American & Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (HSI & AANAPISI)

School locale (including state and country): Riverside, California, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? In-person (though most of my classes are offered hybrid as well, and I occasionally teach an asynchronous course in the summer)

How many years have you taught psychology? 10 total, 8 as instructor of record

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology, Psychological Methods: Statistical Procedures, Perception, Psychology of Creativity, Introduction to Quantitative Methods in Psychology (graduate level), Professional Development for Graduate Students (aka “how to get a job”)

Specialization (if applicable): e.g. clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc.
Cognitive, Teaching

What size classes do you teach? Smallest: 10-15 PhD students; Largest: 585 undergraduates; & everything in between!

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? It takes about 3 times teaching the class before you’re remotely “satisfied” with it. So just let it ride and see how things go the first couple of times—you can (and will!) always revise your class to be better in the future!

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? Desirable difficulties in theory and in practice (Bjork & Bjork, 2020). There is reference to earlier work on desirable difficulties that I recommend reading as well!

Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (2020). Desirable difficulties in theory and practice. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 9(4), 475-479. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2020.09.003

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting? That it’s okay to not implement everything you know about effective teaching right away! It’s great to aspire to all of these great ideas we read about and see our colleagues implementing, but they take a HUGE amount of work to create and implement effectively. It’s okay to take things slow—you’ll get your class there.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I think my favorite course to teach is statistics, since students often approach it with a sense of apprehension and dread. I like to convince them that it’s not so bad after all, and is a desirable skill to have regardless of where they go after their time in undergraduate.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I’ve done an activity I found online a few times related to sampling distributions of the mean. I have students bring in a handful of coins and we create a distribution of the years on each coin (usually a lot of more recent coins, but with a long tail toward much older coins). We then calculate the averages of each student’s set of coins and graph those averages to start building a sampling distribution of the mean. This shows students what this theoretical distribution is in a more tangible way and helps them understand the difference between a sample distribution and a sampling distribution (though it’s still quite a confusing concept!).

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it? I am planning this course right now--a Teaching of Psychology course for PhD students looking to be instructor of record for their own class.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? I use the acronym CREATE to describe my teaching philosophy—I could explain much more about each one, but in the spirit of the prompt, I’ll leave them as they are:

Collaborative, Relatable, Engaging, Assess (appropriately), Test (often), Encouraging

What’s your workspace like? Organized chaos. Everything is in its place (which makes things easy to find), but the places that things are in are perhaps not the most organized or optimized. I have dreams of fixing up my office (and home office) to be neater and more aesthetically pleasing, but I can’t motivate myself to do it until things are disastrously messy.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching? I am currently trying to find ways to effectively implement alternative grading (e.g., specifications grading, ungrading) in large lecture classes. I am motivated to understand whether it can be done effectively, and whether the effort is worth it in terms of improving students’ achievement of learning outcomes and their overall experience in the course.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. When I tried specifications grading in statistics, I set the specifications for the final exam a bit too high, and ended up with many students who would have earned grades far lower than is typical. There were a bunch of (justifiably) angry emails when I released the scores! But I took in the feedback, admitted that I had made a mistake (professors are humans too, after all!) and adjusted the cutoff and final grades accordingly. As a sidenote: happy to chat and share my experiences (good and bad) with anyone who is interested in trying out specs grading—it’s not for the faint of heart!

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened. When I implemented an ungrading approach in Perception, I had students submit final portfolios of their work where they could demonstrate their achievement of the course learning objectives. They also answered reflective questions about their experience in the course, what new things they learned, whether they shared those things with friends/family, etc. Seeing them demonstrate their learning in this way allowed me a much more intimate peek than I typically get with typical exams. It was so inspiring to see them relate the content to their lives and be excited about sharing their newfound knowledge with others.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I hold a second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I am re-reading the first four books of The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson in anticipation of book 5 (Wind and Truth) coming out at the end of the year.

What tech tool could you not live without? Email on my phone. I know, I know, it facilitates poor work-life balance… but I have to know if someone has tried to reach me!

Paddy O'Connor: I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Fri, 31 May 2024 14:08:13 GMT

School name: School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast

Type of school: Higher Education institute

School locale (including state and country): Belfast, Northern Ireland

How many years have you taught psychology? I taught psychology and research methods/statistics at Belfast Metropolitan College from 2016 until last year. I was appointed as a Lecturer (Education) at Queen’s University Belfast in 2020.

Classes you teach: I teach Developmental psychology to first year students. I also teach mathematical cognition and thesis writing classes to final year students.

Specialization (if applicable): My PhD was in developmental psychology, specifically within the area of mathematical development.

Average class size: 120

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? The best advice about teaching that I have ever received is simply ‘take your time’. This is a piece of advice I received when attending a teaching course as a PhD student. This really has been pivotal in helping to shape my approach to teaching ever since, and students now comment in their evaluations of my teaching that the classes don’t feel as if they are rushed.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Hidalgo, G. I., Sánchez-Carracedo, F., & Romero-Portillo, D. (2021). Covid-19 emergency remote teaching opinions and academic performance of undergraduate students: Analysis of 4 students’ profiles. A case study. Mathematics, 9(17), 2147. https://doi.org/10.3390/math9172147

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I enjoy teaching my final year module on numerical development. In particular, I enjoy teaching about different theories which seek to explain how children acquire numeracy skills during the early years of schooling. In developmental psychology, I also enjoy teaching about emotional development and the development of children’s delay of gratification abilities as I did work in this area during my time as a Research Assistant.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I ask students in the first class of the mathematical cognition module to contribute to a word cloud on what words come to mind when they think about numeracy. I ask them to do the same thing during the fifth class, and I post both word clouds on Canvas so that they can see their own learning development on the topic within a short space of time.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I like to incorporate technology into my teaching in order to enhance student engagement during lectures. For example, asking for responses to questions via Padlet, demonstrating research to students using Qualtrics, and asking quiz questions on topics covered during the lecture using Mentimeter.

What’s your workspace like? I try to keep my office at the school as tidy as possible. It’s quite minimalist, with no ornaments or pictures! I do have a magnetic dartboard which a colleague/friend of mine bought me when I was appointed as a Lecturer. My home office is quite the opposite! I have a lot of stuff in there, including an electric drumkit for stress relief.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. These three words have been used by students in their evaluations of my teaching over the years: engaging, approachable, and organized.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Explaining difficult concepts in understandable and relatable terms.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I taught in an unfamiliar room early last year, and midway through the lecture, the microphone started to sound very robotic and made it seem like I was talking like C3P0! I changed the microphone, and then five minutes later, the same thing happened again. The students were in fits of laughter!

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? As someone who went to university late, I particularly love to see mature students, who are going to university to try to better themselves, do well on the course. I especially love to see their development over the course of the degree programme: from being nervous about returning to education, to flourishing in their final year.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I think students would be surprised to know that am a huge fan of darts, and I play in a darts team in my spare time.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? USA 94: The World Cup that changed the game by Matthew Evans

What tech tool could you not live without? My handheld PowerPoint slide clicker – without it, I’d not be able to move when teaching!

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Our school is very friendly, and when I run into colleagues, we usually spend a few minutes talking about work-related issues. Different colleagues will engage in conversations about different non-work-related things such as football, food, and TV shows.

Adijat Mustapha: I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 13:24:06 GMT

School name: Drew University

Type of school: Private, liberal arts university

School locale (including state and country): Madison, NJ

How many years have you taught psychology? 4.5 years as a professor

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology; Abnormal Psychology; Attachment & Relationships; Seminar: Evidence-Based Psychotherapies; Seminar: Culture & Psychopathology

Specialization: Clinical Psychology

Average class size: 24-35 per section

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? What has shaped my teaching has not been any specific advice but more so what I have personally experienced. I have been very lucky to have amazing mentorship throughout my university and graduate experiences. I was blessed with amazing female advisors/mentors/heroes for my time at Drew as an undergrad and my time at the University of Kansas for my PhD. Those incredible people showed me in action the difference one person can make in someone else’s life when they take time to guide, shape, and support their academic growth. I would not be the person I am today without those amazing mentors. My goal as a professor is to offer even half of that to students I advise.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I have been lucky to create some courses based on my specialized areas of clinical interests. One of my favorites, which seems to be popular with students as well, is my special topics course Attachment and Relationships. The course is centered around attachment theory. We explore research data on how the quality of early attachment bonds influence the people we become and how our interactions with early caregivers create the blueprint of how we tend to approach intimate relationships going forward. It is a fun course to teach because attachment influences so much of our life experiences, and it is very relatable content. I love seeing my students making connections both across other courses and in their personal lives. My favorite moments have been with some students who decided to pursue postgraduate studies in Family and Marriage Counseling who cite the course as part of their inspiration.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. One of my favorite assignments is a paper I assign in Abnormal Psychology that requires students to use the information they have learned throughout the semester to complete an informal case conceptualization of a fictional character from a work of literature or film with an identifiable mental illness. It is a great practice for exploring the nuances of diagnoses, comorbidity, precipitating factors, perpetuating factors, etc.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I incorporate a lot of humor, mnemonics (“If I ever saw a hippo on campus, I would remember that for a long-time…”) visual media, and real-life examples in my teaching. Students have expressed appreciation for how taking my time to show them how to apply the concepts to their real lives helped solidify their learning.

What’s your workspace like? My campus office decoration theme is Hogwarts. The book series has been a favorite since childhood, so I have a lot of items in my office inspired by that. It is especially cool because I remember, when I first stepped on Drew’s campus as a prospective student many years ago, I was struck by the absolute beauty of the campus, and it reminded me a lot of Hogwarts. My office also has several cherished thank you cards and other tokens from students who have now graduated.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Challenging, Attainable, and Relevant.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? High expectations and high support

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I once had one of those moments that happen in nightmares the night before the semester starts. I accidentally wore two very different shoes to teach one day (don’t ask how…)! I did not realize it at all until after my first section was wrapping up. I asked my students if they had noticed and they responded yes, but that they thought it was intentional. We had a great laugh about it, and I quickly let them know I am nowhere cool enough to think I could pull off deliberately wearing two different shoes.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? Easily the student connections. It is amazing to just be doing something that comes naturally to me (e.g., helping students understand a concept better in office hours or post baccalaureate career exploration) and to receive a special thank you note from a student that shows me how much that simple thing actually meant to them.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? Students seem pleasantly surprised when they learn that I am creative and that I have a business for those creative ventures.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum.

What tech tool could you not live without? Honestly, my phone. I always say that if it’s not in my phone calendar, it does not exist because I will forget about it. I survive with the reminders and alerts I have set up.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? My conversations with my colleagues are a mixture of processing our teaching lives, problem-solving any ongoing issues, and us discussing our personal lives and interests.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? I think academia is still recovering from the pandemic in many ways. Students often struggle with what going back to “normal” means in terms of deadlines and standards when extreme flexibility was more common in their high school or early college years due to the crisis. Professors are trying to come to terms with social challenges to the value of higher education (and the debt associated for many students) and teaching in a much different technological world with the ongoing advances in ChatGPT and other related AI software.

Albee Mendoza: I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 14:51:22 GMT

School name: Delaware State University (DSU or DelState)

Type of school: HBCU

School locale (including state and country): Dover, Delaware, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? Since graduating from East Carolina University’s PhD program, I have been teaching full-time for nine years!

Classes you teach: Most of the classes I teach are traditional, in-person courses. Introduction to General Psychology, Honors Introduction to General Psychology, Health Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Principles of Psychopathology, Psychology of Learning, Senior Research Seminar.

Specialization: My doctoral degree is in Health Psychology with a specialization in Pediatric School Psychology.

Average class size: 30 to 35 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? At ECU, I had the honor to take courses about teaching as a graduate student and one piece of advice that I have implemented ever since is to structure class time in 10 to 20-minute chunks to hold students’ attention and foster engagement (e.g., in a 50-minute class: lecture, group work, lecture, video clip, lecture, review).

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Keeley, J., Afful., S. E., Stiegler-Balfour, J. J., Good, J. J., & Leder. S. (2013). So you landed a job – What’s next? Advice for early career psychologists from early career psychologists. Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology web site.
Hogan, K.A. & Sathy, V. (2022). Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom. West Virginia University Press.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. It is so hard to choose! I will narrow it down to two. I really like teaching students about parts of the brain. Students like it because we do a lot of drawings and hands-on activities like making neurons out of pipe cleaners and drawing the lobes on each other while wearing shower caps. Another favorite of mine is on operant conditioning principles of +R, -R, +P, and -P. With a background in Applied Behavior Analysis, I enjoy teaching students about the differences and similarities among punishment and reinforcement techniques. In groups, students are asked to give examples of how to utilize these principles in their professional careers (e.g., teach a class of noisy ballet dancers) and personal lives (e.g., deal with a messy roommate).

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I introduce an activity called Speed Meeting on the first day of class to get to know each other. Students write down certain facts on an index card. Then, we go out in the hallway and make two lines. Students have a partner and talk to that partner about what they wrote down on the card for about 1 minute. Then, after the timer sounds, one line moves down so each student has a different partner. We rotate two or three more times. I bring it back as a review activity throughout the semester.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? There are so many to talk about! From my most recent course evaluations and written feedback, I believe that the teaching and learning techniques that are working for my students include learning each of my student’s names, holding students accountable for coming to class by taking daily attendance, providing skeletal notes, using Power Points for lecture, doing sample test questions, reviewing content learned at each class session, and providing time in class to engage in group work.

What’s your workspace like? Since the pandemic, my daughter, husband and I have developed into plant parents. My office is home to a variety of plants: jade (crassula ovata), spider (chlorophytum comosum), snake (dracaena trifadciata), fantasy venice (tradescantia nanouk), and mother of millions (kalanchoe delagoensis). Our home office has a lot more! I also have a standing desk with two screens, a couch, and filing cabinets decorated with magnets from places traveled or activities that make me smile.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. I want to share the most frequently-used words from last semester’s course evaluations and student feedback because they validate what I want to accomplish in the classroom! Welcoming, Interactive, and Engaging.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Encouraging mutual learning through support, relevance, and kindness.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. There are countless times when I planned activities and they have fallen flat! One of them early in my career was when I was a graduate assistant for an Introduction to Psychology class with 100+ students and prepared a game to do as a review which utilized Glee (yes, I was a Gleek!) cards. I assigned different Glee character cards as certain letters which coordinated with different questions. I did not write down what cards matched with what letter, so everyone got confused! I learned that I needed to try out different activities with friends or loved ones before implementing them in the classroom.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? In terms of the quality of life as an instructor, I love the schedule of being a professor. Having breaks throughout the year as well as summers off helps with spending time with my daughter, husband, and family. I also love how each semester is a fresh start for students and faculty and staff. I like that I can make changes to a course and modify techniques based on feedback and outcomes. I also love how each academic year is filled with excitement about coming to college and then graduating from college! I truly enjoy helping students with their own career trajectories, discussing the many opportunities available to them, and the people/departments/resources in college that can support them towards their goals. I hold first-generation college students and students with children especially dear to my heart.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I am an ovarian cancer survivor. I was diagnosed in summer 2019 and continued teaching after a radical hysterectomy and throughout chemotherapy. I received tenure in 2020 as an associate professor at Wesley College. When it was acquired by DSU, I lost status and tenure. I was Visiting Assistant Professor during a probationary period and just recently transitioned to tenure-track Assistant Professor. I discuss teaching through cancer and other aspects of my career in a recent article in the Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? For me, Murder and Mamon by Mia P. Manansala (Book 4 of the A Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery). With my daughter, Maybe Maybe Marisol Rainey by Erin Entrada Kelly. Filipina authors write these books, and I heard about them from being a member of the Filipinx Author Book Club. I am so inspired by the authors who talk about their journeys that I am taking classes to write my own middle grade novel!

What tech tool could you not live without? As a professor, there are several tools that I need to make my days less stressful including Outlook, Google Calendar, Color Note, Power Point, etc. Before 2022, I would have probably said my flash drive(s), then I bought an expensive one which stopped working and I switched to One Drive and Google Drive.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Very often it is about technology issues that we are experiencing in our classrooms! Other topics include when meetings and parties are as well as student issues (the good, the bad, and the ugly).

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? I make sure to emphasize social support and add in readings to help students feel that they are not alone in their academic journeys. To this end, I also find myself disclosing more about myself. Notably, when discussing social support through community service, I tell my students about volunteering for a nonprofit, Pursuit for Peace, which is an organization with volunteers who dress up as princesses and visit medically vulnerable populations. In terms of assignments, I remember a talk from ACT 2022 about bending not breaking the rules/standards. I implement more grace periods for late work as well as drops for assignments and quizzes. I also make sure to emphasize the importance of in-person interactions and oral presentations.

Kristina Pham: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 15:50:25 GMT

School name: Casper College

Type of school: Community College

School locale (including state and country): Casper, WY, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? 11 years

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Human Sexuality, Research Methods, Sports Psychology, Research Methods, Marriage and Family, Biological Psychology.

Specialization: Teaching, Minority Stress, Humane Education

Average class size: 20

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? It wasn’t said directly to me by the person, but is a quote we refer to often in Chabad. “Imagine you could open your eyes to see only the good in every person, the positive in every circumstance, and the opportunity in every challenge” by Rebbe M. Schneerson. I keep this above my desk because following this advice makes me the best teacher for my students and myself.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Our Babies, Our Selves by Meredith Small. It changed how I felt about children and raising children, which led me to become a teacher and a psychology instructor. While it is about raising children in different cultures, it helped shape my views about relating to students of all ages.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. Marriage and Family is my favorite class to teach because it includes many of my favorite topics. I love seeing my students learn that the purpose of marriage has drastically changed over time, despite their belief that marriage was always about finding “the one.”

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I love having students read short stories to connect ideas. My favorite assignment is reading Flowers for Algernon to discuss intelligence. My students also love this assignment. Using the stories turns the topic of measuring and thinking about intelligence from dry to full of emotion.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? Ungrading has been successful for me. My students feel more free to try new things and to participate more because they are not worried about their grades.

Mixing small activities into lectures makes the class more fun. When we use a short activity for discussion, and then I fill in additional notes, the students are more engaged in the class and the topic.

What’s your workspace like? My office is full of work completed by my students and gifts given to me by students and classes. There is always a stack of books on my desk that I want to read. I keep candy on my desk. There is also a Nespresso machine for keeping me caffeinated and when students need a longer discussion with me.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Flexible, fun, hands-on.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Create life-long learners, not memorizers.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I can’t think of a specific instance, but I have definitely had assignments that didn’t go the way I planned. I don’t get embarrassed. I admit to students that things are not going as planned, and we need to scrap it and do something different. I think they appreciate the honesty and not having to keep doing something that clearly isn’t working.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? The students. I always enjoy getting to know them, hearing their views, and laughing with them in class. I look forward to going to work every day because it is like seeing my friends.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I share so many personal stories as part of my teaching. I don’t know if they would be surprised by anything.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Madame Restell by Jennifer Wright

What tech tool could you not live without? This is old school, but a video projector. I don’t use a lot of tech in my classes, so I could get rid of what I do use pretty easily, but I rely a lot on videos and movies.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) Most of our chatter is just stories about our day or our lives. Sometimes, we discuss issues we are having and ask for an opinion. In my building, we mostly have a lot of fun and laughter in the hallway. I don’t think my teaching has changed due to Covid, but I think students have changed, and not for the better. Students seem more needy (I don’t love that word, but can’t think of a better one). But the neediness seems to come from a lack of effort on their part. I have found being back in the classroom post Covid quite frustrating at times.

Sue Frantz: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 15:28:45 GMT

School name: Highline College (emerita) and New Mexico State University (NMSU; affiliate faculty)

Type of school: Highline College is a community college. NMSU is an R2 Hispanic Serving institution.

School locale (including state and country): Highline is in Des Moines, Washington, US. NMSU is in Las Cruces, New Mexico, US.

How many years have you taught psychology? The first class I taught entirely on my own was 33 years ago when I was in grad school.

My first full-time teaching job was at New Mexico State University-Alamogordo, a two-year branch. I left there in 2001 to go to work for Highline College, located just south of Seattle. In 2021, we moved back to Las Cruces, NM, home to NMSU’s main campus. I teach Intro Psych for NMSU when it fits my schedule. My retirement from Highline will be official in September 2023.

Classes you teach: Intro to Psychology, Social Psychology, and Research Methods. I have taught many others, but these have been my courses for the last several years.

Average class size: At Highline, my online classes averaged 30 students. At NMSU, my face-to-face classes cap at 80.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? “If I don’t have at least one negative student course evaluation, then I haven’t been doing my job.” This was uttered by a Political Science professor. He explained that he wanted to challenge students. If at least one student didn’t complain about the course content or the work in the course, then he didn’t feel like he was challenging his students enough. I don’t know that I have fully embraced his thinking, but it has kept me from obsessing over those occasional negative evaluations in a sea of positive ones.

“Students have a right to fail.” This was an academic counselor speaking at a faculty meeting. She said that while she knew that many of us bent over backwards to help students succeed, she reminded us that students have to take responsibility for their own learning. Students have to meet us at least halfway. When students would come to her office and start talking about their struggles in a particular course, her first question to them was, “Are you reading the textbook?” If the answer was no, she would say, “We’re done. Read the textbook. If you’re still struggling after that, then come back and see me.” After hearing this, I stopped taking sole responsibility for my students who did poorly in the course.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? What had the greatest impact on me as a teacher didn’t come from a book. It came from a rock musician. When I started my teaching career my greatest weakness was in public speaking. I had been to a number of Melissa Etheridge concerts and I was struck by how she could hold an audience’s attention, so I started paying attention to what she did. Even though she was speaking to an audience of a few thousand, her style was conversational. Other performers maintain the actor’s fourth wall, the wall between the performance and the audience; I’ve seen instructors do the same thing. In her concerts, that wall is non-existent. I figured if she can be conversational in her style, so can I, and I even have an advantage! With my class sizes, my students can converse back. Although there is one technique Etheridge employs that does allow the audience to converse with her: Call and response. I sprinkle this in wherever I can. I say something, and the students respond as a class. For example, after covering the neuron, this is how I conclude my lecture.

Me: What are the chemical messengers called?
Class: Neurotransmitters!
Me: They float across the empty space called the…?
Class: Synapse!

Etc.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. Introduction to Psychology is my favorite course to teach, because I love the challenge of covering such a large number of topics. Most of us receive graduate training in one area, and then have to bring ourselves up to speed on the rest of the course content, and I am no exception. I like to think of the Intro Psych course as an owner’s manual for the human mind. We explore how everything works and then end the course talking about troubleshooting. What happens when things don’t quite work as they should? And what can we do about that?

There is no other course in the psychology curriculum that has the impact Intro has. The vast majority of students who take Intro are not destined to be psychology majors. They will major in other fields, and then go on to work in industry, business, medicine, law, etc. Intro Psych is our one opportunity to help future leaders and decision makers grasp how important the field of psychology is.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I am a big fan of interteaching because it puts the responsibility for learning back into the hands of the students. I’ve written blog posts about it, such as this one from 2019. Garth Neufeld and I did a webinar on interteaching in 2023; watch the free recording here.

What’s your workspace like? The photograph above my desk is White Sands National Park located 50 miles from where I live. Here in the Mesilla Valley of southern New Mexico, chile peppers are a big part of our agricultural economy. The plants by the window are chile peppers, and outside a ristra, a decorative hanging made of dried red peppers.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Students are responsible for their own learning.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. In class, a student asked a question. As I was answering it, I was reminded of a video I had seen that would help illustrate my point. I did a quick search of YouTube and started playing the video. It was the wrong video. The video I was showing was an offensive parody of the one that I had wanted. I quickly stopped it, said something like, “That was clearly the wrong one,” did a more careful search, and finally played the right one.

The lesson? Just as trial lawyers are told to never ask a question of a witness in court that they don’t already know the answer to, the same holds for instructors playing videos in class. Don’t play a video unless you know what is in the video.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? The best part about teaching is helping students learn. There is nothing better than watching the light bulb come on.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I started using my own Intro Psych textbook for the first time this past January. Some of my students were surprised to learn that I was one of the authors.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I just finished SPQR by Mary Beard. It’s a terrific history of the Roman Empire.

I’m now working my way through Stephen Spotswood’s Pentecost and Parker mysteries. I just started the second one in the series, Murder Under Her Skin.

What tech tool could you not live without? There are several, but with the amount of writing I’ve been doing, I could not live without Zotero. It’s a top notch pdf and reference manager.

What is your hallway chatter like? I work entirely from home, so most of my chatter is telling my dogs to stop barking.

BONUS LINKS: listen to Sue on the PsychSessions podcast!

GST001: Garth and Sue Talk...Season 1 Promotion/Premiere
E004: Sue Frantz: Knows a Thing or Two about Teaching Diverse Students
E158: Sue Frantz, Part 2: Innovator, Author, Technologist, Pedagogical Specialist

Mindy Erchull: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 15:11:23 GMT

School name: University of Mary Washington (UMW)

Type of school: One of the rare public liberal arts colleges

School locale (including state and country): Fredericksburg, VA, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? This is my 19^th year of full-time teaching. I did some teaching prior to that as a grad student, but it wasn’t a key focus in my program.

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Research Methods, Social Psychology, Psychology of Women & Gender, Cultural Psychology, Health Psychology, Social Influence, Research Seminar in Social Psychology, Undergraduate Intern Supervision, First-year Seminar: Feminism in the 21^st Century

Specialization: My degree is in social psychology, and I have training in health psychology and the psychology of women and gender. As you can likely tell from the list of classes I teach, I consider myself a generalist, however.

Average class size: 20-25 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? I think the best general piece of advice was given to me when teaching my first class as instructor of record while in graduate school. I was finding it challenging to balance class prep, work on my dissertation, my TA responsibilities, and what little personal life I had. My supervisor urged me to try to limit my prep to 2 (and definitely no more than 3) hours per hour in the classroom. I didn’t always meet the goal that first semester, but I’ve become much better at it as the years have gone by. I’ll always wish I’d had more time, so sometimes good enough really will do.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? It is all but impossible to narrow this down to one, but I can point to me reading Intersectional Pedagogy: Complicating Identity and Social Justice, edited by Dr. Kim A. Case, as representing a turning point in how I approached my classes and my work with my students.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. While I have a soft spot for teaching research methods since it was a class I hated as an undergrad but later discovered a deep love of research, my favorite class has traditionally been psychology of women and gender. I typically only teach one section of this course every second year, so the wait may make me all the more excited for it when it happens. I love the seminar-style format and that students always make the class distinct from all those taught in prior semester. In a self-serving way, I also now like it because I get to use the textbook I co-authored for the class – inspired in large part by a desire to better serve students who take this course with me. This semester, I’m teaching cultural psychology – a new addition to our major – for the first time, and I think this course may given psych of women a run for its money as a favorite. Finally, my gender studies soul loves that every few years I get to teach a first-year seminar on feminism and step into interdisciplinary territory with a fairly non-psych-focused course.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I have lots of class activities I enjoy, but one of my favorites is when I teach about social influence in my social psych classes. At the end of the week, students work in small groups to evaluate a crowdfunding campaign (that is completed and clearly not endorsed by me) to identify the influence principles being employed. This helps them both see how common they are as well as how many different ways they can show up.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I tend to be eclectic in my approach to teaching. I really thrive with structure, so that comes through in both my course planning and execution. That said, I think many of my most successful classes are ones where I cede a lot of the content coverage and execution decisions to students who lead discussions, so the meetings become inherently unpredictable. I’ve found flipping my classes works wonderfully for some (e.g., my honors general psych course) but worked less well for others (i.e., my research methods course). I’ve developed a focus on oral communication in many of my classes, and I favor frequent, low-stakes assignments to reduce the speaking anxiety that is so common for many (including me).

What’s your workspace like? For me, this means my office on campus. All our offices are on the third floor of the building, and we generally have our office doors open so we’re aware of each other, can ask each other questions, can provide support to each other, etc.

In my office, I have a large L-shaped desk against the window that looks out into a wooded area (when leaves are on the trees) or to the hills across the river (when there aren’t leaves). One part of my desk has my double monitors and laptop on a standing desk overlay (that I use far too little since it means I have to move the ring light that lets people actually see me during zoom meetings), and I always have a pad of paper – and usually some post-its – on top of my laptop. The other part of my desk generally has stacks of folders with notes to take to class or meetings, books for classes that semester, and books I’m trying to read “on my own time.”

I have pictures of family and former students around my office along with some fun toys on my bookshelves. I have a small folding table with my electric kettle and tea supplies, and a comfy chair in one corner I like to use when I’m reading.

I’ve set up my office so the desk isn’t between me and students when we’re meeting, and my office is open enough that groups of 3 (or 4 if I borrow a chair from down the hall) can easily meet with me at one time. And I have a large whiteboard on one wall which I use for brainstorming with students regularly.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Challenging, Skill-based, and Structured

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Helping students build skills for life-long success.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I’ve been teaching for long enough that I have myriad options to draw from here, but I always find myself going back to the first class I ever had independent responsibility for – a small section of Introductory Statistics while I was in graduate school.

While I had taught individual topics before in a number of classes, I had never had full responsibility for planning and executing a class, and I spent many hours preparing before each class meeting. I no longer remember what topic we were covering, but it was clear two-thirds of the way through one class meeting that my students were lost. I was a novice enough teacher that I just kept powering through, but I knew that learning hadn’t really happened (at least for my students) that day.

When we next met, I told the students to rip out the pages in their notebooks from our last meeting, and we started over with me covering things in a different way, at a different pace. It was a great reminder that the same approach won’t always work and that I needed to be flexible – something that doesn’t necessarily come easily to me

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? It’s the “aha” moments students get. When something starts to get stale or repetitive for me, this reminds me that it’s new to my students. One time it was the student who came to me crying at the end of a class focused on intersectionality because she was so moved by considering her own experiences of privilege. Another time, it was the Spanish major who took my health psych class to complete her speaking intensive courses gen ed requirement, discovered the field of public health, and went on to get a masters and work in that field. Sometimes it’s just the small moments of a student realizing that what we talked about that day reflects something they experienced that week. My students are why I do this, and while I can be frustrated by them at times, the moments like these remind me why this difficult job is worth it in the end.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? Other than inappropriate oversharing, I’m pretty open with my students, so I’m not really sure. I know some have been surprised to learn that I’m both a first-generation college student as well as a graduate of a college-prep boarding school. Some might be surprised to learn I own more than 300 board and card games (although given that I sometimes play games with colleagues in one of our open collaboration rooms over lunch, others wouldn’t be surprised at all). Most recently, many students in one of my classes were shocked to learn that, as a gender studies professor, I had yet to see the Barbie movie.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Most of my pleasure reading happens during school breaks. I am, however, currently reading Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story by Jacob Tobia. Every semester, our Safe Zone program hosts a book club for faculty/staff, and Sissy is our focus this semester. I’ve found campus book clubs are a great way for me to read one or two books each semester while also being able to connect with people on campus with whom I might not otherwise interact much.

What tech tool could you not live without? I’m taking my computer, phone, dropbox, and zoom out of the equation for this one. Looking beyond those, this semester it’s ziplet. I’m teaching two sections of a completely new-to-me course and one section of a completely redesigned course, so frequent feedback is something I knew I wanted. This lets me set a digital “ticket out” to use at the end of each class meeting, and students can get to it with a QR code unique to each class (or a stable short URL if they struggle with the QR code). I’m enjoying what it allows me in terms of taking the temperature of the room, giving students a “safe” way to ask questions, or just asking silly questions from time to time. I now plan to keep using it in future semesters.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most? As is true for many, it sometimes involves venting frustrations about students and administrators. Most of the time, however, we’re chatting about our families, plans for the weekend, a book we’re reading, etc. We’re all open to sharing ideas, activities, and assignments, so sometimes we’re brainstorming how to approach things when one of us is struggling.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? One thing that immediately comes to mind is that I was reminded that I can do things outside of my comfort zone. I never wanted to teach online, but because of my own health and family-care responsibilities, I taught online for 1.5 years. Not everything I tried worked well, but I found a lot more success than I expected.

Another change is my comfort with making class-specific videos. This has led to me flipping two of my classes and making many narrated videos for things like using PsycINFO, SPSS, and Qualtrics that students can watch on their own time and refer back to as often as needed.

In terms of a negative change, I totally burned out. Between the extra effort of teaching online when I never had before, the added flexibility I tried to build in to meet student needs, and my own needing to deal with living in a global pandemic, I was stretched to the breaking point. That means the 22-23 academic year was the worst I had since starting to teach full-time. I largely took the summer off to give myself time to recharge, and I’m looking forward to my spring sabbatical, so this year is going far better!

Maggie Albright-Pierce: I'm a member of STP and this is How I Teach

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 14:14:16 GMT

School name: Rutgers University

Type of school: Research-driven (R1) urban university

School locale (including state and country): New Jersey, U.S.

How many years have you taught psychology? 5

Classes you teach: Social Psychology, Health Psychology

Specialization: social/health

Average class size: 15-25

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Oddly, the best advice about teaching (and learning) I received was from my high school chemistry teacher. He described struggling with chemistry in college although he loved the subject. When professors used to post non-anonymized grades, he realized he could not only see who the top performing students were but also learn from them. He waited for A-earning students to see their grades and asked them if he could study with them. He learned their habits and learned from them. At the time, he was spinning a tale about growth mindset, showing his students that they could grow over time with better strategies learned from others (something I also emphasize in my courses). Now, I’ve come to see this as an essential part of teaching as well. He was such a powerful teacher, one who could describe complex content in multiple engaging ways to maximize student understanding. It made me realize that struggling with material sometimes is normal, makes us stronger learners, and makes us better teachers because we’re better able to understand students struggling with the material and problem-solve with them.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Given the story above, it may be unsurprising that the research behind growth mindset has been probably the most pivotal in shaping my teaching philosophy, including Dr. Carol Dweck’s “Mindset”. I also get excited about evidence-based practice, so Dr. Paul Kirschner and colleagues’ work on myths in education and learning as well as how learning happens has also greatly informed my instruction. For years, I was an educational coach, and I preached learning styles not knowing that there is little to no evidence for them—ah!

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. As a researcher in self-regulation (and a former educational coach and health coach), I really enjoy teaching about strategies students can use to meet their goals and improve their everyday lives. I love thinking that they can add healthier, research-based tools to their toolboxes to use during the class and after it’s over.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I love media, so most of my favorite in-class activities center around watching videos and dissecting them with students. I randomly watched PBS’s “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” with my parents in high school, which got me interested in health and social psychology, and I never looked back. I created a watch guide for the film with an accompanying assignment on students’ experience with stress for health psychology, and I really appreciate students’ responses to that assignment.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I love a good discussion. I felt like I learned the most from discussions when I was in school, so I try my best to generate discussion questions (or use some of those provided by generous others) that can be fruitful for students. As an instructor, I love that discussions become a window into students’ experiences, which helps me to shape future questions, examples, or even different subjects.

What’s your workspace like? A work in progress! In the wake of the pandemic, I upgraded our office, adding a sit-to-stand desk, a second screen (joining the 21^st century), and some tall bookcases. I also added a small art wall above my desk of my embroidery work and small artwork I bought or was gifted over the years. Hoping all of these efforts increase my productivity as well as boost my mood.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Positive, inclusive, active

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Evidence-based, student-centered, learning-focused

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. My first teaching experience was leading a statistics lab as an undergraduate junior. One week, instead of emailing the worksheet to students, I sent them the worksheet with the answers. I thought something felt off as students exchanged glances... I thought maybe these problems were too challenging or maybe too easy, and they were trying to say that without saying it. So, after 5 minutes (was it 10? It felt like FOREVER), I reminded them I was here to help as they worked through the practice problems. One brave student let me know I had sent them the answers. I was mortified, especially because I’d have to tell my supervising professor about my error.

I am pretty proud of my quick response, though. My immediate reaction was to swear them all to secrecy and ask them to tip toe out of the classroom like nothing happened. Then, I realized I did them a big disservice in providing the answers before they could work through the problems. So, I thanked the student, joked about the looks I had noticed, gave them all full credit, and explained how they could use that resource to their advantage by using it to check their answers rather than not doing the work at all. I asked everyone to stay for at least half the lab time so they could actually give themselves a chance to test their stats prowess—most actually stayed until the end and were grateful for seeing the answers step by step!

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? I love seeing the light go on in students’ eyes when they connect with something. I know grading can be a drain, but some of my favorite teaching moments are reading reflections and noticing how each student relates to the content just a little differently.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I’m not sure! I’m pretty transparent. I tell them my journey to teaching/academia is not linear, but I don’t go into a lot of detail about all the detours I took, like my brief stint as a belly dancer.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I just finished the last book of the Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin as well as Atomic Habits this past week. I try to switch between a book related to my work and something fun, like sci-fi or fantasy. I think next is “Willpower doesn’t work” and “The end of Men”.

Tamara Monroe: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 14:39:03 GMT

School name: Delaware Valley University

Type of school: Delval is known for being a school of agriculture

School locale (including state and country): Doylestown, PA

How many years have you taught psychology? I am beginning my 5^th year.

Classes you teach: Multicultural Issues in Counseling, Intro to Psych, Developmental Disabilities, Childhood Psychopathology, and Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome

Specialization (if applicable): Health Psychology, Clinical and African American Psychology

Average class size: 34

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I have two favorite lecture topics: The Criminal Mind and Psychological Disorders

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. My favorite in class activity is the Dr. Bandura “Bobo the Clown “activity where I bring an inflatable clown into the class to demonstrate the experiment. Most students are surprised to see me hitting an inflatable clown with a bat during class.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? The teaching technique that works best for me is running an interactive class. I add a lot of questions through my presentation in order to make sure my students are engaged.

What’s your workspace like? As an adjunct I carry everything I need with me during my class but I bring things such as a diffuser that turns different colors to make the classroom environment more welcoming.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Engaging, Controversial (in a good way), and Energetic

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Learning goes beyond the classroom.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. During my first year of teaching I remember a lesson that I worked so hard on but it just wasn’t long enough and I had too much time left over. I was scrambling to think of things to do so I just free-styled. It was very awkward but I learned from that day on to always have a backup plan.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? I enjoy seeing that moment is a student’s reaction where you see the lightbulb go off and they really connect with the material.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? My students would be surprised to learn that although I seem to be extrovert during class, I am really an introvert and very shy.

Karen Holmes - I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 15:28:20 GMT

School Name: Norfolk State University

Type of School: 4-year Public Historically Black College/University (HBCU); NSU offers undergraduate, masters and doctoral degree programs.

School locale (including state and country): Norfolk, Virginia, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? I began teaching psychology as a graduate teaching assistant and have been teaching full-time since 2001.

Classes you teach: Psychology Statistics, Experimental Psychology, Psychology Seminar (Senior Capstone); Quantitative Research Methods; Social Psychology

Specialization (if applicable): Social Psychology

Average class size: 30-35 students each semester

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? I don’t think my mother would agree that this was necessarily sage advice, but she was speaking from the perspective of a burnt-out public school teacher. She advised me not to become a public school teacher and focus my attention on earning my doctorate with the goal of becoming a university professor. I took her advice.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

The novel Plum Bun: A novel without a moral, by Jessie Redmon Fauset shaped my work as a psychology instructor because it helped me to develop my psychology courses using a project-based methodology; something that I had always wanted to do. I developed assignments using the text of the novel, to teach social psychological concepts. Although Plum Bum was written in 1929, Fauset discussed many issues that remain relevant today. I was able to create lecture discussions and class activities around the novel’s premise specifically, issues related to gender, racial inequality, self-identify, and many other social psychological topics.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is psychology statistics. I enjoy teaching this course because it was the course that I most dreaded as an undergraduate student. Working through the anxiety of completing my first statistics course was an important step for me as an undergraduate, and I enjoy sharing my experiences and knowledge with my students.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I can’t pick just one. I most enjoy project and problem-based activities that require students to apply the content knowledge that they have learned. Participating in these types of activities fosters the comprehension of the material at a higher cognitive level.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I enjoy teaching using collaborative activities, demonstrations, and storytelling as a way to engage students with the course material.

What’s your work space like? In addition to being a Professor, I am also the Department Chair; therefore, I have the largest office in the department. My office has a floor-to-ceiling wall of windows and a large desk that has built-in shelves, a bookcase, and file drawers. It is very nice!

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Three words that describe my teaching style are student-centered, collaborative, and problem-based. However, I am a firm believer that no one teaching strategy will reach all students all of the time. I regularly augment my teaching approach to reach the students that I am teaching at the time.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Maintaining high standards in a supportive learning environment.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

Early in my career, I primarily used publisher developed test bank questions to create my exams. I did just that for my statistics class’s first exam. I passed out the papers and approximately 5 minutes into the exam, a student came to my desk to inform me that the correct answers for each item were highlighted! The highlighting was faint but noticeable. I was mortified. I thanked the student for her honesty and quickly notified the class that the exam was over. I now write my own exams.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable?

I enjoy seeing students achieve their “light bulb moment” when they finally grasp a concept that they have struggled with for weeks.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

My students would be surprised to know that I continued to teach both online and in-person courses while undergoing daily dialysis for 3.5 years. I also worked the morning of my kidney transplant surgery.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I must say that I have not done much pleasure reading as of late. Most of my reading has been work-related. However, the last book that I read was Wild Rain, an African American historical romance novel written by Beverly Jenkins. I especially enjoyed reading this book because the subtext of the novel includes (as do many of her novels) aspects of African American history that we are not taught in school.

What tech tool could you not live without? Zoom. Although we are post-COVID, I still conduct most of my meetings using this platform.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (Whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Office chatter has been pretty much non-existent since COVID. However, if I have to pick one thing that I commiserate with colleagues about it would have to be how to best engage students in learning how to write using proper APA style.

Has your teaching changed because of the COVID 19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/ or negative changes).

Since COVID, I have had to be more lenient with deadlines. I have also had to allow more grace and flexibility as it relates to assignment submissions. Often allowing students to resubmit after receiving feedback.

Susan Geffen: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 16:25:10 GMT

School name: Occidental College

Type of school: Liberal Arts College

School locale: Los Angeles, California, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? 8 years (since 2015)

Classes you teach: Intro Psych, Research Methods, Developmental Psychology, Adolescence, Lifespan Development, Perception, Psycholinguistics, Critical Thinking

Specialization (if applicable): e.g. clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc. Developmental Psychologist/Psycholinguist

Average class size: 15 – 20

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? If you are excited about what you are teaching, you will pass that enthusiasm onto your students. And have two textbooks, one that the students are reading, and a different one that you can use for examples the students have not seen.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? There are too many to choose from and the list keeps changing. The STP Facebook group has been an amazing resource over the last couple of years, having an opportunity to compare notes and trade activities with other dedicated educators. I am currently reading Inclusive Teaching by Hogan and Sathy. I was lucky enough to attend a workshop they taught several years ago which gave me great ideas for increasing participation in the classroom, especially for shy students, so I am looking forward to further insights to improve my classes. I’ve also been flipping through Culture across the Curriculum edited by Kenneth D. Keith to introduce some non-WEIRD examples into my classes.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. Whenever students ask me this question, it always stops me. I love teaching Intro Psych because I love helping students discover the wide and fascinating world of psychology. One of my favorite things is hearing students say that they have decided to become a psychology major partly from taking my class. I also love teaching seminar-based classes, most recently Adolescence and Psycholinguistics. Having the opportunity to draw students into discussions about methodologies used in the field or how these topics relate to their own lives reinforces how much I love being in the classroom and being around students. Sometimes I think my favorite “course” is getting to know my students.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. It may be cheating, but I have one favorite assignment and one favorite in-class activity right now. The assignment is a final project called Stuck at Home Science where students have to design an activity to teach elementary school students about an aspect of psychology. I have done this in my Developmental Psychology and Perception classes. Sample activities include creating a spy code to teach children about the sounds that make up a language, teaching kids mindfulness techniques to help them deal with their emotions, and the gingerbread person as a way of thinking about the multiple aspects that make up their (social) identity. In recent years, I have begun sharing these activities with a local community of schools and through a campus organization called Boundless Brilliance that aims to encourage children, especially girls, to get excited about STEM education.

My favorite in-class activity is giving a lecture on a particular topic (e.g., Gestalt principles) and then having students flip through picture books to find examples of the concepts we just discussed. I usually bring in a mix of nostalgic classics like Good Night Moon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar and contemporary picture books like Island Born and How We Say I Love You.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I am a big fan of active learning and non-traditional projects. Classes are so much more engaging when there is a conversation between me and students rather than just lecturing. I look for every opportunity to encourage students to participate in class. For example, in my Developmental Psychology class, I send students an email a day or two before a class when we’re discussing motor milestones or first words with the subject line “ask your parents.” When we discuss these topics in class, I ask for multiple volunteers to share their answers for motor milestones like crawling or walking, or we post it on a word web so we can see what types of words are most common but also the variety of words. I also like providing opportunities for students to practice applying material. Like I mentioned above, I like bringing picture books into the classroom and asking students to try to find concepts we discussed in class. Students frequently report that they appreciate having opportunities to see how material applies outside the classroom, whether it’s to their own lives, to their favorite TV shows or for their future careers.

What’s your workspace like? I like having things to look at, both as a break from reading student papers or journal articles, but also for students who may be nervous about talking to the professor. I have postcards on the wall behind my desk which are great conversation starters. I have pictures and knickknacks on my bookcase. It may not be the ideal office but it’s comfortable, which is important considering how much time I spend in my office.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Enthusiastic, accessible, application-focused

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Make the material relatable; engage with my students.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. Teachers are people too. In one of my classes, we had regular short quizzes at the beginning of class. I kept two copies of the quiz on my computer, one for the students and one marked with the answers. One time, I printed the wrong copy of the quiz, and didn’t realize until I handed it out and students started chuckling to themselves. Finally, someone pointed out that I had given them the quiz with the answers on it. I sighed, shook my head, and proceeded to teach the lesson. Right before the end of the class, I pulled up a quiz on the same topic from a previous semester, put it on the screen and asked students to mark their answers on the back of the original test paper. You can bet I carefully checked what copy of the quiz I printed from then on.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? My favorite part of teaching hands down is the students. I love getting to know them and seeing them connect with the material. When students email me during the semester or after the semester has ended to share how they found a psychology example in their favorite TV show or book they were reading, it makes me really happy.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I am actually a very shy person outside of the classroom. My students never believe me because I am pretty confident in the classroom, but in unfamiliar settings, I can be just as nervous as them.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon by Donna Andrews (a cozy mystery, cozier than the title would suggest)

What tech tool could you not live without? As my students could tell you, I have something of a love/hate relationship with technology. When it works, it’s great. When it doesn’t…grr. If I had to choose a tech tool, I would probably say I couldn’t live without email and my Google calendar. Sometimes they are the only way to communicate with students and keep track of my schedule.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Colleagues and I will often chat about upcoming events in the department, compare notes over our never shrinking to-do lists or commiserate over the critiques of Reviewer 2.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) One change I made since the pandemic is providing a Zoom option for my classes when students are not feeling well. I would prefer that students stay home to rest and feel better, but I also do not want them to miss out on the material. This has come in handy for students who are sick but also occasionally for athletes traveling to a game or match. They appreciate they can still stay connected with the class even while engaged in their extracurricular activity (and occasionally makes for a nice way to fill the time on a long bus ride).

Kathy Doody - I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 12 May 2023 13:44:27 GMT

School name: SUNY, Buffalo State University

Type of school: Urban-engaged, diverse public school; we offer undergraduate and graduate degrees with a few (soon to be more) doctoral programs.

School locale (including state and country): Buffalo, NY, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? None- LOL. I am a special education teacher and teach in the department of Exceptional Education housed within the School of Education. We prepare candidates to become special educators at the undergraduate and graduate level. I started as an adjunct in 2003 and became full-time faculty in 2012

Classes you teach: I teach all of our early childhood special education classes at the graduate level (Assessment, Intervention/Instruction, Managing Behavior, Emergent Literacy and Cognition) as well as some ABA courses, and an Overview of ASD class. I also co-teach a course with faculty from our SLP program called “Sign Language For Students With Autism And Developmental Disabilities”All of my courses are designated as service learning, so we are out in the community, working with children and families.

Specialization (if applicable): e.g., clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc. Teaching and service, specifically autism spectrum disorder, early childhood special education

Average class size: 20-25

What is the best advice about teaching you have ever received? Take what you do well and run with it! (Note: a glimpse into my room would most likely show a flipped classroom with small group discussions)

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? This is a tough question. Probably the “white book,” Applied Behavior Analysis by Cooper, Heron, and Heward.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I am fairly behavioral, so I like teaching anything that relates to evidence-based ABA practices. I also love teaching early childhood language/literacy/cognition as we bring in a lot of content from storybooks and television/movies. Kids’ television shows get a bad rap but there is gold there if you look for it

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I have two assignments that are pretty closely related. We discuss quality indicators for young children’s literature and then closely examine our favorite children’s book from our past to see how it measures up. We discuss why we loved it as a child and then align it to quality indicators. We do the same thing with our favorite children’s show. It is eye opening. My students are often shocked to see how much garbage is thrown at us by marketers and learn to appreciate the merits of well-done children’s media. I also have a pregnancy simulation long-term activity that we do to study development, using a real app called Ovia, but tweaked for our purposes. Students get a kick out of being pregnant, especially the rare male candidates I have from time to time.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? Reviewing new content as a class with many pauses for whole or small group responding (I like response cards or whiteboards) and then breaking into smaller groups to complete discussion and application activities. I love playing around with innovative ways to group students, especially in my early childhood courses, so that we are modeling good practices for their own classrooms. We use different techniques each day and discuss the “how” and “why” of each. By the end of the semester, I love that my students know everyone in the class well, and not just those that sit next to them. They also end up with a toolkit of ideas to use in their own classrooms.

What is your workspace like? A little more cluttered than I would like but time is always short, and the to-do list is always long. My workspace is often my dining room table as those COVID carry-over habits are hard to break. As corny as it sounds, I do try to make my workspace warm and inviting, especially if I am grading papers as I want to be in the best mood possible. I always light scented candles (warm vanilla), bring in as much natural sunlight as possible, and make sure to have a dog or two at my side.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Interactive, genuine, confident.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Assess early and often.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you have had and how you dealt with the situation. I do not multitask well. Many years ago, as an adjunct, I was trying to talk while finding a video of Dwight from The Office to demonstrate a token economy system with Schrutte Bucks. Somehow I managed to pull up a video of two people engaged in a colorful act. We had snacks in class that day, so my students joked that I am the best professor ever – I feed them and show them porn

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? Students, students, students! I love the interaction with them. Teaching is so rewarding in and of itself, but when you get to see students experience that “aha” moment, it is like winning the lottery, every day.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I started my career in journalism as I wanted to be a sportswriter. I love all sports, but especially my Buffalo Bills (the Bills Mafia is real and awesome), the Sabres, and most other professional sports with the exception of WWE. Is that even considered a professional sport? I honestly have no clue.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I have been trying to start Simon Baron-Cohen’s The Pattern Seekers: How autism drives human invention for months but cannot seem to work it in. If I stopped aimlessly scrolling through my phone at night, I would find the time.

What tech tool could you not live without? There are several. I love Zoom (another COVID carryover) and am completely reliant upon my Outlook calendar, especially the reminders. I also really like the Bookings app on Microsoft Office, which is a gamechanger all the time, but especially during student advisement weeks. Flip is a great resource. I also really like Yuja for video quizzes.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Buffalo Bills, kids, dogs, food, restaurants, cooking shows, stress, and how we need 36 hours in a day.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) My teaching dramatically changed because of COVID, mostly for the better. I streamlined my course content, and really concentrated on essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions. I rely heavily on the flipped classroom model and utilize technology as much as possible. I require my students to meet in small groups outside of class time and let them know they can invite me to pop into their meetings if they have questions or are stuck on a concept. I am also very deliberate about looking out for the well-being of my students (the teaching profession took a big hit during COVID) and have stolen an assignment from my friend, Pam Schuetze, that requires students to attend to their own self-care and reflect upon it. I assign points to it, which helps to ensure students will take it seriously and actually do something tangible for themselves to decompress.

Pamela Schuetze - I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 20:09:25 GMT

School name: SUNY Buffalo State University

Type of school: Comprehensive college that is part of a large state university system

School locale (including state and country): Buffalo, NY, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? 28 years

Classes you teach: Child and Infant Development classes, Research Methods, Senior Seminar, Child Advocacy courses

Specialization (if applicable): Developmental Psychology

Average class size: Ranges from 12 (senior level capstone courses) to 40 (for introductory level developmental courses)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Students learn best when you care and when they can see your passion for the content.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I love teaching Research Methods because doing research is one of my favorite aspects of my job. I also love seeing students who are terrified of the course and convinced that they will never do or like research start to appreciate the research process.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I have begun introducing service learning into several of my courses. One project that I particularly like involves a collaboration between my infant development course, a special education graduate course and a speech/language pathology course on our campus. We place our students into interdisciplinary teams, designed to mimic the type of teams that would provide special services in schools. Students are then trained to conduct developmental screenings using the Ages and Stage Questionnaire (ASQ-3) and the ASQ Social-Emotional questionnaire. They then provide developmental screenings to children from birth to age 5 in the community (day care centers, children’s museum). Those scores are then provided to HelpMeGrow, an organization that connects families to needed resources in the community. Student are then asked to present case studies orally and to write a developmental report based on one of the children they have screened. Students love this project which provides them with important applied experiences related to working with children, assessment and understanding developmental milestones.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? For years, I have flipped many of my classes. I love the classroom time this provides for more active learning and discussion in class. Presenting content outside of class in the form of videos with embedded quiz questions as low-stakes assignments also promotes mastery of the content because students are permitted to retake the quizzes as many times as they like.

I also find service learning to be a powerful technique. Students love the applied work and the sense of mastery that comes with learning content and immediately applying it in an authentic situation.

What’s your workspace like? I work best when my space is organized and free of clutter. I have a color-coordinated system for the various ongoing projects I have. I surround myself with plants and have a small reclining chair and ottoman in the corner that I use when reading journal articles and other materials.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Here are the words that I personally use to describe my teaching style: Project-based learning, student-centered, inquiry-based learning.

I also asked a group of students that know me quite well to describe my teaching style. These are students that have taken several classes with me and have been involved in a short-term travel abroad experience that I co-led with another instructor. They described my teaching style as: organized, creative and accessible (which they defined as meaning that I provide content in a variety of ways so that all students understand the content).

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Teaching must be accompanied by ongoing learning.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. Most recently, I had a service-learning project interrupted by a blizzard. Many students were scheduled to complete a service-learning project that was canceled due to the weather and we were unable to reschedule their project. Since many other students had already completed their portion of the project, I had to quickly pivot and find another opportunity for students that was somewhat comparable in terms of time and provided them with similar experiences that related to class content. After many phone class and emails, I find an alternate project for students to complete. Although stressful for me, students were pleased with the project and I developed some new community contacts.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? Watching students ignite a passion for a particular area of psychology or determine a career plan.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? Students are often surprised to learn that I was a military brat growing up, that I spend two summers serving as a river guide and that I was a music major in college (with a psychology minor) rather than a psychology major.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien.

What tech tool could you not live without? Our Learning Management System (currently switching from Blackboard to D2L Brightspace). I use it to organize all of my class materials for each unit and week. Students have access to much of the content but there is quite a bit that I keep hidden so that I can use it in class or immediately make available based on student interest.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Most recently, we have spent a lot of time talking about changes in higher-education. This includes the financial difficulties facing many institutions, the changing student demographics and concerns about the preparation students have when beginning college. This also includes discussions about the changes we see in students as a result of the pandemic (classroom behaviors, study skills and mental health concerns). Nonacademic conversations most recently have been heavily centered around the Buffalo Bills because they have been having such a great year and they provide a much-needed distraction from other local and global concerns. Go Bills!

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) I have developed numerous strategies for using technology to scaffold learning. Many were techniques I had to use when forced to switch to online learning and have continued to learn as supportive methods when we returned to face-to-face learning. I am currently developing new writing assignments in response to the development of the artificial intelligence bot, ChatGPT, which will ensure that students continue to practice writing in a world where technology can write “some” content for them.

Shlomit Flaisher-Grinberg - I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 14:17:24 GMT

School name: Saint Francis University.

Type of school: Private, catholic, primarily undergraduate university with about 2,000 students.

School locale (including state and country): Loretto, PA, USA.

How many years have you taught psychology? I began teaching psychology as an adjunct lecturer in 2007 and been teaching full time since 2014.

Classes you teach: Biopsychology, Sensation & Perception, Learning, Canine Learning & Behavior, Psychopharmacology, Introduction to Psychology, Neuroscience Seminar, Animal Minds, and Animal-Assisted Health & Education.

Specialization (if applicable): e.g., clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc. I am trained as a behavioral neuroscientist with a specialization in psychopharmacology. Within the past few years my focus has expanded to include animal-assisted interactions and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Average class size: There are 10-12 students in my smallest classes (Canine Learning & Behavior), and 25-30 students in my largest classes (Biopsychology, Introduction to Psychology).

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Have fun in class! If you are having fun, your students are probably having fun too.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Animal Cognition by Clive Wynne and Monique Udell. The book celebrates the capabilities demonstrated by animals, combining rigorous science with pure fascination and love for animals. The book inspired me to create my “Animal Minds” course.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. My favorite course is my “Canine Learning and Behavior” Course. Enrolled students live with shelter dogs for an entire semester, bring them to class, train them according to psychological ‘learning’ methodologies and facilitate their adoption. We end every semester with a ‘Puppy Graduation’ ceremony. Working closely with the community, my students learn to write animal shelter-focused grant applications and integrate the dogs into human-animal interactions in nursing homes and elementary classrooms. This course embodies everything that I love about teaching.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. It is commonly believed that the consumption of a poppy-seed pastry can lead to positive results in a drug-use test. Well, this is not a myth. I use saliva drug detectors, poppy-seed pastries, and a ‘within-subject’ or ‘between-subject’ experimental design to demonstrate this concept to my students. This activity is integrated into my “Psychopharmacology” course (e.g., pharmacokinetics), “Biopsychology” course (discussing the opioid pandemic) or even into my “Introduction to Psychology” (discussing research methods or psychological misconceptions). It is an activity that students do not forget.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? During my first year of full-time teaching, I wanted to know what students were experiencing in my courses. I thus integrated mid-term and final surveys that were tailored to course content and enabled me to receive feedback from students throughout the course. I found the surveys (especially at mid-term) to be super helpful since they gave me ‘real-time’ reflections of details that I could improve in my course design, miscommunications that I could clarify, and an opportunity to let my students’ voice be heard. Years later, I still use these in all my classes.

What’s your workspace like? My office is packed with books, human (and dog) snacks, and random equipment that I need for my courses. I love my office, but I spend most of my day running around campus, checking up on animals housed in other buildings and participating in activities happening all around campus.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Enthusiasm, passion, dedication. I am certain that one day I will be teaching “Biopsychology”, talk about the wonders of the brain, and will just spontaneously combust . I honestly love what I am doing.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Every problem can and will be solved.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. It was the first class of the first day of my first year at Saint Francis University. As I stepped into the classroom my shoe broke open, right at the front near the toes. Every step I took, my shoe opened, closed, and made a funny squeaking noise. Well, I pretended that nothing was happening, my students pretended that nothing was happening, and I taught the class till the end. Today I would probably have taken my shoes off and taught in my socks.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? I truly enjoy creating new courses that allow me to learn new topics in depth. To me, there is no better way to learn then to teach. I also cherish my collaborative work with my students, finding that I have so much to learn from their perspectives, opinions, experience.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? When I was preparing for my move from Israel to the USA in 2007, I knew that I had to work on my English. I also needed motivation. My students may be surprised to learn that I improved my English by reading “Harry Potter” books. Literally, with a dictionary.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? ‘Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals’ by Hal Herzog.

What tech tool could you not live without? Canvas, and other LMS platforms. They allow me to remain organized and consistent.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Since I started teaching the “Learning” class (involving rats), the “Canine Learning and Behavior” class (involving dogs), and lately, the kitten-integrated variation of the “Learning” class, hallway chatter mostly revolves around animals; how cute they are, how much trouble they can get themselves into, how they can be trained, etc. Talking about animals seems to brighten everybody’s day .

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) Prior to Covid19, a student who had to be away from campus (due to an athletic event, family or health-related reason, etc.) would be forced to miss a class session. During the pandemic, I discovered how easy it was for students to join class remotely or for me to record my session and share it. Today, I allow students (within reason) to join my sessions via Zoom. My students understand that face-to face course attendance is required but appreciate the opportunity to remain on track when away from campus.

Carey Bernini Dowling - I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 15:10:07 GMT

School name: University of Mississippi

Type of school: 4-year university with masters and Ph.D. programs

School locale (including state and country): Oxford, MS, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? 12 years

Classes you teach: I currently teach Learning, Psychopathology: Integrative approaches, Psychology of parenting, and a graduate seminar on college teaching. I have taught Introductory psychology, Developmental psychology (lifespan and child), Children and Families: Community Work, Internships in Psychology, Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, and Research and Writing in Psychology.

Specialization (if applicable): e.g., clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc. Clinical

Average class size: 100 (typical range is 10 – 150)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? It is actually advice I received from a clinical supervisor (Dr. Marvin Goldfried) about clinical work, but it is the best advice I have received that I apply to teaching. He told us “You are responsible to your (students), not responsible for your (students).”

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? This is extremely hard to narrow down to just one; I think An evidence-based guide to college and university teaching: Developing the model teacher by Richmond, Boysen, & Gurung has shaped it the most though.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I love teaching the psychology of parenting class; it is so applicable and so rewarding to see students changing their mind about controversial parenting practices. I also love it when they tell me they are implementing strategies either with their own children or with children they work with or are related to, and they are finding them beneficial.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I enjoy role-playing an individual who does not know the research about a topic and then challenging the class to teach and convince me to follow the research advice (e.g., why I should sleep at least 7 – 9 hours a night). The students come to life in a fun way as they realize I’m not going to give them the “right” answer and I’m going to pretend like I don’t even know it or the research backing it up.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? In my face-to-face classes I find activities like retrieval practice (written prompts as well as quiz-style questions), think-pair-share, and discussions of the material they are learning work best with my teaching style. In my asynchronous online courses, I find it most helpful to structure the courses with a variety of activities so that I can scaffold their learning process within lessons and across the semester. I try to have the general process for each module and unit start with them becoming familiar with the new material, then engaging actively with the new material, and finally demonstrating their understanding before moving on to more advanced coursework.

What’s your workspace like? I am lucky to have a very nice office space with an L-shaped desk. So, I have a standing desk converter with my computer and two monitors on one part of the desk and the rest is available for other work and meetings.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. interactive, supportive, challenging

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Set the contingencies to help my students succeed.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. My first semester at the University of Mississippi I was asking for examples of passive genotype-environment correlations, where the parents pass on the genes but also create the environment that would make the child more likely to develop that characteristic or trait, such as Mozart’s dad also being a musician who had lots of musical instruments and other musicians in the house. So, many students gave excellent examples, and I thanked them for their examples. Then one student gave the example of the Mannings. I said, “I’m not familiar with the Mannings, but thank you for your participation”. All 100+ students audibly gasped and then the student said, “Like Peyton Manning?!?”. I immediately turned very red as I realized that he was talking about the football family that is famous on campus. I then talked about how they were getting to see my reaction to embarrassment as I kept blushing.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? Helping students learn information and strategies that are going to help them long-term.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I have been with my husband since we were 15.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I'm trying to decide on my next book, I finished one last night. One of my favorite books that I read this year was The vanishing half by Brit Bennett.

What tech tool could you not live without? Definitely TextExpander

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? What is going on in the department and each other's work lives as well as personal lives.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) The primary change in my teaching is that I am much more flexible with deadlines. I am still trying to figure out the best way to be flexible while also keeping students on track. Another big change is that I stopped giving in person exams if the exam can be done on our learning management system just as effectively.

Chelsea Robertson: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 14:20:21 GMT

School name: West Liberty University

Type of school: Public 4-year university with about 2,000 students

School locale (including state and country): West Liberty, West Virginia, United States

How many years have you taught psychology? I began teaching one credit hour statistics labs as a graduate student in 2018, I’ve been teaching full time since Fall 2021.

Classes you teach: I mostly teach research methods, statistics, intro psychology, and various developmental psychology courses.

Specialization (if applicable): e.g. clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc. My educational background is in translational experimental psychology with a focus on developmental psychology. Within the past few years my focus has expanded to include the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Average class size: About 15-20 students.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? There will always be things that need to get done. You cannot do everything all at once all the time. You need to be a human, too!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? I read “Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto” by Kevin Gannon a few years ago and one quote has stuck with me since: “Teaching is a radical act of hope. It is an assertion of faith in a better future in an increasingly uncertain and fraught present.” In this profession I think it is easy to get hung up on the hundreds of tasks we have to balance every day. On more challenging days I sometimes have to remind myself why I’m doing this and what is truly important. I teach because I have hope for a better future and I know my students will go on to do great things.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. This question is always a challenge! I think I have a tie. I recently got to create and teach a special topics course titled Early Adversity and Resilience, which is one of my primary research interests. Both semesters I taught it, students engaged in such thoughtful discussion. They were able to make connections to many other courses they have taken and how they can use the course information in their post-graduation lives. I also love teaching statistics. Students usually have a lot of anxiety about taking the course and I enjoy seeing students’ confidence grow once they realize that they can become “math people” too.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. This semester I’m working with my statistics students on semester-long research projects where they will design a study, obtain IRB approval, analyze data, and present it to the faculty and students in the psychology department. This is the first time I’ve done this assignment, but I think it will become a favorite!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I try to build in a lot of scaffolding into my classes and that seems to fit my teaching style well. I like to ask my students lots of questions to guide their thinking. In skill-focused classes, like statistics, I use a lot of the gradual release of responsibility framework (“I do, we do, you do”) in my lectures.

What’s your workspace like? My office is small, but I love it. Fluorescent lights aren’t my favorite, so I usually rely on natural sunlight and a lamp for lighting. I’m a pretty organized person, but I usually have a lot of notes, to-do lists, books, and a dozen other things on my desk by the end of the day.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Reflective, empathetic, and authentic.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Your students have to know you care.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. About one week into my first semester being a “real professor”, I was giving my first lecture in an intro psychology course. We were discussing how psychology has a lot of myths, including that we only use 10% of our brains and how very intelligent people, like Albert Einstein, are thought to use more of theirs. I explained that one theory regarding Einstein’s intelligence was that he had structural differences in his brain, like having more melanin. I meant myelin, of course, but didn’t realize my mistake until I had said it a couple of times and my students had very confused looks on their faces. I laughed it off and said something to the effect of, “Well, that’s definitely not what I meant. Let’s try that again!” It wasn’t the most embarrassing thing that could have happened, and think I recovered well, but I felt like hiding under a rock the rest of the day!

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? I love being able to get to know my students and see them grow over the course of a semester, both academically and personally. I am lucky in my current position to have many of our students over multiple semesters, so I get to know them pretty well by the time they graduate.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I think my students would be most surprised to learn I dreaded taking intro psychology as an early undergraduate student. I was an English major and didn’t see how that course would benefit me. Two months into the class I changed my major to psychology!

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I just started reading Lunatic: The Rise and Fall of an American Asylum by Edward S. Gleason.

What tech tool could you not live without? I love using the program JASP in my statistics courses. It’s open source and so user friendly.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Our department is small and our offices are close together, so we’re always talking to each other! We go to each other for advice and encouragement or just to talk about how our classes are going, how our families are doing, or our weekend plans.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) I admittedly did not have much teaching experience prior to the height of the pandemic, but I have noticed some changes in my teaching. I find myself thinking more about my students’ wellbeing and what things they face outside of the classroom, both good and bad. I also intentionally build in more opportunities for my students to interact with each other. I missed being a part of those interactions as a teacher, but I think, in general, my students crave the social aspect of learning. I am also more aware of how important it is to be flexible!

Kevin Apple: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 17:55:14 GMT

School name: James Madison University

Type of school: Public university with 20,0070 undergraduate and 2,096 graduate students.

School locale (including state and country): Harrisonburg, VA USA

How many years have you taught psychology? 26 years

Classes you teach: Currently, I am teaching two courses: 1) Psychological Statistics and Measurement and 2) Learning Strategies. The Learning Strategies class is designed for students facing academic suspension. Other courses I have taught in the past include General Psychology, Psychological Research Methods, Social Psychology, Senior Seminar on the Psychology of the Holocaust, and a few graduate level classes.

Specialization (if applicable): e.g. clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc. Social Psychology

Average class size: 25

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I am going to share two pieces of advice. First, the best piece of advice is to have fun while teaching. If I enjoy sharing information about a topic; hopefully the students can also enjoy thinking about it.

Second, a faculty mentor once advised me to trust my students. When I started teaching, I was suspicious of my students assuming they would try to take advantage of me. According to my mentor, consistently being suspicious of my students harms the classroom environment. Although I trust my students, I still take steps to reinforce academic integrity.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Just in Time Teaching: Blending Active Learning with Web Technology by Novack, Patterson, Gavrin, and Christian.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

This is a hard question! Typically, my favorite course is whatever class I am currently teaching. I enjoy making psychology relevant for my students. As a social psychologist, some of my favorite classes focus on how the power of the situation can cause people to behave in unexpected ways.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

For my statistics students, I enjoy exploring a data set from a published study. I hope the practice of using data from actual studies help students understand the relevance of statistics for the field of psychology.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I use different techniques for different classes. Overall, my main technique is lecture and discussion. My students can contribute to the lecture via in-class discussions, demonstrations, or pre-class questions.

What’s your workspace like?

My desk is a bit messy! I have a standing desk, but I rarely use it.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Energetic, Informative, and Empathetic.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Motivate my students to engage with course material.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I was teaching a General Psychology class to approximately 300 students. As I walked past the podium, my pants brushed across a sharp edge and my pants ripped exposing most of my leg. Thankfully, there was tape in the classroom. I quickly taped up my pants, made a joke, and then continued on with the class.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable?

This is an easy question! I like learning from my students. As I get older, it gets harder for me to relate to my students. By hearing about their opinions and experiences, I gain insights into life as a student in today’s society.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

As a teenager, I was a magician. I used to do magic at children’s birthday parties. I also conducted a few magic workshops at a local library.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I just finished Upgrade by Blake Crouch.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My smart phone is probably my most critical tool. It allows me to keep up on emails and helps me stay on track for my various meetings.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes)

Since the pandemic begun, much of our conversations have been focused on how the students are changing. After taking so many online classes, some students appear to have difficulty adjusting to the social and academic aspects of in-person classes.

PSYCHSESSIONS LINK: In this episode Eric interviews Kevin Apple from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. Kevin serves as department chair, and he clearly sees how important the chair is to providing vital services to constituents. The institutional innovation of Assessment Day allows Kevin and the department to leverage assessment in a meaningful way to 'close the loop' and inform changes which lead to measured student outcomes.

Louise Chim: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 20:07:09 GMT

Louise Chim (she/her/hers)

School name: University of Victoria

Type of school: Public university (22,000 students) with undergraduate and graduate programs.

School locale (including state and country): Located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada on the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən, Songhees, Esquimalt, and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples.

How many years have you taught psychology? 11 years (2 years co-teaching as a graduate student and 9 years post-PhD)

Classes you teach: Introductory Psychology (I and II), Statistical Methods (I and II), Cultural Psychology, Psychology of Diversity

Specialization (if applicable): e.g. clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc. I’m a teaching focused faculty member and I teach primarily undergraduate courses. My training is in cultural psychology and affective science.

Average class size: I teach both range of class sizes (50 to 300) depending on the course and term. I also coordinate the introductory psychology program with about 900+ students per term.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? When I was starting out and had many new course preps on topics I wasn’t an “expert” in, my mentor told me to aim for “good enough” rather than trying to create the perfect course/class/assessment. I continue to strive to make iterative improvements in my courses rather than trying to do everything all at the same time.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

What has shaped my work as a psychology teacher the most is the learning and reflecting that happens from interactions with the teaching community. That has been the most pleasantly surprising thing that has come from becoming a psychology teacher. The community that has shaped my work as a psychology teacher include workshops and groups organized locally at my university (e.g., psychology teaching seminars, working groups to support instructors teaching first-year classes, workshops and symposia about decolonizing teaching and learning) to regional and international conferences (e.g., TIP Northwest [https://www.tipnorthwest.org/], PsychOne [http://www.psychoneconference.org/])

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. My two favorite courses to teach are cultural psychology and statistics.

With cultural psychology, my favorite part is when students

realize how much their assumptions and biases about what makes a “good person” is fundamentally shaped by their cultural context;
recognize how much of what we know about psychology is not a diverse representation of the world;
and see themselves represented in some of the research we talk about in class.

With statistics, I find it rewarding when the course exceeds their expectations (and it ends up being even one of their favorite courses in the term) and when students who come in anxious with a fixed mindset about statistics realize that they can grow and learn and ultimately are able to succeed in the course.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I enjoy using community engaged learning projects in my statistics class. Students apply what they are learning in class to a larger project and also interact and learn from community members.

In my cultural psychology class, I like to do activities that show them the individual variation in psychological concepts. For example, I ask students write down all the choices they’ve made today (including some possible choices they may have made in class) to show that there is variation in what people consider a choice or not (e.g., Savani, Markus, Naidu, Kumar, & Berlia, 2010).

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I find that I am my most authentic teaching self when I have students engage in active learning in class. I try my best even in more “lecture-style” large classes to intersperse discussion, activities, multiple choice questions, low stakes writing or assignments in class. I also try to have a balance of activities where they are engaging in self-reflection and when they have to work in pairs or smaller or larger groups.

What’s your workspace like? In terms of set-up, I have dual monitors and a standing desk but decorating my office space is still a work in progress after 9 years of being in the same office.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Approachable, relatable and relevant

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

I don’t think this quite sums up my teaching philosophy but the best I’ve come up is: “Create flexible and transparent structure and guidelines.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable?

See previous question about which courses are my favorite ones to teach.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

That I played collegiate ice hockey.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I just finished The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole.

What tech tool could you not live without?

A learning management system, particularly for coordinating and structuring large intro psych classes.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

You’ll find me talking to colleagues most about teaching-related questions and good / new places to eat in Victoria.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes)

One change that happened because of the Covid-19 pandemic is that my university provided us with easy access to online tools such as zoom and Microsoft teams. With a lot of students commuting to campus, this provides students with easier (virtual) access to office hours.

PSYCHSESSIONS Podcast: In this episode Garth interviews Louise Chim from the University of Victoria in Victoria, Canada. She played on the hockey team for 2 years as a Harvard undergraduate before pursuing graduate work in psychology / affective science at Stanford. Her resilience and patience are impressive, and she now serves as an associate teaching professor at UVic, and is actively involved in TIP Northwest & Psi Chi.

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/2021/10

Vishal Thakkar: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 16:27:08 GMT

School name: Tarrant County College Southeast Campus (TCC) and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW)

Type of school: TCC is a two-year college and UTSW is a medical center with no undergraduate students.

School locale (including state and country): Dallas, Texas

How many years have you taught psychology? 1.5

Classes you teach: TCC: General Psychology, Lifespan Growth and Development, Biological Psychology, Research Methods; UTSW: Research Design and Multivariate Statistics

Specialization (if applicable): cognitive, behavioral neuroscience

Average class size: 15-20 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? The best advice about teaching I have ever received is probably: (a) to never reinvent the wheel since thinking simply is often more powerful than trying to think extravagantly and (b) always take a deep breath since that’s all it often takes to soak in the fun part of the job, solve a problem, or have a great idea.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Transforming Introductory Psychology edited by Regan Gurung and Garth Neufeld, Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning by Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I really enjoy teaching case studies in the neuropsychology world since they offer a lot of depth and insight into behavior and how the brain functions. I also love teaching about research methods, design, and statistics. No matter what subfield people pursue, this topic is fundamental and follows us everywhere! I think it also helps us understand the world around us and formulate opinions in a world that relies on data and statistics.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. One of my favorite activities that I did as a student was a year-long research project that turned into a poster to present at a departmental end-of-year event. It taught me a lot about IRB submissions, the research process, working in teams, and putting data into perspective. As an instructor, I really enjoyed having my students complete an assignment where they could create a 10-minute mini podcast episode on a psychological topic of their choice or write a letter to someone in government about how the topic can apply to policy advocacy and change. Students did a great job with this, and I saw how much they learned and applied to the real world!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I really enjoy structuring most classes by doing a few minutes of review at the beginning, outlining the objectives of the current day, going through lecture and activities for that content, and then ending class with anonymous (e.g., Poll Everywhere) review questions that help prepare for assessments.

What’s your workspace like? I need a clear workspace! I really only keep what I am actively working on in front of me, and that includes only having computer programs or internet tabs open if I am using them. This helps me stay focused on the task instead of bouncing back and forth and losing trains of thought. I will often have a cup of coffee, a water bottle, and music or a podcast in the background.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. interactive, real-world, and enthusiastic

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Equip students with skills to evaluate and understand the world.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. My first semester at TCC, I was teaching introduction to psychology. When building the syllabus, I never marked Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and other holidays, so a student genuinely thought I expected them to attend class during the holidays.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? I always believe that everyone has their own story. Teaching gives me an opportunity to get to know people from all sorts of backgrounds and walks of life. It makes teaching psychology a more meaningful experience since everyone can share their views or personal experiences in class, helping everyone understand these concepts in the real world.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? My students are sometimes surprised to learn that I am a vegetarian, have officiated a wedding, and was in the hospital for 30 days in fifth grade (something tied to cerebellum first, then malaria the second time).

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom and Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

What tech tool could you not live without? Laptop! I do a lot of writing and journaling for fun, and the laptop holds all of it.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Coffee, recent sports games, funny stories from class, board games, and TV shows (huge fan of shows like Brooklyn 99, Schitt’s Creek, Friends)

Jenel Cavazos: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 15:13:51 GMT

School name: University of Oklahoma

Type of school: 4-year flagship state school; R-1 classification

School locale (including state and country): Oklahoma, U.S.

How many years have you taught psychology? 13 years as a professor, 4 more as a graduate student.

Classes you teach: introductory psychology, occasionally lifespan growth and development. I will be teaching a graduate course on psychology teaching for the first time next spring and I can’t wait!

Specialization (if applicable): technically my Ph.D. is in social psychology, but my job description is master teacher and program coordinator for introductory psychology. I’ve never actually taught a social psychology class!

Average class size: 450-500

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? My major professor in graduate school, Dr. Nicole Judice-Campbell, used to tell me, “I’m no different than you are; I’m just a few more years down this path.” She is still the best teacher I know, and I used to think that I’d never be able to be anything like her. Her advice gave me the space to just grow into my own teaching skills and understand that teaching is a journey rather than a destination. For a perfectionist like me, it is so important to receive the message that we are all still learning!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Doug Bernstein’s article “Bye Bye Intro: A Proposal for Transforming Introductory Psychology” (2017) really impacted me. I’m cheating a little bit because I saw him give the talk at NITOP so it was really a double-hit sort of thing. But his idea that we need to teach in a way that is impactful to society rather than catering to potential majors (who are unlikely to remember the content anyway) made a lot of sense to me. I created several new assignments based on his ideas in the semester following his NITOP talk, including one where students create an infographic debunking one of psychology’s greatest myths. When I decide what course content to include in class now, I think about whether it will broadly impact the students’ lives rather than whether a psych major would need it for a later class.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I have a lot of students, so I use a small army of undergraduate teaching assistants to help me run the course (usually 10 or so per class). They are enrolled in an upper-division Instructor’s Aide course, and although it’s not a traditional “class” that I get credit for teaching, it has become one of my favorite parts of my job. I get to know the TAs well, and I spend a fair amount of time mentoring them on psychology-related and life-related things. It also keeps me at least somewhat knowledgeable about the lives of 18- to 20-year-olds, and I use them to bounce off ideas and get suggestions on all sorts of things. Some move on and I never hear from them again, but many others end up returning as TAs for multiple semesters or becoming research assistants. One long-time TA will be joining me as a graduate student this coming fall!

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I give three different surveys throughout the semester to get a sense of how the class is feeling. The last survey includes an open-ended question about the performance of their undergraduate teaching assistants, and I go through and share the best ones with the TAs themselves. They love hearing that they’ve made a difference in their students’ lives, and I love getting to show them how important they really are. Everyone is so supportive of each other, and it’s just such a great, positive way to end the semester.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I use a lot of repeated testing and elaboration during my classes. Since they are so large, I rely on student response systems to help keep the class engaged and get a sense of how well they are understanding the content. Every few minutes, they will get some sort of question – it might be matching, true/false, multiple choice – but it will be practice from the content we’ve been learning. They can consult their notes and talk to friends, but they typically won’t find an easy answer in their book because I like using application-based questions that make them think. The TAs and I all walk around during the questions, listening to the conversations and discussing where we can. Once the answers have been submitted, I like to dig deeper and ask students to share how they knew which answer was correct, how they could change the question to make one of the other answer choices correct, and so on. I’m trying to train their cognitive flexibility while strengthening recall and boosting class interaction at the same time.

What’s your workspace like? Very neat and tidy. I’ve been 100% digital in my work since about 2015, so I don’t have papers or journals lying around. Everything lives in the cloud, which is helpful since I move between my campus office and home office a lot. I like to think that my office is friendly and welcoming to students; I have a lot of family pictures, owl décor (my favorite!) and modular furniture that can be moved around to accommodate different groups.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Energetic, authentic, application-based.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Communicate excitement and connect psychology to everyday life.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? Mentorship. I value the relationships I’ve built with students because we both contribute to each other’s knowledge about the world. I pride myself on being approachable, so it is important to me that students feel comfortable seeking out my advice or perspective on whatever challenges they’re facing.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I am very involved in singing (I started college as a music major). I sing with a group called Canterbury Voices, which is an auditioned group that performs major concerts several times throughout the year. I have gotten to be a part of many unique experiences as a member of this group, including singing in the Titanic musical with Lyric Theater in Oklahoma City and performing several times with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. We will be singing onstage with Andrea Bocelli in his “Believe” tour when it comes to Oklahoma City in two weeks!

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Ok, I can’t believe that I’m admitting this, but I absolutely love vampire romance novels. I’ve read the entire Anita Blake series, the Black Dagger Brotherhood, and several others. They probably appeal to my just-world beliefs because they are predictable and the good characters always win, but honestly they’re just fun.

What tech tool could you not live without? Top Hat, 100%. I’ve been using their student response system since 2016, but I’ve also added a custom textbook, exams, and several other assignments to their platform. At this point, I’d say 75% of my class is run out of Top Hat (with the other 25% in Canvas).

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes). Because of the size of my classes, I was online for an entire year during the worst of the pandemic. When I returned to the classroom this last school year, I kept in-person attendance completely optional and reworked my participation assignments to be completed in person or online. I also kept the online exams that I had implemented during the Covid year, since they worked really well. My class is now optimized for in-person learning but is adaptable to moving completely online for any student(s) who require it. I’m glad I’m able to provide this level of flexibility at the individual student level, and I know I’ll be well prepared if we are ever forced to pivot online again in the future.

PSYCHSESSIONS CONNECTION: Listen to Garth and Jenel talk about her introductory psychology courses!

E140: Jenel Cavazos: Introductory Psychology Master Teacher, Systems Oriented, Thoughtful Mentor

Marianne Lloyd: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 14:06:23 GMT

School name: Seton Hall University

Type of school: Private, Catholic, primarily undergraduate but there are Master’s and Doctoral programs.

School locale (including state and country): South Orange, New Jersey, United States

How many years have you taught psychology? Since 2006 at Seton Hall but I taught my first class as a graduate student in the summer of 2002.

Classes you teach: I have taught a variety bur lately it is mostly Research Methods, Cognitive Psychology Lab, and Orientation to the Psychology Major.

Specialization (if applicable): Cognitive

Average class size: 18-25

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Be authentic.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Specifications Grading by Linda Neilson

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.Unsurprisingly, as an experimentalist, I love talking about a 2x2 design and all the potential combinations that can occur and how great it is that we can answer so many questions using this approach.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. Around 1/3 of the way through Research Methods we watch the Ted Talk “How Racism Makes Us Sick” and then go through all the ways it demonstrates what we have learned so far. In addition to the content being brought up the rest of the semester as meaningful, they get a chance to see how much they now can apply from the class.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I put cognitive psychology into action and focus on spaced learning with plenty of retrieval practice.

What’s your workspace like? Piles of books, papers, and notebooks. Plus lots of things about who I am outside of work so there’s race bibs/medals, pictures of my family, nods to my concerns about EDI, and a framed picture of the Cleveland skyline, which is the city closest to where I grew up. We have generously sized offices so I also have a small sofa, which has come in handy on many occasions.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Compassionate, Transparent, Deliberate.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? We are in this together, thankfully.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. This one is stumping me, suggesting I should take more risks! Other than the occasional turn of phrase that I don’t realize has taken on a new meaning, I can’t think of anything that rises to the embarrassment or disaster level.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? Watching how much students can grow and change in the short term of a semester or the longer term of their full college experience.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I was a pack a day smoker in college.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan.

What tech tool could you not live without? Blackboard grading in browser.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? A bit of everything from classes, to committees, to concerns. I consider many of my colleagues to also be friends and this makes going to work rewarding in many domains of my wellness.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes)I have doubled down on thinking about what is most important and how I can create an equitable classroom that doesn’t also mean I spend my whole life grading.

BONUS PSYCHSESSIONS CONNECTION: Listen to Marianne talk with Garth about teaching research methods, specifications grading, and more!
E142: Marianne Lloyd Part 2: Education Innovator, Reflects Meaningfully, Genuine Commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Christie Cathey : I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Thu, 19 May 2022 02:47:45 GMT

School name: Missouri State University

Type of school: public four-year with approximately 20,000 students

School locale (including state and country): Springfield, Missouri, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? It’s been 20 years since I finished my PhD and got my first teaching position, but I feel like I just started. Time flies!

Classes you teach: I’ve taught a wide variety of classes in the past, including Social, Personality, Statistics, Research Methods, Women and Gender, and Cultural Psychology, but for the past nine years, my focus has been exclusively on Introductory Psychology. I’m also an instructor of our Teaching of Psychology course, which is designed to train the undergraduate psychology majors who assist with the Intro course.

Specialization (if applicable): e.g. clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc. Social

Average class size: 330 in Introductory Psychology

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? “Allow your classroom to double as your research lab.” I can’t point to one single person who told me this bit of advice, but it’s something I’ve heard over and over from STPeeps over the years. My SoTL work has definitely made my teaching more effective, and it’s helped a ton with my research productivity, so I’m really grateful for that advice!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Twenty years ago, my friend from grad school, Angela Walker, (now at Quinnepiac University) gave me a copy of The Teaching of Psychology: Essays in Honor of Wibert J. McKeachie and Charles L. Brewer edited by Steve Davis and Bill Buskist. I loved that book, and it was the first I ever read that was written by people in the STP world. It made me want to strive to be a master teacher and it gave me a sense of how to do that.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. These days, I love teaching students about research from the field of positive psychology. We have such a strong belief in our culture that our happiness and well-being are dependent on our life situation (what sort of job we have, how much money we make, who our partner is, what our health is like, etc.), so I love presenting research that shows that those sorts of external situations account for just a small bit of our overall level of happiness and that there are loads of simple, intentional behaviors we can engage in that can make a big difference in how happy we feel. I think students need this stuff now more than ever.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I developed a class demonstration on top-down versus bottom-up processing that uses backmasking. It’s so much fun and it helps students really understand this difficult concept. I first play a backward clip of a song for the class and ask them if they hear the hidden message. They don’t (that’s their experience with bottom-up processing). I then play the same clip, but I show them the purported hidden message as they listen. Now they hear the message, and they understand that that’s top-down processing. I did this demo at NITOP several years ago and shared a handout that describes how to do the demo and that has a link to my slides. If you’re interested in trying it out, it’s here.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I teach massive sections of Introductory Psychology (330 students), so I find using clickers really useful for checking in to see how well students are understanding the concepts we’re covering in class. When a lot of students miss a particular question, I ask them to talk to the person next to them about the question, and then I re-poll. The percentage of correct responses almost always goes way up. Peer instruction is fantastic stuff!

What’s your workspace like? I have a tiny office with no windows, but I love it. I’m now 99% paperless, so my workspace is wonderfully uncluttered as a result. I cherish good lighting, so I keep the terrible fluorescent lights turned off and use lots of lamps. My walls are covered with posters I found while traveling, funny pictures of my kids, and my kindergarten diploma (my mother kept everything).

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Enthusiastic, down-to-earth, and caring

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? “I believe the children are our future.” I’m kidding! Whitney Houston always sings in my head when I’m tasked with writing a teaching philosophy. Here’s the real one: “Show students you care about them as individuals.”

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. The first class I taught independently was in my third year of grad school. It was a 50-minute, M/W/F Social Psychology course. I fully prepped my first three lectures before the semester started and I felt like I was really on top of things. I showed up that first Monday and made it through my first set of lecture notes in 20 minutes. By the end of class, I’d gone through all three class preps and still had time to spare. It took a long time for me to learn how to slow down and pace myself. I’m now really good at knowing exactly how much material to prep for a given amount of time, but that didn’t happen overnight.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? I love doing research with undergraduate students more than anything. When I was an undergraduate myself, learning about research and getting to conduct my own studies was by far the very best part of being a psychology major, so I really enjoy sharing that experience with students. My undergraduate research lab members are amazing students, and our lab meetings are the most fun, creative time of my work week!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I get grumpy. Students always assume that the behaviors they see from us in class are reflective of what we’re like all the time - textbook fundamental attribution error. I have a carefully curated, very bubbly, very enthusiastic persona in the classroom. Students frequently comment about my constant positive mood, and my daughters laugh and laugh when I tell them this. I can grump like the best of ‘em, but I’ll never let my students see that side of me!

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I just finished Maus by Art Speigleman. I ordered it months ago when it was in the news for being banned by a Tennessee school board and I finally started reading it last week. It’s a truly great, Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel and sadly, it’s an incredibly timely read right now.

What tech tool could you not live without? I can’t imagine life without YouCanBookMe. Students use it to sign up for meetings during my office hours. It’s been a real game-changer and saves so much time and back-and-forth emailing. I’m indebted to the great Sue Franz for introducing me to this tool in one of her conference tech talks many years ago.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Offspring! Many of my colleagues have children around the same age as mine (my daughters are 13 and 16), so a lot of our hallway chatter involves sharing stories from the frontlines of parenting teenagers. I also have a number of colleagues with toddlers and preschoolers, and though I always tell them it gets easier, I don’t really believe that’s true. I consider that to be an acceptable (and humane) deception, though

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? Our Introductory Psychology instructional team had to make a lot of Covid19-related adjustments to the course. For example, we moved exams online and we dropped class participation from our grading scheme. We plan to go back to our pre-pandemic class structure in the fall of 2022, and I can’t wait. That said, I’m not sure things will be exactly as they were before just because our syllabi go back to normal. I suspect most college instructors will continue to see effects of the pandemic on students’ mental health and academic performance for a long time. Fortunately, I think those of us who teach psychology are in a unique position to incorporate best practices from our field to help students overcome these setbacks. Collectively, we’ve all been through a lot, so it’s going to take time and a lot of thoughtful effort to help everyone get back on their feet.

PSYCHSESSIONS: listen to Cathy discuss introductory psychology with Garth! E138: Christie Cathey: Introductory Psychology Expert, Teacher of Teachers, Understanding Self Through Multicultural Lens

Molly Metz: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 15:38:28 GMT

School name: University of Toronto – St. George Campus

Type of school: R1 University

School locale (including state and country): Toronto, Ontario, Canada (there are 3 U of T campuses, but I am smack in the middle of downtown Toronto)

How many years have you taught psychology? 10 years as instructor of record, 7 post-PhD

Classes you teach: large enrollment lower-level Statistics 1 and 2 and Intro to Research Methods; smaller upper-level social psych courses like Social Psychology of Emotion and Social Psychology of Close Relationships

Specialization: I am a social psychologist by training, but my position is as an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, which means I focus on undergraduate curriculum and teaching in a major research-focused psychology department

Average class size: 200 for Stats, 50 for upper-level social psych courses

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? I’m not sure this is the best advice, per se, but perhaps the advice that I consistently carry with me, is that I can’t do everything. There is always more we could do, things we could change, and I struggle with feeling like I’m not succeeding as a teacher because I haven’t implemented some best practice. But, we also need to care for ourselves, and the parts of ourselves that exist outside of work (or, we need to make sure there ARE parts of ourselves that exist outside of work), and being here for my students, imperfect but nourished, is more important than burning myself out while striving for perfection. I’m working on it.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? This is SERIOUSLY hard to answer, because I am a voracious reader, and have been reading and following psychology and higher education blogs since 2012. I am also an aspirational book buyer – the books (or ebooks) I have on my shelf are my to-do list, a reminder of my values, beautiful office art…what they are not, however, is fully read.

As just a couple of examples of things that have spoken to me, though:

This blog post came across my RSS reader early in grad school, when I was struggling with impostor feelings and feeling like a weirdo for being in a top research program but loving teaching. I was feeling like I wasn’t ‘enough’ somehow, and this post gave me vocabulary to start to explain to myself and others that I wasn’t choosing a ‘lesser’ path.
This blog post (which is now a full book) was hugely influential in shifting how I think about students who are not like the student I was. I always fancied myself supportive and empathic, but this article really made me think about who my policies were disproportionately harming. It was an important first step down the road of need-supportive teaching, accessibility, equity, and living my values, which I still work on everyday.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach I really love teaching intro stats. I love seeing students go from anxiety and/or disengagement to begrudging appreciation (or even all-out liking).

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. One of my favourite assignments is the blogging assignment I developed for a Close Relationships course and have also used in a Sex & Gender course. It is a semester-long project that helps students think critically about readings, paraphrase technical information, communicate with a non-expert audience, and learn from each other. Also, way more fun to read than research proposals.

Read more about it on the blog itself here and in an STP eBook here!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? In stats and methods, I make use of active lecturing techniques, since these classes are 200-400 people. I intersperse periods of lecture with learning check questions, think-pair-share discussions, and activities to practice what we are learning. When I moved to online asynchronous in 2020, I recorded my lectures in small chunks (6-18 min each) and programmed LMS quizzes or discussion boards to mimic the in-class activities I had come to love.

In my upper-level courses, I love taking good time for small group discussion about journal articles multiple times a term. They are in the same small group all semester, so they can get to actually know classmates and not have to do the awkward getting-to-know-you stuff every week, and I provide a discussion guide to keep them on track and make sure they discuss the stuff I want them to talk about. Then, afterward, we take a few minutes as a whole class to highlight key parts of their discussions. It is a great balance of the intimacy of small group work with structure.

What’s your workspace like? After waiting three years with my itty bitty windowless office, I was finally moved into a bigger, sunlit space… in June of 2020. So I moved all my stuff, but still haven’t really had a chance to nest and make it mine! For now, my workspace is still our tiny home office (with afternoon sunlight and tons of gorgeous plants, courtesy of my green-thumbed spouse) and my Zoom room.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Conversational, need-supportive, evolving

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. Scene: Psych 100 TA-led discussion section in my very first quarter of my very first year of graduate school. I am barely older than my students, just 22, and I am trying desperately to be taken seriously. In one session, I am to be introducing students to Alfred Kinsey and the scientific study of sex. One slide has links to different sections of his classic 1948 report, and instead of choosing a topic myself, I want my students to indicate what they most want to learn about. I could say, “tell me what you want to learn about!” but noooooo, instead, I say brightly for all to hear, “okay, who wants anal sex?”

So. That happened. We all laughed and I was slightly less uptight for the rest of the term. No other choice, really!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? Probably something that doesn’t fit the schema of “nerdy professor,” like that I was in a cover band in college, or have been skydiving twice. Those experiences make me sound cooler than I actually am (evidenced by the fact that I used the word ‘cool’).

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Right now I am reading School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. I’m only about 1/3 of the way through and it is hard and sad and haunting and scary, so of course I need to see it through. I have a huge queue of books of all kinds for pleasure (see above re: aspirational book buying) and I do my best to set aside at least a few minutes for reading each day.

What tech tool could you not live without? I don’t know if this counts as a ‘tool’, but I highly value the connection and professional and personal networks that social media supports. Of course there are toxic things in all places inhabited by humans, but overall, my life is better and I am better at my job and a better person because of these virtual social spaces. As many folks know, the STP Facebook group holds a very dear place in my heart (I was mod/admin of the group for 4.5 years) and was especially valuable to me as a grad student/ECP trying to find my way. I also avoided Twitter until June of 2020 when I joined to judge a poster conference, and have since found another amazing community. It connected me with professional spaces I didn’t otherwise have easy access to (e.g., the world of faculty developers) and with voices I didn’t otherwise hear often (e.g., disability scholars and advocates, LGBT scholars and advocates, Black scholars and advocates, Indigenous scholars and advocates), all of which have informed my personal and professional development.

PSYCHSESSIONS: Listen to Molly talk about self-determination theory and other connections between psychology research and her life! "E118: Molly Metz: Multi-Talented, Multiple Interests, Deep Commitment to Teaching, Deep Thinking Overachiever"

Erin Tone: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 15:43:07 GMT

School name: Georgia State University

Type of school: Large urban research university (50,000+ students)

School locale (including state and country): Atlanta, Georgia, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? 16 years at GSU and two years as a graduate student and teaching fellow

Classes you teach: Clinical Foundations: Psychotherapy (graduate course); Caste and Mental Health (undergraduate honors course); Abnormal Psychology (study abroad course)

Specialization (if applicable): Clinical

Average class size: 10-48 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Teaching boils down to relationships—we absorb ideas and take intellectual risks much more readily when we feel seen and cared about. Make a point of finding a way to connect—even briefly—with all students in ways that allow them to experience themselves as important, valuable, and capable contributors to the world.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? There are so many! I reread William Zinsser’s On Writing Well annually. I also hate seeing ideas presented as “new” when they are actually being recycled without credit to those who had developed them earlier, so I make a point of tracing ideas and concepts to their origins in the literature. This means that I have been deeply influenced by any number of dusty gems buried in our library stacks.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I like my students to connect with the world around them in ways that pique their curiosity and build their confidence. In my current class on “Caste and Mental Health”, after reading and discussing Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste, students conducted video interviews with people from around the world (ranging from a journalist in India from the Dalit caste who has written eloquently about how caste has affected her mental health to psychologists working in different marginalized communities across the U.S.). They will present their findings in class, with a clinical-community psychologist whose work revolves around social justice serving as a virtual discussant.

What’s your workspace like? Intermittently pristine and chaotic—I find cleaning and organizing my space to be oddly soothing, so I let it get messy sometimes just for the pleasure of restoring it to order.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Warm, animated, precise.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? “Only connect!” (E.M. Forster, Howards End)

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I have been lucky in that most of my embarrassing moments as a teacher have gone undetected. I think my worst moment was during a guest lecture at my daughter’s high school AP psychology class—I was excitedly talking about psychopathology and whipped out my Expo markers and started scribbling on the board. The entire room gasped, and 3 students ran up to rescue their brand-new smart board from me. Fortunately, they arrived in time and one student sacrificed his sleeve to save the day. Even more fortunately, the incident (and their amazement that I didn’t know what a smart board was) loosened up the group and we ended up having a much livelier and more engaged discussion than we might have otherwise.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? I love the opportunity it provides to connect with students who see the world through lenses that differ dramatically from my own. My university is large and richly diverse, which makes it a wonderful place to build relationships with people whose lived experiences differ dramatically from my own. This context makes teaching and learning much more reciprocal than they might otherwise be, enabling me, in some ways, to live out my ostensibly incompatible dreams of being both a professor and a professional college student.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? The two things that most often catch them off guard are that I have backyard chickens and that my path into clinical psychology was winding and indirect (I went from a major in English/German Literature to a year in Teach for America, which in turn led me to pursue a master’s degree in school psychology. An unexpected job at a children’s psychiatric hospital/research institute then sent me back to school in clinical psychology.).

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I keep multiple books going at once—I always have 1-2 mysteries at my bedside (currently Louise Penny and Hillary Clinton’s State of Terror and Stacey Abrams’s While Justice Sleeps). I just got Richard Powers’s The Overstory from my neighborhood little book library and am looking forward to starting it too. When I need something funny, I turn to Allie Brosh, whose Hyperbole and a Half makes me laugh until I hurt.

What tech tool could you not live without? My Fitbit. Although it doesn’t relate directly to my teaching, the indirect effects of exercising infinitely more than I might without a constant stream of data to digest have been notable. It has also been a surprising source of connection to my colleagues throughout the pandemic—since we were unable for so long to meet in person, we started setting up “walk n’ talk” meetings where we chatted on the phone, upped our step counts, and competed in challenges. These have continued and have been a lovely addition to my working life.

Mindy Bergman - I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 16:40:29 GMT

School name: Texas A&M University

Type of school: super large public R1 PhD granting

School locale (including state and country): Texas, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? 23

Classes you teach: Undergraduate: Psychological Aspects of Human Sexuality, Organizational Psychology, Introductory Psychology; Graduate: Foundational graduate course in Organizational Psychology; Seminar on Occupational Health and Work Stress; and Seminar on Commitment

Specialization (if applicable): industrial-organizational

Average class size: undergraduate: 100 (human sex, organizational) – 200 (intro); graduate: 8

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? When I was going through teacher orientation in graduate school, Sandy Goss Lucas showed several videos of instructors who were VERY different and all were considered excellent. She said to be yourself, care about your students, and know the material--there’s no one right way to be a good teacher.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Mr. Rogers Neighborhood—the old TV show.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. Psychological Aspects of Human Sexuality is my favorite course. Its super interesting and also feels very important in our society.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I learned this one from my colleagues in Women’s and Gender Studies and began implementing it in my human sex course: let the students set the class ground rules. On the second day of class, I set the first two ground rules, which is that all adult consensual sexual behavior is acceptable and that we respect all people. From there, I ask the students to either get into small groups to discuss other rules (pre-pandemic) or to write some ideas in paper (during pandemic). Then they nominate rules to the class (one at a time), followed by discussion and modification, and then we agree as a group to adopt the rule. I’m not surprised at the consistency across courses—like some form of “people are going to tell some stories here, don’t retell them to others outside of class for your entertainment and definitely do not share identities.” But I am surprised by the nuances that different classes bring each semester. Then I include the class rules on the syllabus quiz (open syllabus/open notes).

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? Lots of discussion, often based on an interesting video. I do both small group (2-4 people) discussions as well as whole class discussions, and both seem useful.

What’s your workspace like? Big desk top, very cluttered; usually have a running list of things that need to get done on a paper to my right.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Positive, organized, humorous

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? It has evolved since I started teaching Human Sexuality about 8 years ago. Now it is: model acceptance, laugh lots, trust students’ mutual care

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. The most embarrassing thing I’ve said—although it’s 100% a reasonable description—is the time I described the internal vaginal structure and how it is normally “deflated” or “collapsed” when it is not engorged, but when it is engorged the fluids provide more structure and so it is more “inflated” or “stands up like a cylinder or a canister.” Then I said—here it is—the vagina is like a bounce house. How did I deal with it? I hid behind the white board, then posted to social media where everyone got a good laugh.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? Student learning and self-discovery. Sometimes it is about their career paths and lifelong goals, sometimes its about their identities, sometimes something else entirely. Knowing that I am a small part of their personal progress toward becoming who they are going to be, or their better understanding of themselves, is worth the effort.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I went to poetry camp as a high school student, as part of a summer arts institute in Oklahoma.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? With my family: The Nevermoor Series by Jessica Townsend; for myself: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, Wayfarer series by Becky Chambers, Veronica Speedwell series by Deanna Raybourn

What tech tool could you not live without? My phone—gotta DUO authenticate into everything!

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Hallway chatter is usually about (a) research, (b) graduate student questions/concerns/progress, (c) our kids, (d) big picture university politics/programs/questions, and (e) from 2012-2018, the TV show Scandal.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) Yes, and I think for the better! I lectured less. I standardized deadlines (e.g., a deadline every week at exactly the same time every week). I switched to online, weekly, open book/notes quizzes instead of in-class, closed books/notes, every few weeks tests. The shorter format was because I worried that there would be a change to COVID protocols at the time of a test and it would make everything complicated. (And in Texas, we had the deadly freeze in February 2021, so it did happen—classes cancelled, people didn’t have power, etc.) The online was convenience, although setting it up was not! And it turned out that open book/notes didn’t result in radically different distribution of scores than closed books/notes. I’m keeping all of these changes.

Regan A. R. Gurung - I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach.

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 14:51:13 GMT

School name: Oregon State University

Type of school: Public Research

School locale (including state and country): Corvallis, Oregon, USA.

How many years have you taught psychology? 24

Classes you teach: Intro Psych, Research Methods, Health Psychology, Science of Teaching and Learning, Teaching Seminar.

Specialization (if applicable): Social/Personality

Average class size: 350 (Intro Psych); 30 (Teaching Seminar); 50 (Research Methods)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

“Don’t sweat the small stuff, and its mostly all small stuff.”

“Evaluations will often feature outliers on both ends of the spectrum. Savor the highs. Note the lows. Be watchful for what is consistent across students either way.”

“Have a clear idea about why you are having students do something. It must have a purpose and the potential to help them learn (evidence based or research promise). It you cannot share why (tie it to your philosophy) then perhaps you should not have them do it.

Not everything you are told to do, should be done. Be critical of suggestions and educational buzzwords.

Take time for YOU. If you are not strong and rested, you cannot serve students well.

Practice what you teach- For any comment, email, otherwise (from student, colleague, or friend) may sure you do not react when you are tired, and without considering situational attributions – what is going on in that person’s life or day, next to the potential knee-jerk person attribution (that person is X).

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Working on recent and current book projects, especially Thriving in Academic (with Pam Ansburg and Mark Basham), Study Like a Champion (with John Dunlosky), Model Teaching Criteria (with Aaron Richmond & Guy Boysen), and Transforming Introductory Psychology (with Garth Neufeld, co-editor and some of the most hard-working teachers I know, members of the APA Intro Psych Initiative).

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Absolutely love teaching about stress and coping and how to best study in the class topic category.

Because of the significance to life, I really enjoy teaching health psych and methods though have to admit one of the biggest thrills was to develop and teach a course called Gods, Ghosts, and Goblins: Why we believe.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

One of the most difficult things to do is students to tease apart the mechanics of science, and see how what to them seems like jargon, actually translates to life. One of my favorite activities is to first have students complete a survey with numerous scales from psych such as measures of personality, self esteem, health beliefs model, etc. The survey has no labels and this is early in the course (done it in both research methods and health psych). Once we cover material on the related topics I have them see if they can identify which scales were used based on the material taught/read. They develop hypotheses about how the different concepts are related, then I give them data from their own class and THEY analyze the data to practice their stats skills. Then they interpret the findings writing both an APA style abstract to practice technical writing and as a blog and twitter post to practice sharing science and ensuring they can talk about the concepts and findings confidently and in a way they can easily apply to life.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I am a big fan of sharing cognitive science with my students and really helping them to use it. I used to just talk about best practices, then I realized I should the time to PUT it INTO practice. Now each class period I have a practice retrieval exercise. I design assignments to explicitly foster spaced practice. I script classes to interleave materials from different chapters.

I am also comfortable with not being serious all the time and believe that I can be firm as long as I am fair and flexible. I try to be as genuine as possible and take pains to acknowledge that students have other classes than mine, and a life as well, often with multiple hardships and stressors.

What’s your workspace like?

I like color and memory cues. My offices (I have two appointments so a Center for Teaching and Learning Office and a Psych one) have mementos from places I have been and numerous fun things students have given me. I also have some of my favorite family pictures around – even a glimpse at them on a hard day can make me automatically smile and feel stronger. Yes, there are a fair amount of little items but all of them have a story. There is always something to catch a students’ eye and it is a great ice-breaker.

Perhaps most often commented on are my collection of Barbie dolls. I taught a class on Culture, Development, and Health, and one component on gender development discussed the role of toys in shaping identity. I bought a “Barbie in India” in India (I was born and raised in Bombay) as an example of how toys shape minds around the world. On a whim I bought the same figure here in the US. Shockingly, the doll from India was fairer than the same doll made in the US. This makes for really thought provoking conversations on the whiteness.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Energetic, Engaging, Entertaining.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Care

[If you really care about student learning you will take pains to learn how to do it well, invest the energy that it involves, and see every single student holistically and as one with potential.]

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

Thankfully there was nothing big enough that it came to mind easily when I read this question. There have been the hiccups. One day the tech in room failed and I had to use the overhead projector and conduct the entire class writing on the plastic sheet from the material in my head (I did not print out a hardcopy of the day’s material). Another day, a student made a negative comment about “fast-food workers” and another student took offense as her mother raised her by working fast food. That was uncomfortable and I am not sure I did the best job alleviating the situation (I am more prepared now). And yes, once a student asked if I could say “Thank you come again” in a strong Indian accent aka Apu on the Simpsons. That was a great teachable moment that while very difficult was in the end I believe enlightening for all.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable?

I love the energy of a classroom as student “get it” or revel in the new knowledge. It is a thrill when I run into them years later and they share what they remember or more so, when they get in touch and say how they use what they learning in their lives and in their jobs. I love trying to find a new way to do something and having it work, or the challenge of not having it work and trying again. I love the repeated opportunities for redemption—a day not go well, revise, go back and do it better!!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I am a pretty open book so after a term with me they probably know I love to cook, am fascinated by identity, immigration, and history, do not have a wide range of musical genres I listen to. They may be surprised to know I broke my nose in a street fight in Bombay that had ties to nefarious mafia activity (not my ties).

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

To get my mind to stop whirling, I try to end every day and start every weekend morning, with something not connected to research or class planning and development. I try to only read if it is pleasurable and actually enjoy the stuff I have to read for ‘work’. Right now I am reading “Exterminate the Brutes” by Sven Lindquist, in which he traces European imperialism and exposes the diverse roots of racism, ideas expanded on by Caste (Wilkerson). I am also midway through John Burnett’s “Bangkok Haunts” a very different type of crime story (lots of cultural commentary in it).

What tech tool could you not live without?

Thankfully none.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

A lot of conversations are around the great outdoors and fun activities planned for the weekend J. Oregon is a wonderful place to live.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes)

It is all positive in that the pandemic gave me a chance to explore better ways to make all students feel inclusive, additional techniques to allow flexibility in types of assessments and assignments, and just to try to new things. This fall I am experimenting with ways to have students in my large gen psych course have backchannel conversations. I also am trying new ways to share syllabus information.

In the complete opposite of "Syllabus Day" (give syllabus and leave, and a tradition that should go extinct) I been dedicating the first full class to sharing how material applies to life, engaging activities, modeling participation, creating comfort, and explicitly talking about how to study. Students are often overwhelmed on day one and this may hamper attempts to process a full syllabus. So this term I tried something new. I rolled out the syllabus in two phases. On Day 1 of class they got a Syllabus Snapshot - One sheet. Visual. Key elements. Gentle entry. Easier read. We talk about it. The full syllabus with more details is available online. I am also think about ungrading and how that fits in.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Regan talk with his buddy Eric Landrum in 2017 about his childhood in Bombay, Carleton College, and other topics! https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e012-an-interview-with-regan-gurung

Regan would like STP folks to know about these upcoming books!

Thriving in Academia:
Building a Career at a Teaching-Focused Institution https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/thriving-academia

Transforming Introductory Psychology:
Expert Advice on Teacher Training, Course Design, and Student Success https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/transforming-introductory-psychology

An Evidence-based Guide to College and University Teaching
Developing the Model Teacher https://www.routledge.com/An-Evidence-based-Guide-to-College-and-University-Teaching-Developing-the/Richmond-Boysen-Gurung/p/book/9780367629847

Richard Lopez - I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 15:17:44 GMT

School name: Bard College

Type of school: Residential liberal arts college

School locale (including state and country): Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? 6-7 years

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychological Science, Statistics for Psychology, Social Neuroscience, The Science of Goal Pursuit

Specialization (if applicable): e.g. clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc. Social/cognitive neuroscience

Average class size: ~15-20

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Something to the effect of “Learn to recognize the point at which any additional effort you put into course prep leads to diminishing returns.” Put another way: be content with “good enough.” You can always revisit and tweak later!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? The Spark of Learning by Sarah Rose Cavanagh

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. Recently, I have enjoyed teaching on the topic of ego depletion and several replications that have found weak depletion effects (at best). The idea of limited and depletable willpower not only resonates with students personally, but it

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. In my science of goal pursuit seminar, students complete a group assignment comprised of a public service announcement (in audio or video form) in which they present an effective, evidence-based self-regulatory strategy (or strategies) to change their habits and behaviors to promote goal pursuit. They also create a mock social media post or story to adapt the PSA so it’s conducive to sharing with a broader audience.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? Encouraging peer-to-peer learning via structured group work has worked well for me. With a little bit of nudging and guidance on my part, students often will come to enjoy and own a group project, especially for topics that are more open-ended (e.g., describe the evidence (or lack thereof) of this psychological phenomenon or behavior, or, how does the brain represent the self?).

What’s your workspace like? On my desk I have my laptop hooked up to a widescreen secondary monitor. Both sit on a table-top standing desk converter, which I often forget to use to minimize my sitting time! I have a single-cup drip coffee maker within arm’s reach of where I sit. A few feet away is a small and inviting round table with two chairs where I have meetings (in safer times) with colleagues and students. There’s usually ample light that streams in from windows behind me, and I often hear the chatter of squirrels as they scurry up and down a large oak outside my office.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. On my better days, I hope that my teaching style can be described as: inviting, compassionate, and empowering.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Awaken and empower the learner within every student.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. It wasn’t quite a disaster, but for one activity students had to install a free statistical software package on their laptops and each student had a different error during installation, so a lot of class time was eaten by troubleshooting.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? What I find most rewarding is the privilege of witnessing students’ first exposure and reactions to fundamental psychological and statistical concepts.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? Some students may be surprised to learn that spirituality (namely, the Christian faith) is a major lens by which I view and interpret the world, and that I do not see science and religion as incompatible.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I do not have much time for leisure reading at the moment, but earlier this summer I was fascinated by the historical context and key players in the United States’ pandemic preparedness plans described in The Premonition by Michael Lewis.

What tech tool could you not live without? My trustworthy Logitech wireless presenter/remote!

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Hallway chatter is varied and ranges from “where can I find the best X type of food?” to “what explanations of a p-value have you used that make it less mystifying to students?”

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) And as far as how my teaching has changed because of the pandemic, I would like my pedagogy to embody the phrase: “do less, well.” I would much rather my students have a deeper, more nuanced understanding of fewer concepts and ideas than a cursory, fleeting grasp of more concepts. This would simultaneously free them from the stress of trying to collect, remember, and reproduce the presented material and enable them to repeatedly engage their scientific reasoning and critical thinking skills.

Alleyne Broomell - I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 15:28:03 GMT

School name: Western Carolina University

Type of school: Regional Comprehensive with Masters and Doctorate in Psychology programs

School locale (including state and country): North Carolina, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? 7

Classes you teach: Neuropsychology, developmental psychology, research methods and statistics

Specialization (if applicable): Neuroscience and development

Average class size: 40/undergraduates; 10/graduates

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Students need to know you’re on their side in order to challenge themselves and grow over the duration of the semester or degree. Convincing students that you are as committed to their success as they are gives them courage to succeed.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? “Make it Stick” By Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel which gives a structure based on cognitive psychology for classroom principles to promote retention. Additionally, I have been heavily influenced by Paulo Freire’s work in problem posing and contextualization of education.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I love teaching neuroscience and research methods courses. These courses are often perceived as “hard” by students and I find satisfaction in showing students that they can overcome difficult content and even if they don’t plan to continue to graduate school, they can benefit from and apply the concepts we talk about to various parts of their life. For example, I teach basic spreadsheet management as part of my research methods courses. Most students arrive to the class with no understanding of spreadsheet logic or basic principles of data management, which are integral to any business endeavor or even managing a household budget.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. One of my favorites is “neurotransmitter BINGO” during which students use their notes to match definitions to neurotransmitter abbreviations on a BINGO board. They get really into the competitive aspect while reviewing the material and it reinforces the need to take good notes!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I don’t practice a fully flipped classroom, because many of my students expect and benefit from the structure of a traditional lecture. However, I do incorporate active learning strategies in pretty much every class. The combination of lecture and experiential learning seems to strike a good balance for my undergraduate students who vary in their experiences and academic preparation. By scaffolding them in this way, they are able to become active participants in their education without feeling abandoned to their own devices.

What’s your workspace like? A clutter. I am working on the piles of papers and creating a filing system but keep finding other more pressing things to do. I will say that the first week of the transition to teaching from home I recognized the need for a second monitor in my home office. I switch back and forth between tasks often and having more virtual space is important. In the classroom I rely on google slides and a white board as well as a lot of papers and worksheets I print out. I’m getting better and creating virtual ways to complete in class activities (thanks, COVID), but sometimes there is no substitute for having a case study on your desk to work through with a neighbor.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Enthusiastic, experiential, committed to students.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? You can do difficult work. I will help.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I’ve had a few technical glitches such as sharing the wrong file and once I accidently broadcast my ultrasound photo from a not yet announced pregnancy. The biggest issue was a misconstrued sarcastic comment about the difficulty of a test which convinced a few students that I was “out to fail them.” That was one of the most pivotal moments in my teaching career in realizing that students didn’t necessarily know that I want them to succeed. I think we have to gain student’s trust before we can ask them to challenge themselves and let them know that we are teammates, coming in with an assist, not goalies trying to prevent them from scoring.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? I love building relationships with students and seeing them bring their own expertise and experience into the classroom. Now that I’ve been at this a few years, it’s been really cool to see what students go on to do and which students keep in touch. When I was very young, I loved acting and being in plays. I think I bring a lot of that same energy into my classroom and enjoy improvising and riffing on comments and questions as they come up.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I hated science and math in elementary and middle school. I thought that they were pointless and wouldn’t serve me later on. Boy, was I wrong... But that experience was valuable and I now build my courses around ideas and skills that my students can directly apply, even if they don’t go on to graduate school or think that they aren’t “science people”.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I just finished “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone” by Lori Goittlieb. I wanted more experience and knowledge about the counseling profession and clinical psychology route, as I have so many students who are interested in pursuing it as a career and I know little about it as an experimental psychologist. I also love a good novel and recently have enjoyed “Ask Again, Yes,” “The Flight Attendant,” and “Such a Fun Age”

What tech tool could you not live without? Zoom, because we’re still living through a pandemic. I also love Calendly to schedule office hours and advising meetings and am slowly converting my graduate students and colleagues to using R.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Different colleagues have different types of conversations. These days it’s a lot of, “How have you been, I haven’t seen you in forever!” In general, we talk about research, shared students, and general day-to-day life stuff. We live in a small town and everybody knows everybody, which is a great dynamic.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) There are a number of technologies and changes to promote accessibility that I think have been really useful and will continue post-COVID. A large number of our students commute fairly long distances to campus, so I will continue offering virtual office hours and meetings to students who are unable to come to campus. I think that my comfort with online classes and openness to recording lectures and creating virtual assignments has been helpful and will make my courses more accessible to students going forwards.

Eleni Pinnow - I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 13:24:28 GMT

School name: University of Wisconsin-Superior

Type of school: Four-year public liberal arts college

School locale (including state and country): Superior, WI, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? 12 years full time

Classes you teach: Reading and Writing for Psychology; Senior Research; Learning and Behavior; Psychopharmacology; Psycholinguistics; General Psychology

Specialization (if applicable): Cognitive

Average class size: 25

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Remember that you are always the adult in the room.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Schwartz, M. A. (2008). The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science, 121, 1771.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I honestly love all of classes (there are no clunkers)--but the one that has become a passion is Reading and Writing for Psychology. There is so much embedded in that course that is foundational to academic (and professional success): information literacy, critical reading, explaining complex concepts, and at its core is the message of continuous improvement and the need for constant revision. It is also a great chance to invite students into your own areas of growth as a scholar and normalize them; my students are often shocked that even professors need multiple drafts and feel frustrated and procrastinate-y. That course is both a skill builder and an invitation to the constant struggle of reading for comprehension, writing, and revising.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I really enjoy teaching my students to concept map and how to annotate figures (Hoskins, 2008). Concept mapping helps my students see two things: 1.) How much they actually know about at topic and 2.) How all of their knowledge fits together. It’s constructivist learning at its finest!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I really enjoy using the C.R.E.A.T.E (Consider, Read, Elucidate the hypothesis, Analyze and interpret the data, Think of the next Experiment) method in my content classes (Hoskins, 2008). Because it is an active learning approach that focuses on teaching how to think like scientists, it’s successful in a wide range of classes (from Psyc 101 to 400-level classes like Psycholinguistics). I also use this approach in my Reading and Writing Course because it helps my students learn active reading and analysis that’s critical for close reading of scholarly articles. C.R.E.A.T.E is also great because it remedies one thing that was missing from my undergrad psychology degree: how to read scholarly articles effectively.

Hoskins, S. (2008). Using a paradigm shift to teach neurobiology and the nature of science—A C.R.E.A.T.E-based approach. Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education, 6(2), A40-A52.

What’s your workspace like? Like a filing cabinet exploded.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Adaptive, informal, rigorous

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Foster growth through curiosity, skepticism, literacy, and confidence.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. In my first semester of full-time teaching, I realized that my tights didn’t fit as well as I thought and were falling off. I stepped behind the desk at the front of the classroom, kicked them off, and kept lecturing. If my students noticed they took mercy and didn’t say anything!

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? Everything but the grading! Mostly I enjoy the relationships with students and watching them see how much they are learning and gaining skills.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I think my students would be surprised that one of my summer jobs in college was being a camp counselor at a sleep away camp or maybe that I have never had a cup of coffee.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Kimmerer, R.W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass. Milkweed Editions.

What tech tool could you not live without? I tend towards the low-tech side of things—but I love speed grader on Canvas! My bad handwriting doesn’t cause an issue and I can’t spill tea on that homework.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? It’s been a bit since we all had a hallway to chatter in—but a lot is about classes and university politics/drama. We also get in a fair amount of talk about pets, food, and life in general.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) On the positive side, I’ve gotten a lot better at organizing my materials within our learning management system. On the negative side, I feel more disconnected from my students, and I’ve found it hard to foster mentoring relationships at a distance. I hope to continue developing my virtual mentoring skills as more students choose online learning options.

Alfonso Díaz Furlong: I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Mon, 03 May 2021 14:53:47 GMT

School name: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Department of Psychology

Type of school: Public University

School locale (including state and country): Puebla, Pue., Mexico

How many years have you taught psychology?

In December 2020, I turned five and a half years as a professor-researcher at the department of psychology. I got my permanent position (as tenure) in November 2020.

Classes you teach:

I have essentially taught research methodology courses (we have four compulsory courses). I mainly focus on the class of quantitative methods in psychology. In 2016, we had an update of the psychology degree program. I participated in developing an elective course on the modeling of cognitive processes. I have taught this subject ever since. This is an advanced course of cognitive psychology.

I have also taught Statistics I and II and thesis seminars at the graduate level. Typically, I teach between 7-8 courses per semester.

Average class size:

It varies a bit; In the undergraduate degree courses, the number range from 45 to 60 students per class. In graduate courses, I have in my groups 10 to 13 students.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

It was not direct teaching advice, but it was something that helped me get through difficult times; a very dear friend from neuroscience told me during my Ph.D. "be practical." This advice has also helped me a lot in my teaching work. From my undergraduate studies and later in graduate studies, I tried to remember and record in my memory the practices that I liked the most about my professors. I have always loved teaching and wanted at some point to apply all the good things that I learned from my professors.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Several books have helped me a lot. Specifically, I could do the following: Dr. Rex Kline, "Becoming a behavioral science researcher"; Dr. Wendy A. Schweigert, "Research Methods in Psychology: A Handbook"; Dr. Hugh Coolican, "Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology"; and Dr. James Goodwin, "Research in Psychology." Two books that have helped me a lot in my classes recently are Dr. Farrell and Dr. Lewandowsky's "Computational Modeling of Cognition and Behavior" and Dr. Smith and Dr. Kosslyn's "Cognitive Psychology: Mind and Brain."

I must confess something; the thing that has helped me the most lately, especially during the pandemic, are the recommendations and papers that the members of the STP post and comment, both on Facebook and in the STP journal.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

This is a tough question. There are many things that I love. Two topics that I could say would be above the others would be ANOVA (during quantitative analysis course) and the subject of connectionist models of categorical learning (in the class of modeling cognitive processes). In the first topic, I love being able to carry out an exercise from scratch (i.e., statement of the problem) and carry out the whole process until finishing with the interpretation and adequate presentation of the results. It allows me to explore different data sources and use free and open software like JASP and jamovi, besides introducing a Bayesian approach. About connectionist models, I love to review the aspects of memory and some neurological disorders that could lead to certain conditions. It is also where we strongly introduce Python as our programming tool to evaluate prototype and sample models.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

As I mentioned in the previous question, I love the theme of ANOVA and connectionist models. In ANOVA, I like to show students the research process from scratch; we establish a research question and "live" we do the whole process. To acquire the data, I show them how we simulate some data (particularly during the pandemic) or download some data from legal and official pages. We carry out the respective analysis, and they report their results and their interpretations to me. We take great care in the aspect of effect sizes and other methodological considerations. As for the connectionist models, I like hands-on activities in the code and modifying it to find the parameter space.

It motivates me a lot when I see their code manipulation results and their work in Python.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

With the pandemic, I have had to adapt some things that usually worked for me in person, but something that has been very efficient for me is working the problems directly in the session with situations applied to reality and using real and free databases. The students get motivated knowing that they can apply their knowledge to the real world. Another crucial thing that I incorporated this semester was having an international online seminar. I am in charge of a research group of undergraduate students called Neuro-COGNiMATH LAB. These seminars serve as a perfect complement to the topics of different courses.

The seminars are given mainly by female researchers from all around the world. The students become more closely involved in the research process and interact with the researchers.

I have been using various platforms to record asynchronous sessions. I upload these recordings for the students that cannot connect to the synchronous session.

I want to share the links to the places where we publish these talks; hopefully, these could be useful for you.

Facebook page (@CogniMath) (https://www.facebook.com/CogniMath/)

YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-i2MNSTK8nOO5ye69oInpA)

What’s your workspace like?

Before the pandemic, my office only had a blackboard and my desk. Of course, I had my bicycle parked there; that before some health problems, it served as my transportation. Usually have some things from my daughters; on several occasions, they accompany me to my classes.

With the pandemic, my desk has my computer and a second monitor to teach my classes; one side my drawing tablet to draw and annotate on the slides or screen.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Motivated, engaging, honest, empathetic (sorry for writing four)

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Love learn, enjoy, share knowledge and help others

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

This question reminds me of some hard memories. But I will focus on two difficult moments. On one occasion, I was in my 7 AM thesis seminar class, and I had my daughter with me when suddenly, I started to have severe pain in my right side and was on the point of fainting. As I could, I suspended the class and arrived at the clinic. I couldn't have my daughter with me, and one of my students supported me at that time to take care of her. Later, in the next class, we continue with the presentations that were pending. The other occasion was the year we had an overwhelming earthquake. Unfortunately, we lost the building that housed us for so many years, so we had to move to another campus in the university to continue with the activities about three weeks later; We had to restructure many aspects of the courses, but we were able to get ahead.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable?

I think; no, that's not the word; I am sure it is when my students tell me that they are grateful and happy for everything they learned. It satisfies me a lot to see them happy and abundant with what they have done in the course. Even greater, when the years or courses have passed, and they write to me to tell me that what I taught them has served them a lot on their path, or they turn to me for guidance or advice for their dissertations. It makes me extremely happy to see them filled with success.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

At the end of each session, I take a moment to reflect on the errors or omissions that I may have made during class; also, every day, I spend time looking for new and better tools and resources to share in my courses.

And while I enjoy online classes because of the opportunities it presents, I miss my students so much and being able to be with them in the classroom.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

With the pandemic, it is complicated to have time to read something independently, but I like to read some stories with my daughter; however, most of the "free" time, we draw together and work on her literacy process. I am reading about EEG aspects and Dr. Richard A. Chechile's latest book on Bayesian statistics for experimental scientists. But I would love to read a novel. But above all, to continue writing a book about my life, which I left pending before the pandemic.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I could say that I wouldn't miss any technology, but I would be lying. I think it would be my cell phone. Not only for communication but a lot of the work I do, I do it from there (presentations, Python code, data analysis, announcements, etc.)

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

The pandemic has reduced the talks a bit, but usually, with my colleagues, I like talking about projects, improvements, proposals, and I like that we share experiences of our trajectories. Once a dear friend, who is now in her postdoc in Poland (I think), told me that "I always had something to talk about and share," so I really enjoy talking.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes)

The negative side is not being able to be in the classroom with my students. It is one of my favorite places because I love teaching. On the other hand, for me, it has brought many positive things. I have been able to organize myself better, I have learned many tools and the handling of many platforms and databases. One of the most important things was to establish the seminar I was commenting on; it has allowed us to get closer to the world; at a time when we are separated. It has been fundamental to establish ties for the formation of my students. And the pandemic has allowed me to explore different course goals that are better achieved with online classes.

Crystal Quillen: I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 13:54:23 GMT

School name: Middlesex College (formerly known as Middlesex County College)

Type of school: Community College

School locale (including state and country): Edison, NJ (USA)

How many years have you taught psychology? I’ve been teaching Psychology courses since 2009 when I was in graduate school, so over 10 years.

Classes you teach: Introductory Psychology, Research Methods, Social Psychology, and Lifespan Development.

Specialization (if applicable): e.g. clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc. Research Methods and Health Psychology

Average class size: 30 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Every class and every semester of teaching is different. If something doesn’t go right one time, don’t change it immediately.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? “What the Best College Teachers Do” by Ken Bain. I read it in graduate school and it totally changed my way of thinking about teaching.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. My favorite lecture topic is when I teach my Research Methods students about experimental designs and the difference between an IV and DV. I give them this example about stress and memory and lecture about the terms. Then we do a demonstration where I give them a list of words with some instructions on what to do with those words. Turns out, it’s a memory test! The students are shocked that I ask them to recall the list even though I talked about memory not 5 minutes before. It’s a lot of fun and they learn a lot about the terms that way.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. My service-learning Lifespan Development students had the opportunity to spend some time at a Veteran’s Home and interact with the residents living there. We developed a project revolving around age and gratitude (this just happened to coincide with Thanksgiving). We interviewed the residents and asked what they were most thankful for and recorded their responses on fake tree leaves. Then, we had the idea to do the same thing with the College community. We set up a Thankfulness Tree and asked students, faculty, and staff to write on the leaves. Then we analyzed the results comparing the differences in responses. It was a great combination of searching the literature, collecting data, and analyzing the results. Students had so much fun doing it, they didn’t even realize they were doing research!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I have a very interactive classroom and I like to move around a lot. I definitely believe in rotating the types of activities we’ll do in class. Sometimes we’ll watch a video and discuss it, or sometimes we’ll divide up a larger group assignment, sometimes it’s think-pair-share, and sometimes it’s a recall activity where they share what they learned with someone else. I try to change things up to keep students guessing.

What’s your workspace like? Depends on what point it is in the semester, but my workspace reflects me. I’m fun and funky. I love the Beatles and Yoda, and that is immediately apparent. I also strive to create a more approachable workspace where my students and I will meet at a table in my office instead of a desk. It also gives us more room to stretch out in the space.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Relaxed, inquisitive, and relevant.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Enthusiastic commitment to teaching and learning.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. In my Research Methods class, I did a factorial design demonstration using different flavored jellybeans. They were both red, but one was cherry flavored, and one was hot sauce flavored. Apparently, the hot sauce flavor was REALLY HOT, and students started spitting it out! The students who received cherry were so confused. Needless to say, I’ve changed flavors since then.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? When students understand the point of why they are learning a particular topic. I never create an assignment or teach on a topic “just because”. I’m always trying to get them to see the bigger picture. When they figure it out on their own, it makes me incredibly proud.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I used to do musical theater in high school and have a pretty decent singing voice. At home, I’m normally always singing with my kids.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I have a book club with my best friends from high school! We are currently reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.

What tech tool could you not live without? My clicker. I’m never near my computer because I’m always walking around the classroom.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? My favorite colleagues and I are always hanging out in each other’s’ classrooms before classes start. It allows students to know other professors and to see that we all like each other. Our hallway chatter is sometimes productive. One time we had this wild idea of holding a panel about the Salem Witch Trials from a biological, psychological, and historical perspective. We wound up actually presenting it to students and had them VOTE on what may have caused the trials (all in fun, of course)! Psychology won! That’s why you’ll see one of my photos with me and my witch hat.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) I don’t think my teaching has changed much, just how it’s delivered has varied. What I do value is that I am still able to maintain close relationships with my students, and I feel like I still get to know them like I would face-to-face. I do, however, miss my colleagues. We often do virtual game nights, but it isn’t the same as randomly running into them in the hall and having a quick chat.

Chris Hakala: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 14:16:03 GMT

School name: Springfield College

Type of school: Small Private College

School locale (including state and country): Springfield, Massachusetts

How many years have you taught psychology? 29

Classes you teach: Introductory Psychology, History of Psychology, Cognition, Psychology of Language, Statistics, Research Methods

Specialization (if applicable): Cognitive psychology (teaching of psychology)

Average class size: 25

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? No matter what you do, don’t mess up the students!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Teaching Tips, Wilbert McKeachie

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I love teaching history of psychology. It helps students really contextualize the discipline and provides a glimpse into how thinking about human behavior has evolved over time.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I do an activity on dichotic listening to show students how challenging it is to multitask. I have two students read different messages to the class (both drawn from the amazing book by Cialdini on Influence). I divide the class into thirds. 1/3 listens to one person, 1/3 listens to the other and 1/3 listens to both. I then ask for recall. We find that highly salient things are heard by all, but details are lost for things you are ignoring. Very powerful demonstration.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I use a great deal of active learning techniques to help engage students, and then I use topic-based discussion. And, in that, I engage in both meta teaching (talking to students about why we are doing whatever it is we are doing in class) and I help students consider meta cognition. We constantly situate what we are learning in a larger context so students can see relevance either for their discipline, their own lives, or whatever the situation lends itself to.

What’s your workspace like? I have a standing desk in my office. And, when at home and on zoom, I stand on my skateboard so I can keep moving while teaching. I like to move around a lot, and so when I’m in the classroom, I like being able to circulate around and work with small groups, etc.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Energetic, enthusiastic, conversational

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Provide students with the optimal learning environment.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. Oh, there are so many! I guess one of the worst was when I was being observed by a colleague and I was moving around the room, and I fell over the projector cord, backwards. I never missed a beat, and kept talking, but the students had a hard time not laughing!

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? The students. I know it sounds like a cliché, but I enjoy my students so very much, and have learned so much about the world from them. If you take the time to get to know a bit about them, you find out amazing things about their experiences and it helps one grow as an educator.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? There’s not much I don’t talk about in class! They might be surprised to know that I didn’t talk in class at all when I was a first or second year student. They would be surprised because I don’t let them get away with that!

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Company Man by Joseph Finder. It’s a murder/mystery book. Really easy, fun reading. I’m also listening to a Bill Bryson non fiction book about language, Made in America.

What tech tool could you not live without? My smartphone. I do SO MUCH with it.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) Hallway chatter is about pedagogy. I currently run a teaching center, so we often talk about teaching and learning. We also talk about issues with COVID and how we can navigate it. I think that one of the changes is going to be, at least in higher ed, a bigger reliance on technology for faculty who were perhaps a bit shy about it before. I know for me, and I’ve never been shy about technology, I will rely more heavily on my Learning Management System to communicate with students.

Amanda Woodward: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:35:21 GMT

School name:

University of California, Riverside

Type of school:

4-year public university, Hispanic Serving Institution

School locale:

Riverside, California

Classes you teach:

Before coming to UC Riverside, my teaching focused on Statistics, Research Methods, and Cognitive Psychology. Currently, I’m teaching a class on Social Identities in Development and R programming. I’m excited to teach Cognitive Development, Statistics, and Social Psychology in the near future!

Average class size:

I started out teaching smaller classes (~30). Currently, my average class size is 60, but will be teaching larger classes (100-150 students!) later this year.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I think my favorite piece of advice is “the first time you teach a class, you should aim to get through it. You will improve and perfect it the second and third time.” This particular piece of advice helped me recognize that classes don’t have to be perfect, and they can change. It has encouraged me to try new activities in my classes, reflect on what’s working and what’s not, and ask for feedback from students on their experiences in the class.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I really like Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan. Dr. Frank Golom at Loyola University let me borrow his copy when I started teaching Research Methods. The book contains statistical explanations with a conversational tone. What really resonated with me was how the examples related to everyday topics (dating, LeBron James, and baseball). It reminds me that, while statistics tends to be anxiety provoking for students and can be regarded as “the class to avoid at all costs,” there are SO many ways to make it more approachable. For instance, I ask students to tell me their favorite TV shows and movies and structure examples around video clips. “The Office,” “New Girl,” and “Black-ish” have currently been class favorites and I have used them to demonstrate everything from research designs to ethical considerations and statistical concepts.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. Believe it or not, my favorite classes to teach are research methods and statistics. I like that students learn a little bit about different subdisciplines of psychology and can see how statistics are important for understanding how we think, behave, and feel. I also think they’re really important topics for students to understand because they hear about research all of the time. The news, Buzzfeed, Twitter, and even Instagram, have posts that contain statistics, and may even mislead with statistics. My goal is for students in my classes to critically consume this information and be able to talk about it.

It’s a lot of fun to see students apply what they learn in research methods to these topics. For instance, I like using the example of cell phone horns in class. I ask students to read a Buzzfeed article about research investigating how “horns” develop on people’s skulls from looking at their phones too much. Then, I start off class by claiming that we all should never use our phones again and ask students to change my mind. They come up with answers pretty quickly- like investigating who funded the study, differences between correlation and causation, and questioning methods. My hope is students then take the same energy (and questions) to thinking through psychological research and other findings from the news.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

One assignment I really like is asking groups of students to “teach” a statistical concept to someone who hasn’t taken our class. Some of the students are really creative! Some use TV and Movie examples we haven’t used in class, a there have been a few interactive videos, and one group even wrote a song! The “lessons” have been used to study for finals and students seem to really enjoy it.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

When I taught in person, I found that group quizzes worked really well for my research methods class. It allowed me to check student understanding both by examining the quiz grades, but also listening to the conversations students had in class. Students really worked well together, and I think their discussions helped students understand the material. For instance, most quizzes had a question about choosing the correct analysis. Because students worked in groups, they needed to justify to each other what they thought was the best approach before answering the questions. It often led to class discussions about how multiple analyses could be used, and the conditions that made one choice better than another.

What’s your workspace like? It’s a little more organized this quarter because I’m working from home and students are completing assignments virtually! My desk is usually pretty cluttered, and there’s a big window that let’s in some sun (which I love – except when I’m teaching!).

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Approachable, inclusive, active

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Real world applications, approachable material, and student involvement

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

Woof. I tried to use a class example to teach sampling distribution of the mean. I had them all write down a number from one to ten (to represent our population). Then, I gave students 30 seconds to get into groups of five (to represent sampling) and write the mean of their numbers on the board. We did a few rounds to represent that the distributions were made from every possible mean for a group of 5. Everything seemed to be going well, but then we got to the point where we needed to graph the means. I pulled up a list of means that would be graphed to highlight the complete list, and I found almost all of my students had a “deer in the headlights” look. I thought it would make more sense as we started to make a graph, but students stopped answering my questions. At this point, I was afraid that students would be terrified of any statistics that came later in the quarter.

Rather than continue the activity, I stopped and asked students to put their heads down and tell me how they were feeling (thumbs up: doing great- thumbs down: feeling lost beyond repair). After viewing a sea of thumbs down, we all discussed why students felt lost. We ended up having a good discussion about sampling strategies and how we can estimate all possible means (e.g. we can’t actually take every possible sample to find the means when we’re talking about people).

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I think my students would be surprised to hear that, while I am very excited about statistics now, I dreaded taking my first statistics course and didn't really come to embrace stats until graduate school.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Lately, I have been on a female comedian autobiography kick. Currently, I am reading Yes Please by Amy Poehler.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My computer and internet have been really important for teaching and for staying connected to others during quarantine. I have found myself using google docs a lot in my teaching because it lets students work together in small groups and share notes easily.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I think my hallway chatter covers a broad range. In person, I think I was equally likely to end up talking about statistics as I was to talk about family, friends, and what we did over the weekend.

Bill Altman: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 15:05:39 GMT

Name: Bill Altman

School name: SUNY Broome Community College

Type of school: Community College

School locale: Binghamton, NY

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Human Development, Adolescent Development, Educational Psychology, Social Psychology

Average class size: 20-32 (depending on whether the class has a writing emphasis)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? The best advice I’ve ever gotten about teaching (or anything else), was actually more general advice, geared to life as a thinking person. Professor Alexander Riasanovsky, my undergraduate advisor and the professor of my Russian History and Byzantine History classes impressed on me, and on all of his students, the need to learn about everything. He pretty much meant that as it sounded. Everything. And that our task as people, and especially as scholars (and I take it as a teacher) is to somehow figure out how all of that information fits together into a single, intelligible whole. All of the arts, sciences, humanities, and all of the other human and non-human endeavors in the world are connected, and all of them are meaningful. The joy, and the challenge, is to make sense of it. As a teacher, I try to bring some of the enthusiasm for this approach to the world that I got from Dr. Riasanovsky to my own students.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Actually, there are too many to name. But a few of the most important to me as a teacher would include works that are generally not thought of as part of the “teaching” canon:

His Master’s Voice by Stanislaw Lem
This novel chronicles the failure of scientists to decode what seems to be a message from outer space. It illustrates how our preconceptions as researchers give us blinders, preventing us from asking meaningful questions and from truly understanding not only what we research, but even one another across even closely-allied fields of study. Like much of Lem’s work, it delves into the psychology of people in different, often problematic situations, and how difficult it is to communicate and understand one another.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
This is a well-structured, philosophical look at how science advances through the changing of paradigms, based on the ongoing failures of our existing ways of thinking about our realities.
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
Hoff’s book is a pretty good explanation of Taoist thought for the lay reader, which provides some excellent perspectives that aren’t often taken in our sometimes high-stress “scientific” approach to discovery and understanding.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I love teaching general psychology. I think it’s the most fun course in our entire curriculum. It allows us to explore nearly every part of the science of psychology, and learn through experiments, demonstrations, and other hands-on exercises. As an educational psychologist, I like to stress the practical applications of the things we learn, as well as how my students can learn better while having more fun and doing less of what they think of as work. So, we don’t only talk about the theories, history, or methods of psychology, we look at how psychology can help in many different aspects of life beyond the classroom.

One of the most important topics in the course (in all of my courses, actually) is the need to embrace failure as the route to learning, so the course is designed to allow students to fail a certain amount, recover, and do well. It’s sometimes a shock for them at first. But when they realize that each failure is actually helping them to learn, and that their grades not only don’t suffer, but actually are better than they expected, they really start to accept and value the idea.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. The culminating activity in my introductory psychology class is one of my favorites. It actually runs through the entire semester. We design our own cult. It helps students to use the information they’ve learned about brain development, nutrition, perception, attention, sleep, cognition, memory, identity, social pressure, and many other topics as they decide whom to target, how to convince them to join, and how to take control. It also serves as an organizing strategy throughout the course, piquing students’ interest about each topic and how it will be used in the final analysis.

On the last day of lecture, we begin the exercise by saying that we’re obviously not going to call ourselves a cult. We’ll be an educational foundation (registering with the IRS as a 501(c)(3)-type organization, so we can take donations and remain totally legal and open), founded on Maslow’s principles of helping people to achieve self-actualization, and addressing each individual’s full range of needs. Next, we discuss ways and places in which to recruit adherents, the design (including security aspects) of our compound, the activities and amenities we’ll provide (including free gaming laptops and smartphones with unlimited Wi-Fi, data, and talk/text–not to worry, our members won’t be spending a lot of time talking with the outside world in ways that could cause problems for us–we talk about that, as well), how we’ll gain control over our members’ thoughts and attitudes, and train them to go out into the world and send us their money and their children (when they have them). And when they’re out in the world, our members will also help with recruiting, as well as hiring other members into their organizations.

At the end of the process, most students are surprised to find that we’ve actually designed a university (in fact, a particular one, that shall remain nameless here). Students who’ve served in the military also begin to see parallels to their training and years in service. This kicks off a very spirited discussion of how schools and other social institutions work, and helps students to exercise a great deal more critical thinking about their surroundings. Some former students have come up to me years later to talk about this exercise and how it helped them in particular situations.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? A combination of activities and banter. Learning needs to be fun. Demonstrations that involve the class, rather than lecturing, are more fun and seem to be more productive. The other stuff lives on the LMS.

One example is a texting-while-driving activity. I set up a simple driving simulator, and a student volunteer (who claims to be a good driver) is then hooked up to our EEG unit by other students. Some monitor the EEG during the demonstration. Others watch for errors in driving, accidents, and other problems. The driver is then allowed to drive for a while with no distractions (other than the wires on their head, and the other people watching them, of course). After a few minutes, another student begins texting to the driver during while they’re driving. EEG and driving behavior monitoring continue. We may also test talking on the cell phone while driving, or driving while singing along with the radio. Students love the exercise, and are amazed at the differences in brain activity and driving errors. And sometimes there are some interesting outcomes. I’ve now had one student back up a telephone pole (twice on her run), and two other students hit parked fire engines at high speed (so at least the first-responders who weren’t killed were on scene to help everyone else). There was also one student who actually managed to get arrested in the simulation.

What’s your workspace like? Arthur C. Clarke once described working with Stanley Kubrick by saying that, “Stanley uses a tame Black Hole as a filing system.” My workspace looks like the inside of that Black Hole. But I do clean and organize it at least once a year, whether I think it requires it or not (generally I think it’s fine). I’ve long been convinced that any horizontal surface above the floor must be subdued by an appropriate amount of papers, books, technical equipment, coffee, snacks, and other paraphernalia. And I’m beginning to look at those floors with some suspicion, as well.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. I hate limits. Let’s go with 4:

Eclectic
Improvisational
Transparent
Fun

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Educators should inspire, challenge, and support students.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. There have been too many to count. Let’s just skip this one. I’m sure my students will be too happy to relate any number of these.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I’m pretty transparent, so I don’t think there’s much that would surprise them. They hear about various past jobs, being a houseparent (house mother, actually) for an engineering fraternity, doing standup, acting, doing theater tech and directing, spending a decade on talk radio, and too many run-ins with various forms of authority. There’s not much that doesn’t make it into our discussions when it might be useful in making a particular point.

The only thing that seems to surprise them is if they see me away from school, perhaps at the grocery store or the farmers market. Sometimes the shocked expressions have been priceless.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I just finished Lawrence M. Krauss’s A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. It’s a fascinating book, and it made me begin to think that there may be some small hope of my getting a tiny glimmer of understanding quantum physics.

I’m currently reading a collection of essays by Bertrand Russell, and wandering through several science-fiction novels and collections of short stories.

What tech tool could you not live without? I don’t think there’s anything that dramatic about my tools. The ones I find most useful are WordPerfect, Quattro, Firefox, Thunderbird, Dropbox, and my phone. But I’m often most happy going back to a pencil and pad to do most of my work. Though many of my students are convinced (because they’ve seen me doing it at times) that I use a slide-rule to work up their grades (just for fun–I actually keep everything in Quattro) for their reactions.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? It’s pretty eclectic. Most of the colleagues to whom I’m closest are in my college’s History, Philosophy, and Social Sciences Department. So, with a group made up of historians, a sociologist, an anthropologist, a specialist in the humanities (concentrating in comparative literature), a couple of economists and philosophers, and various people from our technical support areas, our conversations can cover a really broad range of topics. And that’s not even taking our various hobbies and outside interests into account!

David Copeland: I'm a Member of STP and this is how I teach

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 15:50:40 GMT

School name: University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)

Type of school: 4 year university with master’s and doctoral programs

School locale: (Fabulous) Las Vegas, NV

Classes you teach: My main focus in recent years has been Introduction to the Psychology Major, but I also teach some graduate courses such as Cognitive Methods.

Average class size: Some semesters I teach 150-300 students in the Intro to the Psychology Major course; the grad course tends to be closer to 6-10 students.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? To remember what it was like to be a student! I like to think about what they are actually going to take away from the course and try to avoid making my classes feel like busywork where all that they care about is their grade.

A second piece of advice is to focus on what students will retain and take away from the course a year later. So, instead of focusing so much on the short-term memorization of details, I try to emphasize skill development, knowledge that they can apply to their lives, and the reinforcement of key ideas.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? This is probably a common one, but Bain’s “What the Best College Teachers Do” has been important to me. I utilized so many ideas such as creating courses where students are challenged to think and apply ideas to their lives. I also like the idea of letting students feel comfortable with the idea that failure can be okay -- trying, failing, and learning from it is much better than not trying at all.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I love teaching the Intro to the Psychology Major course because of the impact that it has on my students. For someone not familiar with this course, it is different from general psychology in that it focuses on what students can get out of and do with a psychology major.

Every semester students tell me how important this course was for helping them think through their future path and what experiences can help them prepare for that future. I love hearing from students who tell me about landing an internship, getting involved with research, developing leadership skills as a Psi Chi officer, or being accepted into graduate school after they applied what they learned from the course.

I cover topics such as skill development, building relationships with professors and students, getting relevant experience (e.g., research, volunteer work, internships), career paths, preparing for careers, and graduate school possibilities. I think this class can be so impactful for students that I try to help other faculty develop courses like this for their institution.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. In the Superstar CV assignment, I teach students how to create a CV -- but because many of the students are early in their college careers, they do not have many accomplishments to list. Because of that, I designed this activity to be a learning and goal-setting exercise. Students set goals for achievements and experiences that they learn about in my course and to focus on those that can help them to follow their desired path.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? Students consistently tell me that my enthusiasm for the topics seems authentic and that it helps to pull them in and get more engaged with the course. I also try to use techniques that cognitive psychology research has shown to improve memory such as distributed practice and practice testing.

What’s your workspace like? I try to mix it up -- I typically work on campus in my office or my lab, but sometimes I will work at home or take my computer to a coffee shop when I want to get away to write.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Enthusiastic, interactive, and encouraging!

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Make a positive impact on their future!

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. When I first started teaching the Intro to the Psych Major course, I did not think through an assignment where I asked them to create their own CV. Most of my students were just starting college and had not yet built up a list of accomplishments.

I realized my lack of foresight when I was inundated with emails from flustered students who were anxious about not having much to list on their CV. I reassured students that this was okay and I encouraged them to include accomplishments that they wanted to achieve before graduation. This turned out great in the end because it helped me to convert this assignment into the Superstar CV activity that I use today!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? When I started college, I floated around a few different paths before I landed in psychology. Part of the problem was that I did not have a clear plan for the future because I did not know that I should be spending a lot of time thinking about it.

I stumbled into a good career path, but I want to help students to be better prepared than I was back in college. I want them to think about future possibilities and to know about resources and experiences that can help them. Because I wish that I had that type of help when I started college, I built and teach the Introduction to the Psychology Major course that helps students prepare for their future.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I am enjoying the “Compound Effect” as it focuses on the benefits of taking action and making continual progress toward your goals. The ideas can be applied to different aspects of life and it is also a good idea that I can share with my students. For example, taking consistent action throughout one’s college career can help students to build up a strong resume or CV.

What tech tool could you not live without? This is probably a tie between my phone and Chromebook. My phone goes everywhere, but it is not always practical for activities like work. The Chromebook is light, effective, and starts up much more quickly than my old windows-based laptops.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Conversations can cover a variety of topics, such as chatting about weekend activities, dreading an upcoming meeting, or congratulating each other for a recent accomplishment.

Drew Christopher: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 15:36:26 GMT

School name: Albion College

Type of school: 4-year Baccalaureate

School locale: Albion, MI (about 50 miles west of Ann Arbor and 175 miles east of Chicago)

Classes you teach: Introductory Psychology, Research Methods, Statistics, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Senior Seminar, Public Policy in Film (which is a first-year seminar), Black Swans (a College-wide honor’s seminar that discusses the effects of seemingly rare historical events)

Average class size: 35 for Intro Psychology; 16-24 in Methods and Stats; 24 in I/O Psychology; 15 in Senior Sem, First-year sem, and Black Swans

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? I am not sure where I heard it or who told it to me, probably it was over breakfast at NIToP, someone told me that if you think you’re going too slowly through the material, you probably need to slow down. No, that didn’t make sense to me either, but students never quite “get it” the way you think they do or the way they appear to get it. Keep close tabs on what and *how* they are understanding….it is amazing the feedback you get on the one-minute end-of-class “tell me what you learned in class” index card routine. Grading tests provides numerous insights into how students don’t understand something, allowing me to adjust (hopefully by improving) my teaching of that information with future students. Heck, a quick two-or three-question end-of-class formative quiz can be quite enlightening, too. It’s not what students don’t know that’s the problem; it’s what they think they know that just ain’t so (to paraphrase Mark Twain, I think it was but am not sure).

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Is Bill McKeachie’s Teaching Tips too obvious? I’ll offer something different…it’s a journal that shaped my work as a teacher – Teaching of Psychology. Yeah, really surprising, I know. I discovered this outlet when I was a graduate student at the University of Florida, working with Rich Griggs. He knew I was interested in teaching, and he said that if I was interesting in teaching well, this is a source I needed to read, cover-to-cover (indeed, Rich always emphasized that doing something and doing something well were far from synonymous, something I try to keep in mind to this day). I loved the ideas that journal offered me as a relatively new teacher, and I learned at an early age that it was critical to see if what I did in class actually had an effect, ideally a positive effect, on students. There were a few articles back in the day that really made an impression on me and helped me form what I think was a strong foundation for me career. First, Dana Dunn and Stacey Zaremba’s (1997) paper, Thriving at Liberal Arts College: The More Compleat Academic is a classic in my mind. It gave me the script, while I was in graduate school, of what to expect and, as is obvious from the title, succeed in such a role. I was a student in such an environment, so it was tempting for me to think I knew more about being a faculty member at such a school than was really the case. Even now, whenever I talk with graduate students or relatively new faculty at these sorts of schools, I am quick to refer them to this paper. In addition, Thomas Plante’s (1998) paper, A Laboratory Group Model for Engaging Undergraduates in Faculty Research was another one that helped me realize not only that faculty at schools focused on undergraduate education could still be active in research, but provided me with ideas for how to do so. Its value to me lied in its simplicity; it was a great piece to read right before starting as a faculty member at similar type of school as Plante described in that paper. I followed his lead early in my career, made adjustments as needed, and I am still here, so something must have went right.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching Intro and the methods and statistics courses in psychology, and my first-year and honors seminars. Not that I don’t enjoy teaching content-area courses, but the reality is, it’s really less challenging teaching content area material than it is to teach broader classes (assuming, of course, you are trained in that content area, which is certainly not always the case). Especially in methods and statistics, students are expecting the worst, so in a sense, teaching those classes is like taking over as manager for a baseball team that finished in last place the previous year -- there is nowhere to go but up. These two classes in particular have challenged me to make information accessible and relatable to students. Some students appreciate the theory and number-crunching, but even those students need to understand how to use this information. Even the most mundane of circumstances can be used to teach complicated material. For instance, one day when I was doing yard work, I scrapped up my elbow. It was a fairly noticeable scrape, one that I could not really hide from others, but it did not impair my movement or hurt. Now, much like statistical effect sizes can be classified as trivial, weak, moderate, or strong, so too can elbow scrapes. Indeed, my injury was a great prelude to discussing Cohen’s d. Who knew my elbow could be a tool to teach a statistical concept? Likewise, the concept of a statistical interaction is one that takes a while for students to really “get” the first time they encounter it. However, it is a concept I find students do understand, albeit not statistically, before they ever encounter it in these classes. Specifically, for students who have ever baked or cooked a dish, they have experienced an interaction. Combining things to make a dish or baked treat requires using different ingredients (factors) in different amounts (levels) to make the outcome delicious. My general point…look for instances of what you teach in circumstances to which almost any person could relate. If it can be done in statistics, it can be done for any other course we teach!

By the way, the class was torn whether my elbow scrape was a weak or moderate scrape, which gave me the chance to talk about the somewhat arbitrary nature of how “cutoffs” are established in statistics for use in the “real world.”

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

There are two ways to answer this question, so I’ll give two responses. First, with respect to enjoyment, I like introducing interactions to my statistics class by making chocolate chip cookies in class. Admittedly, the data are mixed on how well students learn from this activity, I think because they are so bewildered to see their teacher making cookies in class. Regardless, it gets their attention and gives me a chance to dive into the topic from a statistical perspective with them relatively engaged at that point. I must admit, I cannot bake the cookies in class (really, our classrooms don’t have ovens), so it is wasteful in that regard. Also, students expect to receive real homemade cookies, which I inevitably bring them in the next class period, which is not hard to do with my relatively small class sizes, admittedly.

Second, with respect to teaching what students find difficult, I love my end-of-class cumulative assignment in research methods and statistics. I love it because it is relatively straightforward, and it also puts students in a semi-real-world situation. Specifically, I give them situations in which statistics can be used to answer a “real-world” problem. For example, a local restaurant is test-marketing four new dipping sauces for their breadsticks. Students are asked to describe a research design the restaurant can use to learn what sauce(s) their customers prefer, then describe the appropriate statistical analysis to use, given the design they described. There are no calculations or analyses to conduct and interpret; students have handouts upon handouts from throughout the course for those details. Rather, this assignment requires purely conceptual understanding of design and analyses. If they don’t understand these considerations, the details of conducting analyses are worthless.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Whatever works best for my students works best for me. In general, that means, as I’ve mentioned previously, the more I can get their attention with something they can relate to, before delving into theory or other relatively complex material, the better. I don’t like to introduce classical conditioning with definitions of UCS, CS, UCR, and CR or the work of Pavlov or Twitmyer. Rather, I’d prefer to bring up LeBron James or Shaquille O’Neal (yes, my students know who Shaq is) and the products they endorse. We can talk about why those companies have these celebrities endorsing their products, which can open the door to UCS, CS, UCR, and CR and other nitty-gritty classical conditioning concepts. In essence, I am going fishing when I teach; I bait the hook with something that students can talk about in a nonacademic sense (I hope), then reel them in with the actual content when they are hooked (hence my making cookies in class, too). I suppose I am making use of foot-in-the-door, too…get them to start talking and discussing with relatable information, then they will continue to do so with the technical information.

What’s your workspace like? Have you ever seen the late 1980s movie “Wall Street” or seen the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during that time? That’s pretty much my office at school and my office at home. Organized chaos is a good way to describe it. I think it motivates me to literally see the work I need to do; I worry as we all rely on technology more and more, I’ll forget to do things because they are stored electronically, where I cannot readily see them. It’s already starting to happen, I fear.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Flexibly-organized, skill-focused, proactive (these are only three words because the first two are both hyphenated, just sayin’).

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Assume nothing

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

This was the hardest question to answer because there were so many to choose from. Then again, a certain amount of teacher embarrassment can endear a teacher to their students, so when it happens, I really don’t take close note of it. We all have demonstrations and activities that don’t work as we hoped, so that really isn’t something I fret about. When that happens, I just try to figure out how to make it work better next time, and oftentimes asking some of my better students help in this regard. However, one day in particular does come to mind. My very first class, ever, as a grad assistant at the University of Florida, I was of course scheduled in a room about as far across campus from my office as one can get. As I am walking across campus, I feel a tap on my left shoulder, so I turn look over that shoulder. I saw no one, just figured I was imagining things. I was extremely nervous, being the first class session I ever taught of my “own” class, so I just figured it was those nerves. But a couple of seconds later, I realized there was something on my left shoulder…when I looked again, I saw that a bird had made a deposit that landed on my shirt’s left shoulder. What a great way to start a new semester. Because I had such a long walk, I left my office super early, so I was in the building in which I was teaching well ahead of time. I was able to get to the bathroom and clean off the bird’s deposit (and dry off, as walking across campus in central Florida in late August, coupled with the nerves of Day 1, I was sweating something fierce). Alas, my first day of teaching was not over! Wanting to come off as “tough”, I started that first lecture after doing introductions and overviewing the syllabus. This was the pPP era (pre PowerPoint), so we had an overhead projector and “slides” that we could write on. I had my trusty pen, and got a little over-enthused, as I took it to the screen. Just as I started to write on the screen, I caught myself, quickly tried to make it look to the class like I was gesturing. I don’t think they noticed; they were likely just as nervous as I was.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

They assume I majored in psychology, but in fact, I majored in finance and economics (with a minor in psychology). I always use this story with my first-years around registration time each fall, that your major matters less than the skills you build, the experiences you have to talk about in future interviews, and just doing well and showing the capacity to learn, which everyone (graduate schools and employers) is particularly concerned about. So, I guess my students would not be surprised to learn this about me because most already know it. Regardless, it allows them to realize that not getting into a particular class or not being able to decide on a specific major is not the end of the world….I did not choose my major til after I had my undergraduate degree, in some ways!

What would surprise them, something I do not often reveal? Read on to the next question and my response!

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I am reading two books, one titled “Sun, Sin, and Suburbia: The History of Modern Las Vegas” and the other “The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream.” I went to Vegas for the first time a year after graduating from college for a bachelor’s party and fell in love with area. I mean, Vegas itself is a psychologist’s playground in so many ways….the gambling of course, but the shows are something special, and the area is so rich in history, something that I love to learn about, so that’s why I am reading these books. It is such a geographically beautiful area, too….I love the hiking out there; hiking through Death Valley was something I’ll never forget (just don’t do it the summertime). The thrill rides at the Stratosphere are not only fun (Insanity is my favorite), but offer a wonderful view of the city. I am contemplating teaching an honor’s seminar on Vegas and the surrounding area, though students will likely expect a trip in such a class, and I am not sure this is the destination I want to promote for student travel. Regardless, next summer (assuming it is safe to do so) I plan to go out there and eat myself into oblivion, so many unique places to eat both on the Strip and Downtown. I’ve already been looking at the menu for China Poblano and would love suggestions for other restaurants from those who’ve found a special place to eat out there!

What tech tool could you not live without?

Email….that’s it (and frankly, some days my life would be better if I didn’t have that either). Maybe PowerPoint for some things, though as Charles Brewer once said, PowerPoint has lots of Power but minimal Point. Right now, I am making due with Zoom and Google Meet, and those certainly have their place, pandemic or not. However, I am saddened in this time where we all need technology for pretty much every facet of our teaching that we may think teaching is inherently enhanced the more technology is integrated into the class. Where’s the evidence we should be doing this? I am learning about a ton of tools I could use in my classes, but just because they are available doesn’t mean I should use them, even in these strange times. I do like discussion boards on my course web and plan to use those more post-pandemic, but it’s not because it’s cool or something I can add to my list of things I can say I use to impress my administration….it’s because in the spring, I noticed that some of my quieter students in-person would contribute more when they had this option. No idea if there is evidence that introverted and shy students participate more in discussion boards than in in-person classes, but so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s worth doing to help a segment of my students. At least at Albion, students want interpersonal connections, and I suspect that is the case with most undergraduate students. I worry technology is eroding these connections. I don’t see technology as a tool bringing people closer together; in fact, if I had to wager on it, I’d bet technology is being used more to drive people apart…and to a dangerous extent.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Wow, all sorts of random things….sure, we talk about department issues, brainstorming ways to help specific students who are encountering specific issues (like needing to find transportation or and from an internship site), bouncing ideas off each other for class activities or other pedagogical considerations. My colleagues around campus like to make fun of me for being an SEC football fan. Given recent history, I am not sure they have much to talk about, especially my Big Ten-obsessed colleagues, to whom I’ve often said that if Vanderbilt played football in the Big Ten, they’d be in the national semi-finals every year. So, yes, we talk trash around here. Usually it provides a nice break from talking about details of committee work

And finally... presenting Sybil and Hans!

Arlen Garcia: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 02 Oct 2020 13:27:54 GMT

School name: Miami Dade College (MDC has eight campuses throughout Miami-Dade County and my home campus is North.)

Type of school: Teaching Institution (THE community college of Miami-Dade county since 1960 educating diverse local and international student populations ranging from South and Central America, the Caribbean, and African American.)

School locale: Miami, Florida

Classes you teach: Psychology and Student Life Skills courses fully online, hybrid, and face-to-face (mainly teach 16-17 weeks/semester of Introduction to Psychology, Human Growth and Development, Abnormal Psychology, Psychology of Personal Effectiveness, and First Year Experience courses)

Average class size: 30-40; Fully online courses are cap at 30. The smallest class size I’ve taught has been 10-15.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? My doctoral mentor in graduate school mentioned to consider the student holistically. It’s about quality not quantity of work.

I also heard this question as a full time faculty member from another colleague, how does a faculty member learn? From and With each other. This rings true in so many aspects, I’ve learned most when I share with my colleagues and ask for their perspective.

Recently, the power of the pause and being a transparent convert are guiding principles.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? I was trained in a research track and had no real training on the science and art of teaching psychology, except for what I recall my undergrad and graduate school professors do.

In my earlier years, I relied heavily on my research background of developmental science and mental health counseling, especially the theoretical framework of Freire and positive youth development. Later, I found Angelo & Cross’ CATs Handbook and Saundra McGuire’s work invaluable.

Within the last five years, I credit a lot to the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) courses for enhancing and in some cases transforming my teaching. In the last year, I have met amazing STP members that I have now proclaimed as my own teaching mentors, because of their vast years of experience and they are just really kind J

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I really enjoy teaching Psychology of Personal Effectiveness because it is an applied psychology course. It’s a positive psychology course at its core and it blends the best of both worlds, the counseling realm with empirical research. It’s an interdisciplinary course so it’s a requirement of those students on the A.S. track and so I get a mix of majors that have never taken a psychology course before. It’s a gateway course that really tries to capitalize on teaching emotional intelligence for the workplace. We know from research that most employees are not looking for the “hard” skills, they are looking for candidates that demonstrate how to utilize “soft” skills, and how do you teach teamwork, conflict resolution, active listening skills, emotional intelligence? You have to demonstrate/apply it and this is why I love teaching this class, it makes you “walk the talk”.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. One of the first hands-on assignment I use that also serves as an icebreaker is a paradigm shift activity with an ambiguous figure.

Concepts/topics targeted: neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, delay gratification, ambiguity, anxiety, team work, vulnerability, self-efficacy, self-esteem plus so many others.

We first define what is a paradigm, brain malleability, what novel stimuli does to our brain, how does knowing all of that relates to everyday student life, (i.e., help students in their fear/anxiety of math class or chemistry or physics, etc.) and how can we practice it, how do we do it? To apply it, I give them an ambiguous figure and I ask them to first individually figure it out. I ask to pay attention to how their body reacts too. How does anxiety feel for them? When someone answers correctly, I ask that person to help others see it. They all get that “aha” moment look and engage with each other. It’s a great experience of deep learning.

Then we process all these concepts and how just because we can’t see something at first glance, it doesn’t mean it’s not there (and connect that to their struggles in other courses like math). Also, how and what ambiguity makes us feel (usually uncomfortable) can be the answer for growth and change. That’s a huge positive message that we reference back throughout the semester. It’s a game changer for motivation and building rapport.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I’m very hands on. There is usually a microlecture with team work or handouts or as a class we engage on focus questions. I also like documentaries and clips to demonstrate how the concepts we covered exist in real life and how students can find alternatives/coping skills to thrive.

What’s your workspace like? I do have my own little office vs. sharing an office. Most of my students say it feels very cozy and calm, but also very packed with books and knickknacks. Since early March, I’ve been working from my home office/guest bedroom. See pictures pre and post COVID-19 J

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Passionate, Intentional, Personal.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Co-participatory, transparent teaching and passion for life-long learning.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. Most of the ones I can think about happened when I was a graduate student teaching large lecture halls up to 200 students. I think mainly because I was so young, the same age of the students or younger, I got questioned about the research I cited and probably read too much from my slides. I think I would definitely show it when I blushed because I felt like I had to prove that I knew what I was talking about.

As a 23 year-old, I would double and triple check my information and would come up with questions students may have to make sure I could answer. I had students come up to me after class reassuring me of what a great job I did and how much they learned, especially when a particular student would persist and keep questioning or interrupting for minute details in front of the whole class.

I learned how compassionate students can be. I realize there was nothing to be embarrass about and I was there because I knew my topic, but it definitely made me doubt at times my confidence in teaching the material and classroom management.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? My students and some colleagues might be surprised to find out I have an immigrant story very similar to the Dreamers. I was brought here by my parents when I was eight years old in the late 80s from Nicaragua and crossed the border. In the 90s, immigration laws were different for those seeking political asylum, and my family found a path to naturalization, however, the first decade was extremely hard financially and psychosocially.

Additionally, my students might be surprised that I was an English minor (almost double major). I played the flute and was in band in middle school. For most of my adolescence and undergrad years I played and taught piano. I also love calligraphy, drawing, painting, and crafting.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I always have a goal of reading at least 4 books during the summer, but this never happens. I end up reading only 2-3 books. Lately I tend to start them, but then another catches my attention…so on my bedroom bookshelf right now I have these half-read: “ Becoming” by Michelle Obama, “City of Girls” and “The Signature of All Things” by Elizabeth Gilbert, “On Being a Master Therapist” by Kottler and Carlson, “The Untethered Soul” by Singer, “Braving the Wilderness” by Brene Brown, “A First-Rate Madness” by Nassir Ghaemi, M.D., “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” and “The Next Person You Meet in Heaven” by Mitch Albom, “What I Know for Sure” by Oprah Winfrey and more poetry books by Sin, Kaur and Faudet…

What tech tool could you not live without? LMS Attendance and Gradebook tool.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? It depends…we are thirty five psychology faculty college-wide spread across seven campuses and often, we only see each other in person 2-3 times throughout the academic year (it can take over an hour to get to some campuses!). My home campus is North, the farthest up from the city, and I’m in the Social Sciences Department, so it is interdisciplinary. We are thirteen faculty ranging from History to Anthropology. We tend to talk about students and the usual “…could you believe a student….?” And when we have departmental meetings, it’s about family and travels, world news, chocolate, food...

Barney Beins: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 18:08:39 GMT

School name: Ithaca College

Type of school: Regional comprehensive university (but mostly undergraduate)

School locale: Ithaca, NY (Finger Lakes region of upstate NY)

Classes you teach: Research Methods, Research Team, History of Psychology

Average class size: 25 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Students want you to succeed as a teacher as much as you want to succeed, so be prepared and do your best to work with the students. And don’t be afraid to say you don’t know, although as Charles Brewer said, try to reduce the frequency with which you have to say it.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Bill McKeachie’s Teaching Tips never goes out of style. That being said, my decades of interacting with people in STP have consistently shaped the way I think about teaching; I’ve benefitted the most simply from the many conversations I’ve had with my good teaching friends and colleagues. As successful teachers know, the interactive, human element is critical for effective teaching and learning. I’ve recognized that again and again in my collaborations with stellar teachers.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I am fortunate to be in a situation where I love all the courses I teach. So all of my courses are my favorite course.

In Research Methods, I stress that what they are learning is relevant if they never do a minute of research after they graduate because they are learning a new way of thinking about complex issues in life. As the maxim states, for every complex question, there is always a simple answer. And it is always wrong. Nothing about human behavior is as simple as we would like it to be, just as most issues in life are more complex than we would want.

So we have to learn that, as scientific and critical thinkers, we have to be willing to change our minds when new, better information appears. Research Methods is an ideal course for students to learn to ask themselves why they believe as they do and what evidence it would take to change their minds.

What the students learn in Research Methods can help them evaluate claims about many complex personal and society issues, even if they don’t involve psychology directly.

In the History of Psychology class, I try to impress to students that history isn’t something that used to be. Because psychology is a human science based in a societal context, many of the same human elements that led to psychology’s development are relevant now. The History of Psychology course is an exercise in identifying how psychologists (and others in our society) have evaluated and categorized people. As the students learn, the thinking has often not changed in the past century.

Students learn about how psychology has dealt with “the other” from within different theoretical frameworks and how our discipline has invariably found ways to incorporate already-existing societal attitudes into a new theoretical framework.

So the History of Psychology course reveals to students how our scientific approaches have differed in the last century and a half but also how psychologists, like others, place their thoughts in a social context that is far from objective.

Material for my classes are accessible through my website: http://barneybeins.com

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

It is not unusual for people to claim that psychology is the science of the obvious. They hear about research and wonder why anybody bothered to ask the question because the outcome is so obvious. E. C. Sanford reported on this as long ago as 1906. One of my favorite activities involves showing that research results are only obvious after you know what they are. That is, given any research outcome, we can weave a good story (i.e., an interpretation) that makes sense. But how well can we predict that story?

I provide students with potential results of 15 published research studies, but without the results. They try to predict the actual outcome (e.g., A > B, A = B, A < B) and generate the rationale for their predictions.

For example, which of the following outcomes actually occurred?

A.    Women wearing lipstick while taking a test score lower than women not wearing lipstick.
B.    Women wearing lipstick while taking a test score about the same as women not wearing lipstick.
C.    Women wearing lipstick while taking a test score higher than women not wearing lipstick

Palumbo, R., Fairfield, B., Mammarella, N., & Di Domenico, A. (2017). Does make-up make you feel smarter? The “lipstick effect” extended to academic achievement. Cogent Psychology, 4. doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2017.1327635

The actual outcome is C, which 16% of my students guessed correctly. I have tried to avoid “Gotcha” studies where the results are opposite what a person would normally suspect. Across the 15 studies, my students are consistently at chance levels, right around 33% correct.

The question I pose to them has to do with why the “obvious” result wasn’t all that obvious before they knew the actual outcome.

(The entire activity is available on my website: http://barneybeins.com/epa/epa2020.html)

In my other favorite course, History of Psychology, in one unit, I ask students to read reports published a century ago about African Americans. Some of the reports are quite disturbing, but I tell the students that, although psychology today presents a better depiction of “the other,” many of the issues that appear in the research literature are the same as they are today.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I undoubtedly talk too much in my classes, but for a critical thinking course like Research Methods, breaking the class into discussion pairs gives students the chance to talk about the complexities of the ideas we pursue. In addition, when different pairs report to the class, it become apparent that when issues get complicated, there isn’t just one potential answer. Different explanations can each form part of the answer to a question.

I also create reaction papers for students based on popular media research reports. These assignments require students to assess some methodological concept (e.g., correlation versus causation) but also to draw a conclusion from their perspective as a consumer of the news. By bringing students’ personal reactions into the discussion, they begin to see the relevance of research to their lives.

And just as I create assignments for students, I have a standing assignment for myself that for each class meeting, I need to bring in a new research application or current topic that I can relate to the aspect of research that they are learning about. I often introduce it with a statement of “I just came across this in the news. . . .” Students recognize that research is an ongoing endeavor, which I hope they keep in mind even after the semester ends. In addition, as I spend an hour before every class meeting preparing for it, it doesn’t become stale; I can introduce it in class with enthusiasm.

In addition, over the decades, I have discovered that reading a diversity of nonfiction books informs my teaching, even when the books are not directly tied to the courses I teach. Books about exceptional people provide insights into psychology as a whole. For example, The Witch of Lime Street deals with Harry Houdini’s attempt to spot the trickery that a medium used in supposedly contacting the dead. It turns out that Harvard psychologist William McDougall monitored Houdini’s attempts to debunk the medium called “Margery.”

What’s your workspace like?

I suspect that my workspace is like that of many people whose teaching I respect. I can describe it as books, books, and more books. And being of a certain age, I am surrounded by a lot of paper. Much of the paper involves ideas for my teaching—resources on paper are more user friendly, so I keep the printouts handy for quick reference. (For reasons that should be relatively apparent, there are virtually no printouts of memos from the dean.)

I also have pictures of my grandchildren running as a slideshow on my computer. Sometimes, it is refreshing to step back from my work just to enjoy their images.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Humorous, interactive, thoughtful

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Try not to be boring

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

They might be surprised at some of the summer and other jobs that I’ve had in my life prior to becoming a professor. Some of these include selling cleaning products door to door, mowing lawns in a cemetery, helping dig graves (very briefly), working in the press room of a newspaper as a paper handler (and proud member of the international union of paper handlers and sheet straighteners), and science reporter for the NPR affiliate in Columbus, Ohio.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I am in the middle of two books right now and just finished one.

Bacteria: The Benign, the Bad, and the Beautiful by Trudy Wassenaar

This book is about the hidden world of bacteria around us. Life as we know it would not exist if not for bacteria, although sometimes bacteria destroy life as we know it. They are fascinating, marvelously evolved organisms.

The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball by Frank Deford

The history of baseball is populated by quirky and interesting characters. Although we would recognize baseball in 1903 (when the first modern World Series took place) as the game we know now, it has undergone changes that, in the 1910s and 1920s turned it into our modern game.

Three Shot Burst by Phillip DePoy

This is a fun, trashy detective novel for summer reading.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Like everybody else, I’m completely dependent on my cell phone, which I use as a book, telegraphy, encyclopedia, weather forecaster, and other, but seldom as a phone. For teaching, I’m pretty old fashioned: I use a desktop computer, although I gave up on my Apple II computer a long time ago.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Aside from asking colleagues whether there is a department meeting in the afternoon, I regularly talk about the results of the Ohio State football games (and other sports scores), ancient Roman holidays, and which of our elected officials win the award for having the least grip on sanity. In addition, my colleagues are remarkably helpful about how to navigate through the school’s increasingly frequent changes in software applications.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Barney's keynote address from the 2018 New England Psychological Association conference "Psychology From Beginning To End: What Do We Want Our Students To Learn?"

Ken Keith - I’m a Member of STP, and This is How I TAUGHT

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 16:01:09 GMT

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: When I received the invitation to contribute to this series, my initial reaction was to say that I’m a has-been who may have little to say to my younger colleagues—colleagues who are much more conversant than I with current technology, who represent the future of the discipline, and who are exploring unknown terrain as they adapt to teaching in the face of a worldwide pandemic. However, my friend Rob McEntarffer did some gentle arm-twisting, suggested the title you see above, and posed some questions. So here we go.

School name:University of San Diego

Type of school:USD is a private university, with a Carnegie classification of “Doctoral University: High Research Activity.” However, the heart and soul of the university is the College of Arts and Sciences—a primarily undergraduate college that places a premium on quality teaching. My home was in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the College.

School locale: San Diego, CA. USD is located in the diverse, multicultural neighborhood of Linda Vista.

Classes you taught: Introductory Psychology, Research Methods, Cross-Cultural Psychology, Cross-Cultural Psychology Lab, History of Psychology

Average class size: Class sizes varied over many years, but were rarely smaller than 10 students and rarely larger than about 40.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Like anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in the profession, I’ve read, heard, and sought advice of many types from many quarters. But perhaps the best advice I received over the years did not relate directly to the “how to” aspects of teaching; it was, rather, advice about the attitude, the general approach one might take to all dealings with students: Respect the audience and the occasion. This advice came from my long-time friend and colleague, the late Clifford Fawl of Nebraska Wesleyan University. Every class, Cliff believed, was an important occasion, an occasion and an audience that should be approached with respect.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? It would be really tough to identify a single title. An early influence was B. F. Skinner’s 1956 American Psychologist article, “A Case History in Scientific Method.” In it, Skinner discussed his approach to science, and I was powerfully influenced, but it was his opening line that really caught my eye: “It has been said that college teaching is the only profession for which there is no professional training . . . (p.221).” I have also tried over many years to integrate psychological science with the sciences more broadly, and with the liberal arts and sciences in the widest sense. Some key books along these lines have included Jacob Bronowski’s (1973) The Ascent of Man, Carl Sagan’s (1996) The Demon-Haunted World, and James Watson’s (1968) The Double Helix. I guess I have always been attracted to the stories of science and the lessons of stories, as evidenced by Robert Coles (1989) in his The Call of Stories. Finally, I have been able to pretty well follow Skinner’s (1970, p. 17) sentiment, one I quoted in the introduction to my dissertation: “I have built apparatuses as I have painted pictures or modeled figures in clay. I have conducted experiments as I have played the piano. I have written scientific papers and books as I have written stories and poems.”

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. This is another question that doesn’t have a single simple answer. In recent years, cross-cultural psychology has been my passion, but I have loved introductory psychology since the first time I taught it in the 1967-68 academic year. In fact, I’ve never taught a course that didn’t feel like my favorite at the time. If I must choose one, I’d say introductory psychology, for two key reasons: first, intro. requires the instructor to know at least a little about nearly every facet of the field, and I’ve always found that both rewarding and challenging; second, intro. is the first (and sometimes the only) exposure that students have to our field, making it a critical course—if we do it well, the student will be hooked for life.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. Although I’ve used many, perhaps hundreds, of teaching activities and assignments, one stands out as a favorite. For many years I asked my introductory psychology students to write letters home (e.g., Keith, 1999). I generally required four letters, spaced across the semester, explaining or discussing, in ordinary English, some aspect of the course. Students wrote the letters to anyone of their choosing, with the intent to share their experience in psychology with a parent, sibling, high school teacher, or friend. I provided some general guidelines, and students submitted two copies of each letter—I mailed one to the recipient, and retained one for grading and feedback purposes. This was a popular activity that helped students to clarify their own understanding, in order to explain it to someone else. As we moved further into the electronic age, some students thought the assignment was a bit quaint, but they received a lot of reinforcement from family and friends who were delighted to receive real letters from the students.

What teaching and learning techniques worked best for you? Early on, my training as a behaviorist convinced me that the most effective learning comes from doing. As a result, I became a firm believer in the importance of active engagement of students. I tried, then, to get students out of their seats whenever possible, and to engage them in demonstrations, a variety of activities, or in data collection and analysis. I wouldn’t say I was ever powerfully enamored with any particular technique, except to the extent that it could accommodate meaningful student activity. I also agree with my old friend Ludy Benjamin (2002), who argued that there are key aspects of teaching techniques, including lecturing, that determine their effectiveness. Among these are passion, clarity of goals, spontaneity, being oneself, and avoiding doing the same thing all the time.

What’s your work space like? I can imagine that a first-time visitor to my office would immediately bring to mind a predictable word: cluttered. But I have close at hand my books, my computers, and music when I want it. My space is quiet, although not as well organized as it probably should be. But it works for me, and I like it.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Flexible, interactive, respectful.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Respect the audience: Students are colleagues in learning.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. Many years ago I received an invitation to give a talk to a large audience on another campus. This was in the pre-PowerPoint era, so I had brought my trusty slide carousel. After the introductions, I began. Soon the carousel stuck and would not advance. It was far out in the center of a large room, and I saw no graceful way to try to fix it under the circumstances, so I simply mentioned that the slides seemed to be stuck, and I’d just go on without them. Then I was interrupted by a voice from the back, a woman saying loudly, “No, you won’t.” She got out of her seat, removing a pin from her hair, and proceeding to the projector. After a minute or so of poking and prying at the offending slide, she looked up at me and said “Now try it.” I did, and of course it worked. She had fixed the problem, and the only casualty was my pride; she exposed my technologic ineptitude, which was already pretty well known among my colleagues.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? Although many of my students over the years have known that I appreciate a variety of kinds of literature, I don’t think many knew that I write poetry.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I like to read both fiction and nonfiction. I recently finished Michael Lewis’s (2017) The Undoing Project, about the relationship and collaboration of Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky. I also recently read Alan Furst’s (2019) Under Occupation, a novel set in occupied Paris in World War II. And I keep going back intermittently to the medieval Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters; I think I’m on the eighth one now, The Devil’s Novice (Peters, 1983). And of course, I read a little poetry, with Billy Collins being a favorite.

What tech tool could you not live without? I am heavily reliant on computer technology. I can use the university library from my desk at home, and that is critical for my writing. I access this technology via the laptops on my desk, a smartphone, and a tablet.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? I communicate regularly with a half dozen colleagues who are longstanding friends. We talk about current events, books we have enjoyed, politics, and a variety of common interests. One frequent topic during the Covid pandemic has been the ways that various organizations, agencies, and government officials use and misuse data.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Ken Keith talk about his academic journey and how he combines his love of travel, poetry, and psychology. https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e013-an-interview-with-ken-keith

References

Benjamin, L. T., Jr. (2002). Lecturing. In S. F. Davis & W. Buskist (Eds.), The teaching of psychology: Essays in honor of Wilbert J. McKeachie and Charles L. Brewer (pp. 57-67). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bronowski, J. (1973). The ascent of man. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co.

Coles, R. (1989). The call of stories: Teaching and the moral imagination. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Furst, A. (2019). Under occupation. New York, NY: Random House.

Keith, K. D. (1999). Letters home: Writing for understanding in introductory psychology. In L. T. Benjamin, Jr., B. F. Nodine, R. M. Ernst, & C. Blair-Broeker (Eds.), Activities handbook for the teaching of psychology, Volume 4. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. [reprinted in Psychology Teacher Network, Jan.-Feb., 2001]

Lewis, M. (2017). The undoing project: A friendship that changed our minds. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Peters, E. (1983). The devil’s novice. New York, NY: Warner Books.

Sagan, C. (1996). The demon-haunted world: Science as a candle in the dark. New York, NY: Ballantine.

Skinner, B. F. (1956). A case history in scientific method. American Psychologist, 11, 221-223.

Skinner, B. F. (1970). An autobiography. In P. B. Dews (Ed.), Festschrift for B. F. Skinner. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Watson, J. (1968). The double helix. New York, NY: Atheneum.

Karen Brakke: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 15:42:22 GMT

School name: Spelman College

Type of school: Historically Black liberal arts college for women

School locale: Atlanta, GA

Classes you teach: I’ve taught many courses over the years. In recent years I’ve taught Developmental Psychology, Psychometrics, Learning & Behavior, Statistics II, Research Seminar, and Honors Seminar.

Average class size: It depends on the class; I’ve taught as few as 3 or as many as 55 in a section. Most classes are between 15-25 students, I’d guess.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? I’ve learned a lot over the years from my STP colleagues and others, but I can only pinpoint a few pieces of advice per se. My big brother, who is a math professor, advised me when I started teaching to never prepare more than one class session in advance. I’ve modified that somewhat, but I have found that preparing a bit each day as the semester unfolds lets me respond to the needs of each class in a relatively agile way. Plus it indulges my penchant for procrastination. I think I’m going to have to change my ways if we move fully online in the fall, though.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? So many; I can’t even pick one SoTL article or book. I’m a developmental scientist by training and always go back to the classic developmental theorists to inform my teaching. Bruner, Vygotsky, Thelen, and others all get thrown in. Right now I’m venturing into developmental aspects of narrative identity theory and working out how I can incorporate that more fully and intentionally into some of my courses.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I generally enjoy all of my courses, ‘tho I like to switch them up every few years so I don’t get in a rut. Although I haven’t taught it in a while, I really enjoyed teaching introductory statistics classes. I had fun helping students get past any mental barriers that they set up before taking the class, and seeing their eyes light up when they ‘got it’. If they didn’t absolutely hate the class, they gave me credit for being a good teacher – it gave me a pretty low bar to leap to be thought of as ‘good’!

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. One that the students and I have a lot of fun with comes from Learning and Behavior. They complete a major behavior-modification project for which they use learning principles to change one of their own behaviors in a way that supports sustainability. They write up a report on their results, but my favorite part is asking them to tell the story of their subjective experience along the way. Each student develops a 12-panel cartoon that provides an overview of how she responded to the project at different points in time. Because it is a cartoon, I think students lower their guard and tell more authentic stories than they would in a more traditional write-up. We share the cartoons on the last day of class and during the last part of the final exam period, which ends the semester on a fun note.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? Again, it depends on the class. Mixing up interactive lectures with small-group activities in larger classes usually works pretty well for me. And I like incorporating storytelling when I can. But I think I am most effective working one-on-one with students as they develop and conduct research projects for research seminar courses and thesis projects. I’m a better mentor than I am a teacher, I think.

What’s your workspace like? Right now my workspace is my sewing room, and my desk is an ironing board. Surprisingly, it makes a good sitting/standing desk.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Reflective, transparent, old-school

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Build trust and share the journey. (“Don’t say anything stupid” is a close second)

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. Many years ago I had students create short PSA videos about something in psychology. I thought it would be a good idea to have each team film their videos in class while other teams continued to work on their projects. It was not. I focused so much on the filming schedule that I stopped interacting with the rest of the class, and they just started loudly chatting among themselves. When I tried to ask them to quiet down and re-focus in the auditorium-sized classroom, my voice came out as a frustrated shriek, which didn’t help. I apologized and talked things through with the class, but I think my rapport with that group of students was damaged that day. I learned a lot from that episode.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? It seems students are often surprised that I have a life outside of my office at all, and that I have had a lot of adventures over the years. (Happy to chat about those over a meal or drink at a teaching meeting when we get to the After Times and can do that again, by the way!)

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Usually I read historical mysteries for fun, but right now I’m reading When in Rome, a travel memoir that I found in a Little Free Library. It’s along the lines of A Year in Provence, about a young woman who moves from Australia to Italy as an adventure. I love to travel and spent time in Rome as a grad student, so I can relate to a lot of her experiences adapting to a new language and culture.

What tech tool could you not live without? Yikes. I’m using more and more tech tools each year, it seems. I guess the ones I rely on most are email, the course LMS, and Dropbox/Google Docs. And my laptop, of course. I used to get things done before I had any of these, but I don’t remember how.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? In Normal Times we often talk about campus goings-on, families, or what’s going on in society. As I write this in early June 2020, our Zoom Happy Hours tend to drift to the same things that occupy the whole nation: Covid 19, the fight for social justice, and how the two intersect. But we still talk about families too.

Jordan Wagge: I'm a member of STP and this is how I teach

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 16:28:16 GMT

School name: Avila University

Type of school: Small, private liberal-arts university

School locale: Kansas City, MO

Classes you teach: Research Methods & Statistics, Cognitive Psychology, Introduction to Psychology, and Senior Seminar, along with my research lab. I’ve also taught special topics courses on scientific thinking and metascience in psychology.

Average class size: 15

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Probably the best advice I’ve received in my entire life: “Don’t let the perfect get in the way of the possible.” My PhD advisor taught me this and it’s so true – especially right now -- having to adapt to a new format and trying to fight the urge for everything to go perfectly. First, perfect is not a thing that exists in education, and second, the desire to approach perfection can keep you from taking risks and trying new things.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire. I am re-reading it right now with our current situation; even though it was first published in the 1970s, the concepts have never been more timely.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. My favorite lecture topic *right now* is experimental methodology. With all the questions around possible treatments for COVID-19 (including “remedies” being promoted by folks like Jim Bakker), understanding the benefits of randomized controlled trials – as well as why we have to wait for them to be completed and potential dangers if we don’t -- is so important. The story of Thalidomide’s failure to be approved by the FDA to treat morning sickness is a very good cautionary tale here.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. Right now, my favorite thing to do is include a question on EVERY assignment for a couple of points of extra credit that just asks students to tell me how they’re doing. If they don’t want to answer, they can say “pass” and still get the credit. It’s allowed me to connect folks to resources and also extend some grace on assignments without them having to ask.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? Now that I’m at home, working my cats into my lectures has been essential… Especially since the cats leave me little choice.

What’s your workspace like? Normally, my office is small, and clearly defined with things like doors and windows. Right now, my workspace is a hypothetical construct that is impossible to measure even indirectly.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. My “Pandemic response”: Flexible, encouraging, and understanding.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? My COVID-19 teaching philosophy is “Make it work”. Thanks Tim Gunn!

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I embrace embarrassment and bounce back pretty easily. See: https://twitter.com/jorowags/status/1242633396226011137?s=20

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? That I pretended to be hypnotized by The Amazing Kreskin on New Year’s Eve in Times Square in 2007 and it aired on Fox News. There are multiple pieces here that are orthogonal to so many of my values.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez and about five other books that I’ve started and haven’t decided if I’m going to finish. I’m also reading this super cheesy YA sci fi novel but honestly I can’t remember the title OR the author and it’s all the way on the other side of my house so you’ll just have to live in suspense.

What tech tool could you not live without? Instacart. But you probably meant about teaching, so let’s say … nope, still Instacart.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? The hallways are pretty empty right now, but we’ve pretty good about texting each other general encouragement and funny memes. When school’s in-person, we talk about pretty much everything. The area between my office and my two colleagues across the hall has been affectionately nicknamed “the vortex” because if the three of us are in, you WILL be sucked into a conversation about… something.

Alex Swan: I am a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 19:40:31 GMT

School name: Eureka College

Type of school: Small liberal arts college (undergrad only)

School locale: Eureka, Illinois

Classes you teach: Oh, I teach a ton: General/Intro Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Human Memory, Sensation & Perception, Learning Psychology, Social Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Research Methods, Health Psychology, Biological Psychology, & History of Psychology

Average class size: about 25 (range is usually 15-35)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I think the best advice I have received is something along the lines of being yourself and being enthusiastic about the topic. The reason I teach so many courses is because I am really into each of those topics, and so my enthusiasm is a part of my approach, which is me being me. This carries over to my students, who are quite a bit more engaged when I’m animated and goofy. This is helping me a ton during the distance education/COVID pandemic, because I can just geek/nerd out on some of my favorite topics and still keep folks engaged hundreds of miles away.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I don’t think there is a book or article. I think my answer to this question is the Society itself. Being a part of STP has shaped my teaching considerably in the past several years. The brilliance and dedication of so many awesome teachers in this group makes me want to be a better one.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Cognitive Psychology, as it is my specialization. Every class I get to share with students how their minds work, and importantly apply it to their daily lives. Why do we miss little details in our environments? We don’t have the capacity for such nuance if it doesn’t impact our survival! Little things like this are crucial for explaining the black box of cognition has relevance to everyone and their daily experiences.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

In General Psych, I play a variation of Let’s Make a Deal with my students. I ask them to wear costumes per the original idea of the game, and we go through the Monty Hall problem several times. I use this class activity to illustrate event probabilities are usually connected, but also there’s no sense in sticking to your first gut intuition if it’s going to be wrong!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I generally use a combination of lecture and active learning strategies. Each class I try to have some direct action performed by students, whether it be a demo (just yesterday I tried to get my distance students to try an echo location task and said they should put it on social media), or a scale, or a group chat.

What’s your workspace like?

My current distance learning workspace is my basement office. I have a long desk/table that fits two monitors. Behind me is a large piece of carboard with a green screen sheet draped over it. My mic for livestream classes is a Blue Yeti connected to a shock mount and boom arm (this was mainly created for my podcast).

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Jokes, trivia, animated

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Trust me, psychology is a fun science!

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

To apply this to our current online education struggles during a pandemic, I was embarrassed the other day when online trolls found my public stream on Twitch and began to harass me and my class in the chat. I had to pause mid-discussion to deal with a minutes-long onslaught, using my moderation tools to ban them. I was able to learn from this event, though. Twitch features followers-only chat, so that helps mitigate the threat. The stream is public, but chat requires a few extra steps. It is similar to the stories I hear about Zoombombing—I wish my friends and colleagues the best of luck in their online teaching endeavors!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

That I didn’t start out as a psychology major in college. I tell this to some students if they ask about my academic journey, but most students don’t actually know this.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I currently can’t read for pleasure. I watch things for pleasure. Lots of TV, movies, and YouTube.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Adobe CC. It fuels my hobby, podcasting, and it is currently my online teaching lifeline (e.g., Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Audition).

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Mostly random things; family/home life; vacation plans; search committees and progress.

Raechel Soicher: I am a member of STP and this is how I teach

Wed, 27 May 2020 13:53:04 GMT

School name: Oregon State University

Type of school: 4-year university

School locale: Corvallis, Oregon

Classes you teach: Quantitative Methods in Psychological Science, Research Methods, Intro Psych

Average class size: 25 (online), 50 (in-person)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? In my first ever workshop about teaching college, the facilitator said “What would it mean for a student to get a C in your course”. My naïve reply was that it would mean the student came to class every day. The facilitator challenged me to really think about what I wanted the students to experience in my class and how they would demonstrate their learning. That has always stuck with me when creating my courses or planning class periods.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? I’m currently reading “Radical Hope” by Dr. Kevin Gannon. I’m only two chapters in, but he has very eloquently captured my every emotion regarding teaching. I highly recommend it to folks.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I’ve taught an incredible range of courses – I was a community college professor before I came back to school for my PhD. But truly the one I’ve enjoyed the most is online stats. The course is usually full of non-traditional students who have previously struggled with statistics. Connecting meaningfully with them and helping ease their anxiety and increase their mastery of the subject is incredibly fulfilling.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. My favorite approach to in-person or hybrid teaching is Interteaching. In this class format, students complete a “Preparation Guide” for their homework, which asks them to apply what they learn in the course readings to real-world situations. Then, in class, they spend most of the time co-teaching in small groups. Only 1/3 of each class period is dedicated to lecture, during which the instructor covers only what is requested by the students. This format has allowed me to engage more meaningfully with students and motivates their learning to a greater degree than other formats I’ve tried.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I’m a big fan of any strategies that engage students with the material, make it relevant to them, and encourage them to ask a lot of questions. I love to see them make connections between the material and their own lives or have an a-ha! moment where they’re able to achieve something they didn’t think was possible.

What’s your workspace like? As a graduate student, my “work” desk is in a shared office space of 13 cubicles. Luckily, my desk is alone under a window and next to the coffee pot. My home office is complete chaos – a laptop connected to an extra monitor and books and papers everywhere. It’s a wonder I can even get any work done.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Flexible, compassionate, engaging

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? A pedagogy of “radical hope”: life-affirming and inclusive. (Credit to Kevin Gannon)

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. When I first started as an Assistant Professor at a community college in Florida, I was trying to embrace the “flipped classroom”. As part of this, students were required to come to class with their notes prepared and I would take attendance by visiting each student at the start of class. One day, some students arrived late and so I didn’t grade them (per the class policy). The student interrupted me during lecture some time later to ask why, I explained the class policy, and he stood up and yelled a bunch of profanities at me and left the classroom. I was stunned. I actually excused myself to go cry in my office for about 10 minutes. Then I returned to class and kept teaching. I think about that experience a lot.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? My students would probably be surprised to learn I quit my first PhD program. I went straight out of undergrad and it was a terrible fit for me. I left after 4 years to pursue teaching.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I am part of a book club with some of my friends. We just finished “A Gentleman in Moscow”. It took me 125 pages to get into, but it turned out to be an absolutely delightful story with a few good life lessons peppered in.

What tech tool could you not live without? My “Happy Light”! Probably not the type of answer you were looking for but the PNW gets a bit dreary and I’m originally from Florida. My happy light helps keep me sane (plus my Vitamin D supplements) during the winters and soggy springs in Oregon.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Hallway chatter usually involves me trying to convince all the other graduate students how important teaching is and why they should love it as much as I do!

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Raechel talk with Eric about starting her dissertation and her love of teaching during this great PsychSessions podcast!

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e040-raechel-soicher-tenacious-slayer-of-obstacles-ubiquitous-and-appreciative

David Kreiner: I am a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 08 May 2020 13:58:36 GMT

School name: University of Central Missouri

Type of school: Public four-year university with Master’s programs

School locale: Warrensburg, MO, about 50 miles southeast of Kansas City metro area

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Advanced Statistics (graduate)

Average class size: This is a case where reporting the mean would be misleading due to variability! General Psychology 30-60, Cognitive Psychology about 25, Advanced Statistics 8-12.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

During my first year of full-time teaching, a couple of colleagues invited me to go to a workshop led by the author of our Intro textbook, a guy named Doug Bernstein. Doug suggested something that has stuck with me for the ensuing 30 years. He advised us to do something fun in every class meeting. He shared a number of activities as examples, some of which I have used, but the important thing to me was to make teaching a fun experience. I think about Doug’s advice every time I’m planning a class, whether face to face or online.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I can’t point to one particular book or article. I run across numerous cool ideas in journals such as Teaching of Psychology. Instead of one particular book, I’m going to say that Steven Pinker’s writing has been a big influence on me. Books including The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works made me think about how the topics in our discipline cut across textbook chapters. He presents ideas in an interesting, thoughtful, and sometimes provocative way. I’m no Steven Pinker, but the way he communicates makes me think that we can engage students and get them excited about our field.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is General Psychology (Intro Psych). I enjoy introducing students to the field. It’s fun to be able to pick a few interesting concepts from different areas and help students appreciate the relevance to their lives. I like the opportunity to change how students perceive the world.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

For online courses, I like to use SoftChalk Lessons. I think about what I want students to learn, then I create pages in SoftChalk that are a combination of text, video clips, links, and review or reflection questions. These lessons are available asynchronously. I give students multiple opportunities so that they can get more points if they don’t get them all the first time through. I want all students to have the opportunity to be successful…if they are willing to put in the effort.

My favorite FTF activity is a demonstration of a neural circuit. It involves three rows of students, who simulate the neurons, and some running around by me. The neural circuit is something I learned about from one of my graduate school professors, Dennis McFadden, who was an excellent teacher. It’s a circuit that localizes the direction of a sound, so the activity is appropriate for either for the Bio or Sensation & Perception chapters. I have run across examples of really cool activities in which students act out the process of neurons sending messages. But I want students to understand that neurons working together can actually do things, the kinds of things that we’re interested in understanding. If a circuit of 30 neurons can localize a sound, what can billions of them do? If anyone is interested, there’s an article in Teaching of Psychology about this activity.

Kreiner, D.S. (2012). An activity for demonstrating the concept of a neural circuit. Teaching of Psychology, 39, 209-212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312450438

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

This semester, after unexpectedly taking on a section of General Psychology, I decided to try something a little different. Instead of organizing the class by content area (basically chapter subheadings), I organized each class meeting around interesting phenomena and then connected to whatever concepts (for that chapter) were relevant. For example: let’s look at this illusion; now, what concepts about sensation and perception does that help us understand?

With the transition to all-online teaching due to the COVID-19 situation, I am using the same organizational style with online lessons. I had already been using SoftChalk for my online Cognitive Psychology course. So, for the last week or two I have been creating SoftChalk lessons for General Psychology, organizing them the same way I did for face to face meetings. It makes me enthusiastic about approaching each lesson. I hope that enthusiasm will come across to my newly online students.

I like to use face to face class time for activities and group work. Any of these types of activities could be done online. For Sensation & Perception, I moved to using class time mainly for small group activities followed by discussion. Students read and take a quiz before class so that they are prepared to apply what they learn. I later found out this was called a flipped classroom.

I did something similar when I started teaching our capstone course, History of Psychology. I didn’t want to validate the mistaken idea that history is boring, so I had students work together to apply what they had learned in various Psychology courses in the context of historical issues. For example: after watching video of the Little Albert study, apply your knowledge of Developmental Psychology to evaluate Albert’s behavior. Sadly, I haven’t been teaching History of Psychology or Sensation & Perception in recent years due to my administrative duties.

What’s your workspace like?

My situation is a bit unusual as I am chair of an academic unit (called a School) that includes several disciplines and is geographically separated across two campus buildings. I have an office in each building. Each office is set up with a monitor and docking station. I use electronic documents as much as possible to reduce the clutter. As I write this, I am now working from home due to the COVID-19 situation. My reliance on electronic documents has made this transition a little easier. I do not have a home office as I normally leave work at the office as much as possible.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

I can hear my young son watching Dr. Seuss videos and as a result the three words that immediately come to mind are: “stink, stank, stunk.” I hope those are not the right ones.

These three words are more aspirational: focused, flexible, fun.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

It’s all about what the students learn.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

In the early days of using PowerPoint, when our classrooms did not yet have digital projectors, we had a cart set up with a projector and laptop. It was so cutting edge! I was all prepared for the first day of a summer statistics course. I rolled the cart into the classroom and plugged it in. Then it started smoking. I unplugged it and had a moment of panic about how I would teach. As the smoke cleared, I remembered that I had taught statistics for years without using a projector at all. It was a good reminder not to be too reliant on slides or any particular technology.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

That there is a ton of stuff I don’t know. I think there is a perception that I know how to do a lot of things. But that is an error of attribution. When I’m able to solve a problem or answer a question, it’s almost always because other people are helping me. I am not at all ashamed of that, as I think it’s just as good to know who to ask for help as it is to know how to do it myself.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I recently read Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, Born to Run. I like stories about people, which is the same reason I was happy to teach History of Psychology. I just started reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers. I also read an essay every now and then from David Sedaris’s Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. It’s a nice stress reliever. I am not one of those people who is constantly reading something, but lately I am doing more leisure reading as a coping method for being cooped up at home.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Dropbox changed my life. I know pretty much everyone uses a cloud service now, but when I started using Dropbox everything changed for me in terms of what I could access and where. It doesn’t have to be Dropbox specifically, but if the cloud “evaporated,” it would be a big problem for me.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

As we were leading up to the change to working remotely, much of the hallway talk (from six feet away) was speculation about what would happen and how we would deal with the changes.

Generally, I find that the type of conversation differs across different colleagues. It may be following up on something, such as asking how something turned out or whether we resolved a problem. Often, it’s mutual support and humor. It will be interesting to observe how informal communication changes now that we are handling everything remotely.

Psychsessions Update: Listen to Eric's interview with David about his path toward teaching psychology and his current leadership roles (Chair of the School of Nutrition, Kinesiology, and Psychological Science!) https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e067-david-kreiner-humble-collaborative-leader-among-leaders

KatieAnn Skogsberg : I am a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 16:24:50 GMT

School name: Centre College

Type of school: SLAC (small liberal arts college)

School locale: Danville, KY

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology, Physiological Psychology, Foundations of Behavioral Neuroscience, Sensation & Perception, Human Neuropsychology

Average class size: 15

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Take 15 min. after each class (or as soon as possible) to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and what you want to change for the next time you teach the class. Keeping a “pedagogy log” or teaching notes has been a lifesaver!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Oh, so many! Make it Stick by Mark McDaniel & Peter Brown has had a lasting impact on my teaching. I started giving low-stakes pre-class quizzes over the reading, and my classes suddenly went from mostly lecturing to dynamic, interactive discussions. The students were more prepared, aware of what topics they needed more information on, and curious about other issues that had piqued their interest. I’m now trying mastery-based grading, where the students have the option to re-do assignments to demonstrate their mastery of a topic. I hope this method will alleviate the frustration that comes from giving an exam and discovering that the students haven’t learned what you wanted to, and with no way to go back and correct their mistakes. Allowing them to correct their errors has been a lot more satisfying than having just to accept that they don’t know something and go on.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. Hands down, my favorite course to teach is Sensation and Perception. I tell my students that if they don’t leave class every day with their mind, just a little bit blown, then I haven’t done my job. It’s so much fun to reveal to students that what they perceive is only that which their sensory systems can provide. There are so many fun illusions and demonstrations to do in that class. Inevitably, students start sending me examples of illusions that they’ve discovered on their own. Often they are things I’ve not seen before, so I add them to my arsenal of “Stuff to blow your mind” examples. I teach it with a lab where they collect data on themselves, so they also learn more about statistics and data analysis. My course evaluations generally indicate that although they had learned about data analysis and statistics in their research methods class, they learned more from applying it in my class. That’s also very satisfying.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I do a one-eye dark adaptation activity in my sensation & perception class that I absolutely LOVE. The students cover one eye with sterile bandages (no conjunctivitis vectors!) and keep it covered for a ½ hour while they do depth perception related activities (tossing a ball back and forth, navigating a maze, etc.). I hand out a sheet of paper (face down) that has color photos and a couple of paragraphs written in colored text. It’s on heavy paper so they can’t see what’s on it. Then I turn off all of the lights (there is a slight amount of illumination from a window in the door) and ask them what they can see. Most can see the outline of the paper, so I have them turn it over and tell me what they see. Some say it has pictures and words, but don’t know what the images are of or the words are. Many say they can’t see anything. Then they take the patches off, and the whole room erupts in various exclamations of surprise, confusion, or disbelief. I ask them again what they can see, and walk them through the differences between scotopic and photopic vision in all it’s glory. It’s worth noting that I do warn them ahead of time that many students find this activity unsettling, and some even get nauseated because their brain can’t reconcile what is happening in their visual system. I’ve done this for over ten years now, and it never disappoints! Best day of the year every year!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? As noted earlier, I have found repeated low-stakes quizzing before the class meeting time has raised the quality of the in-class discussions considerably. I also use a lot of spontaneous think-pair-share, especially when I get the impression the students are getting confused or struggling with the material. This slows things down a bit, but I’ve learned to value quality over quantity. I’ve shifted my focus from teaching content, to teaching students how to be independent learners. The content then ends up being a byproduct of that method. I also used to think that every class period had to be a neat, complete unit. But one year, I got off by about 1/3 of a lecture and kept ending the class meeting period in the middle of a topic where the students were still struggling to understand the material or didn’t have the complete story. I was frustrated and upset with myself for leaving them hanging. But over a few class periods, I discovered this was actually an effective technique. It ended up, that because the students were frustrated and confused, they continued to reflect on the topic they were stuck on, and continued to think about it to try to figure it out between class meetings. Many students would go back and study the topic again between classes and come back with a better understanding next time. We would start class with their questions and work on clarifying what they were still struggling to understand. What I discovered was that when the lecture was neatly tied up with a bow a the end, they basically closed the book on it, assumed they understood everything and didn’t reflect at all between classes. But when they left the class feeling a little frustrated and confused, they remained more engaged with the topic and worked to understand the material better. I now understand that confusion and frustration, in moderate and controlled doses, are very effective teaching methods!

What’s your workspace like? I LOVE where I work. My colleagues are amazingly collegial, supportive, and kind. We are very fortunate not to have a lot of the typical political and hierarchical struggles that many campuses have. It’s a very small college, so we pretty much have to get along. The students are also generally very high achieving. Most of them were in the top 10% of their high school classes, so they come to Centre with the expectation that the courses will be rigorous and challenging. Many first-year faculty discover that they have to raise the bar considerably in their classes to meet the expectations of the students. But it keeps us all on our toes and at the top of our game. You really can’t slack, but most of us earned our PhDs because we too want to be challenged, so I often feel that my students are more like collaborators than students.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Spontaneous, Improvisational and Socratic

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Make it personal and make it real.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I’d have to say this moment in time is the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced. I’m rolling with it like everyone else is. I am trying to keep everything as much the same as possible, keeping as much of my class housed in our CMS software (that I already used a lot) and not asking my students to learn new platforms or add new things to their repertoire. I’m cutting back on workload and just trying to make due as opposed to make well.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? This is tough to answer because I’m very open with my students. I tend to use a lot of personal stories to create relatable examples in class, so things students might find surprising (like the fact that I had a concussion in my 20’s and lost six months’ worth of memory) come up in class. So I’m drawing a blank on this one!

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I’m re-reading James Clear’s “Atomic Habits.” It’s been a game-changer for me.

What tech tool could you not live without? My computer and the internet. Even though I (usually) teach face to face, I use our course management software for quizzes, exams, assignments (every essay is typed! No more deciphering handwriting!), and I use a lot of videos and animations to make the material come alive.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? We are a very teaching-focused institution, so our whole world revolves around teaching and students. Yes, we sometimes talk about specific students, but usually, we’re bouncing ideas off of our colleagues about how to do things better, or if they think a certain idea would work, or how they’re doing something we also want to do. Sometimes we talk about research or family, but usually, it’s just “how are you holding up today?” Of course, right now we have to “chat” via zoom or text message. There aren’t many opportunities for hallway chats these days… but hopefully, we’ll continue to find ways to connect.

One additional thought: Before pursuing a degree in Behavioral Neuroscience, I spent the first ½ of my life as a horse trainer. I started in my teens and trained professionally (competing at the national level) up into my 30’s, so this is my 2^nd career.

I firmly believe that everything I ever needed to know about being a college professor I learned from training horses. The horse training part was easy. Teaching their owners how to ride them that is hard. Being a riding instructor requires you to be able to communicate to someone else, how to communicate with yet another creature who not only doesn’t speak your language but also has an entirely different agenda and communication style. The only way you can tell if your “student” is doing it right, is by observing the horse they are riding to see if it’s receiving the messages effectively. Sometimes the horse is doing their own thing regardless of what the rider is doing, and vise versa.

It was in this context that I received the best lesson in “how to teach.” It is a well-known fact that you should never give a family member lessons in anything. But, I was a successful trainer, and one of my older sisters wanted to ride. I found her a very well trained horse to ride with the goal of getting her into the show-ring quickly. One day, while I was giving her a riding lesson, the horse’s performance just kept getting worse and worse. Her reins were un-even and her position was all wrong. She was frustrated and getting angry, the horse was frustrated and getting angry, the instructor (me) was frustrated and getting angry. The horse was to the point that it was going to express its frustrations (do something bad), so I told her to just STOP what she was doing, and do it RIGHT instead. She did stop (the horse), threw down the reins and looked dead at me and said: “I’m doing what you are telling me to, so if I’m doing it WRONG, then you must not be explaining it RIGHT.”

I was rather taken aback, but she also had a good point. I realized that the reason the horse was getting worse was because of how she was interpreting what I was saying. She was earnestly trying to do what she thought I was saying. I realized that if she wasn’t doing it right, I needed to change what I was saying or how I was saying it. It’s really the same as training a horse. If you are trying to get the horse to do one thing, and they do the opposite, you have to stop and figure out how to communicate with the horse in a way that they understand what you want (not the other way around).

This personal experience has shaped everything I do as a teacher. Granted, I can’t be responsible for every students’ learning. Sometimes there are things that are outside of my control that I just can’t accommodate or anticipate (like our current events!). But if several students aren’t “doing it right,” then I need to step back and think about how I’m communicating what I want from them. What am I doing that’s creating this result? It’s not always my fault, but taking that moment to reflect often reveals things that I can do better the next time.

Kiersten Baughman: I am a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 16:08:35 GMT

School name: Valley City State University

Type of school: 4-year public regional state institution

School locale: Valley City, North Dakota

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology, Cognition and Brain Science, Developmental Psychology, Psychology of Learning, Social Psychology, Health Psychology, Understanding Statistics, and Intimate Partner Violence

Average class size: 10-20

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? “You’re here to educate, not entertain.” And, “You should feel (a little) nervous – it means you care!”

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? McKeachie’s Teaching Tips

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I love so many courses, but I would have to say my favorite topic is teaching operant conditioning. It’s so dicey for some, but I have been told I teach it really well and get students involved in creating tons of examples. I start by explaining the importance of freewill. Then, I move to defining and discussing reinforcement and punishment. Finally, I tell students to think mathematically about + (plus) and – (minus) when describing positive and negative. All that’s left is to determine whether we’re adding or removing something desired (appetitive stimulus) or something undesired (aversive stimulus). We discuss many examples, and I end by showing a clip from The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon actually mistakenly refers to “negative reinforcement” when describing positive punishment, and students catch it! Such a great lecture.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I love creative submissions from students. In all my courses, I have students create a presentation about a topic of their choice related to the content we’ve discussed that semester. I’ve had students relate martial arts, running, and hunting to psychology and inform the class about rare disorders and how they connect to the field. Students also comment on each other’s presentations. This has worked quite well as either an in-class discussion throughout the semester or online recorded submissions at the end of the semester.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I’ve been told I teach very “conversationally.” I have an open dialogue with the students, eliciting answers and examples from them routinely. My most successful moments in the classroom come from creative activities that require students to think critically and apply new concepts to everyday situations.

What’s your workspace like? I enjoy my double-monitor setup that allows me to easily have a Word document open at the same time as a web browser or other application on the other screen. One unique element of my office is a futon. I can’t take credit for that – it was my brother’s idea to have a nice place for students to sit when they visit me. I face outward so I can always smile and wave at everyone walking by. I also have a mini-fridge and microwave because I try to bring my lunch as often as possible. I couldn’t live without my desk calendar and sticky-notes that are right in the center of my desk. Books are behind me on the shelves unless I’m actively teaching that course, in which case they’re on my desk for easy access.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Conversational, enthusiastic, animated

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Students learn best from everyone in the room.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I once had a student approach me after class about a distinction I’d made in class between concepts the student had learned were the same. After a lengthy discussion, the student left having learned a lot about the difference and the importance of research, so I considered that a success.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I am an accidental psychologist. I found psychology when I learned being an English major was going to be a lot of reading books I didn’t particularly want to read (rather than grammar). Psychology fit into my schedule when nothing else did, and I fell in love with it. They might also be surprised to learn that I love board games.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I’m a psych nerd so even my reading is most often psychology related. I checked out Gender, Global Health, and Violence from our campus library right before spring break along with The Voices of #MeToo.

What tech tool could you not live without? I am really enjoying Yuja for screen-capture right now.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? We talk about everything from family to pets to what we’re watching on Netflix. I love a department that allows us to be the true humans we are.

Crissa Levin: I am a member of STP and this is how I teach

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 13:25:22 GMT

School name: Utah State University

Type of school: R2

Location: Rural Northern Utah

Classes you teach: (Exclusively Online) Intro, Methods, Counseling & Interviewing, Advanced Behavioral Interventions, Pseudoscience

Average class size: 25

What’s the best advice about online teaching you’ve ever received? There are multiple challenges from working from home, and people who choose this type of learning do so generally because they have competing resources – account for those competitions in creating a course structure and assignments. This will allow people to get an education, and stay the course, who might not otherwise be able to do so.

What book or article has shaped your work as an online psychology teacher? Bawa, P. (2016). Retention in online courses: Exploring issues and solutions—A literature review. Sage Open, 6(1), 2158244015621777.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I really love teaching pseudoscience. I enjoy pressing students to think critically, and to make this part of their routine. Their weekly assignment for the class is to bring in something that they have seen or heard of as a falsifiable fact, and to look up a credible source to fact check it. The idea is to ensure that they are neither immediately discrediting or crediting anything they hear, but checking it out for themselves, and making that just part of their routine – attempting to avoid confirmation bias as well as disconfirmation bias. Students regularly contact me after the course to let me know that this has changed how they engage with facts from friends, family and social media after the class has ended, and that alone makes it my favorite course to teach – plus I personally love reading about this topic and discussing it with students.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or online activity. My favorite activity I already described, but an activity that I do in all of my courses that I think is really useful is a form of scavenger hunt to make the online lectures more engaging. Before the lecture, there is a PDF to download of different questions for which that the student can look for the answers throughout the lecture. I try to make these questions things that I especially want to draw attention to, like concepts that might be hard to understand but that I go over in some detail in the lecture. Then, when the person is going over the lecture (or the set of multiple shorter lectures) they are rewarded for attention by listening for those answers, because at the end of the lecture there will be a “scavenger hunt quiz” or “attention quiz.” On that quiz will be the answers to the questions that they were meant to seek out through the lecture. If you are particularly worried about cheating, you could leave out the PDF in advance and do a larger test bank at the end, however to me this is all about respecting the students and trusting them and their time – I give these a low percentage value in their overall grade, but it feels good to the students to know that listening and attending to the lectures was worth something tangible.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I’m not sure that it works best, but one thing that I think works well is to bring elements of social media engagement into the online discussion forums. My first rule for myself of required discussions is to ensure that they have a meaningful purpose – that discussions are not there just for the sake of being there. But for the classes for which that is true, then I like to make it feel more like a space that is already rewarding, a space like twitter. To do that, each discussion has a topic, and then it has basically an “answer menu.” The menu is a set of hashtags, each of which are defined, and each one has a separate sort of rubric for how it would be graded. So it could be #understand, in which case the student would be asking a question about a specific aspect related to the topic at hand that shows an attempt of looking it up oneself before asking (#understandresponse is a separate menu item, where another student would respond to an #understand). It could be #example, which could be describing an anecdote to help other students remember the concept which is being described in the topic. For each response, it has to have the tag, which is how it alerts me to what rubric it will be graded off of, and none of the menu items include something that would give any points for “OMG, I agree,” regardless of what tag they add to the end. And the last part I like to do here is add one point of extra credit for the original post with the most ‘likes,’ where I ask students to give out one ‘like’ per week to the post that was most useful and well thought-out.

What’s your workspace like? My disability is such that I have chronic pain that intensifies when my foot is not elevated. As such, I have a ‘work bed’ with a monitor that swings above my head (or away when I get up), and it’s in my home office, separate from my sleeping bed. I am very careful about the stimulus control of this workspace, to keep it only for work. I do have a desk space that is structured primarily for how it looks in zoom meetings, as these are the main time that I am not working from bed. When I get sleepy or have trouble focusing, I do sometimes choose pain anyway, and switch to the desk for a few hours of grading or writing.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Thoughtful, Connected, Respectful

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Students are adults, and education and grades matter.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I had a student in my pseudoscience class argue in a discussion that science had “proven” the existence of God, and before I got back to the message board there were already three sort of increasingly heated responses with another student arguing angrily that science has “proven” that God does not exist. I responded both on the discussion board, and to the two students individually who were arguing. I live in Utah, so while this is a delicate issue anywhere, this feels especially disastrous here, with both sides feeling particularly strong in this state. My response was that the very cool thing about “knowing” was that there is more than one “way of knowing,” something that we had already learned in the class, but not applied to this situation. That faith is not related to science in terms of ways of knowing, and that these are simply “different hats.” There wouldn’t be a way to know faith through science, just like there wouldn’t be a way to know if you are attracted to someone through a science experiment, or knowing if a joke is funny to you. Those are not scientific questions; those are questions of a different kind. And whether there are or are not artifacts related to the life of figures in the bible is not something I’m an expert in, but again that just isn’t a faith question, that’s a history question – and both people could see those same facts if they existed and have opposite faith conclusions, which is how you can tell that it is a different way of knowing. Then I reminded them that this was a science question, so while these were really interesting philosophical or faith questions, they weren’t really appropriate for the ways of knowing we could contact here, and to please stick to the scientific way of knowing for the remainder of the class They were both were surprisingly happy with that answer.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I actually don’t think they’d be too surprised to learn anything about me! One thing that I think the online engagement literature seems to say consistently is that retention and engagement does best if there is a lot of “you” in your classes – and I take that to heart. So my students really know me, or I try my best to let them know me, through anecdotal stories in lectures, through emails and announcements, through discussion responses, and especially through giving feedback on assignments. I try to really have a genuine voice in my courses whenever there is an opportunity. I once had a student taking my fourth class, and she emailed me to let me know that her husband walked in to say, “Is that Crissa talking about her dogs again? What is she using them to teach today?” So, while I’m sure there are things many of them don’t know about me, I honestly can’t think of what they would be!

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I am just starting Helter Skelter. I am a part of a fantastic true crime book club, and that was their most recent choice. We just finished Under the Banner of Heaven.

What tech tool could you not live without?

All of them? I think Audacity is the tool that I would be most desperate without. It’s a free software for audio editing, and it’s how I record and edit all of my lectures. I really like it better than all of the other options because of the specificity it has – you can really see the separation of lines better there for editing. And when the audio is great, it doesn’t really matter what you use for video I think. That said, I also really love this newer tool called Descript. You can upload an audio or video into Descript, and it will transcribe it for you, and spit it into a text version. Then you can cut, or cut and paste, the text portions, and the software will modify the video or audio for you based on what you do to the transcript. It’s not cheap, but it really is a time-saver for A/V editing.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Since I work from home for all but one or two days a month traditionally, my chatter involves texting colleagues or bothering my spouse when he is working from home, who is also a faculty member in my department. For my closest colleague, with whom I co-mentor a distance-only research lab for undergraduates, we generally chat about functional things like how to move forward with a project, with a hint of co-ruminating about how far behind we are on grading or similar things. When it’s my spouse or other colleagues in the department, a significant majority of the time it’s something related to cooking or food!

Millie Cordaro: I am a member of STP and this is how I teach

Wed, 09 Oct 2019 16:00:56 GMT

School name: Texas State University

School locale: San Marcos, Texas: Nestled in the Texas Hill Country, sitting atop a hill, a spring-fed, crystal clear river runs through campus.

Classes you teach: All undergraduate courses, I teach both online and face-to-face sections of Psychology of Adulthood and Aging. In addition, I teach several sections of an 8-week hybrid course, Professional Seminar: Careers in Psychology.

Average class size:

Online format of Adulthood and Aging- 25 students
Regular section of Adulthood and Aging- 100 students
Professional Seminar: Careers in Psychology- 30 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I’m deeply grateful to have an ongoing, 20-year mentoring relationship with my undergraduate professor turned master’s research chair, Dr. Sam Mathews. There’s been many salient conversations over the years around crucial academic and professional decisions and turning points in my career. What should I highlight? Well, we chatted on the phone to reminisce, laugh and converse about this very question.

On teaching advice, he spoke about fostering the ability to teach and run discussions with a class of 50, one student at a time. The technique he used to make these individual connections is intentional eye contact, systematically making eye contact one student at a time in a class of 50. Also, asking open-ended, reflective questions while pausing and giving students time to think and interact. Naturally, I have modeled my teaching style after his.

He also offered insight around professional identity. Sam described how one’s professional identity is incorporated into your own, and how one informs the other. From one developmental psychologist to another, his wisdom resonated- your career path and style of teaching is a part of you and your identity. Don’t lose yourself; rather, incorporate your professional self into who you know yourself to already be.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

These are not resources on teaching, but the conceptual framework for each of these books are running in the background of my mind while teaching various developmental psychology courses over the years:

Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. New York, NY, US: W Norton & Co.

Ford, D. H., & Lerner, R. M. (1992). Developmental systems theory: An integrative approach. Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications, Inc.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Did you know that humans are genetically predisposed to live upwards to 110-120 years?

I present to you the topic of genetic limits, one theory of primary aging that reads like the opening to a science-fiction short-story; yet, the theory is a reoccurring theme discussed in my Aging course. Genetic limits is embedded in the bio-ecological, developmental context of culture, lifestyle choices, telomeres and the notion of personal control as mechanisms of influence for aging.

The students find the theory fascinating and I so enjoy hearing their opinions on why there is still a substantial gap between the present-day average lifespan and our genetically preset potential for longevity.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

In my Careers in Psychology hybrid course, students work in groups of 2-3 based on similar career interests in various psychology subfields. Students are given discussion prompts to work through together such as:

Identify the type of degree you need to earn, and in what type of program you would earn the degree.
As a group, discuss anticipated challenges (e.g., academic record, performance on previous standardized tests, and financial resources) for attaining a degree and working in one of these professions

Students leave the class with more clarity and realistic expectations around the requirements and obstacles to achieving career goals in a range of subfields within the psychology profession. The group activity commonly spurs additional career-related questions that lead to important and meaningful one-on-one conversations with students outside of class.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I try to communicate with students in a way that keeps them thinking. I ask open-ended questions, solicit opinions on contradicting research findings, and request anecdotal stories of how concepts play out in real life. Typically, I have students approach me after class or in office hours sharing their opinions or stories based on class discussion. My goal is to keep them thinking long after the class meeting or semester ends. While I keep a conversational tone, I expect students to rise to the occasion and engage their intellect.

Also, there’s an abundance of social media relevant to aging; I’ll follow up a class meeting with an article or video that I post to my Twitter feed augmenting the concepts discussed in class. Again, engaging students in an alternative way that keeps them thinking.

What’s your workspace like?

I prefer natural light in my office. And there’s some uniformity in how I scatter my papers that makes sense to me. I have a small collection of seashells from various beach trips that are special to me, and I dote on my plants when I need a quiet moment to reflect and be with my thoughts.

Also, I have several of my graduate texts and almost every course notebook from my master’s and doctoral classes. I have this romantic, nostalgic notion about someday sitting down and reviewing old course notes.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Socratic, reflective, story-driven

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Adapt studies and concepts to real world examples.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

When I was a first-year doctoral student administering my first test, there was one remaining student completing the test long after the class wrapped up. She was worried about her pending test grade, so I offered to grade it right then. Well, I had to tell her she failed miserably, and spent the next few minutes trying to calm down an inconsolable student- bordering hysterical. I made a mental note to never repeat that mistake again.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

When I began my doctorate, I was fully focused and invested in furthering my research, and carving out a research-based career in developmental psychology. My graduate assistantship package included teaching my own undergraduate class, Developmental Psychology. It quickly transformed from a work obligation to the highlight of my doctoral-training experience. Although I miss the mental stimulation that comes from science writing, I still get giddy introducing students to Erkison’s psychosocial theory, longitudinal research designs, and genetic limits!

Also, I teach Aging at 8am sharp; I think my students would be surprised to learn that I'm not a morning person.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I reread Gone with the Wind prior to the start of the semester.

Currently skimming Thanks: How the Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, and a dozen or so journal articles on positive psychology and/or aging.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Twitter, power point and my university’s LMS via mobile app.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

“…that smells delicious…” and “…I have an idea to run by you for an upcoming…”

Carolyn Brown-Kramer: I am a member of STP and this is how I teach

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 20:18:19 GMT

School name: University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Type of school: Public R1 university

School locale: Small city (Lincoln, Nebraska)

Classes you teach: Introductory psychology, honors introductory psychology, social psychology, advanced social psychology, motivation and emotion, and career planning for psychology majors (co-taught with advising staff). Most are undergraduate classes, but advanced social psychology and motivation and emotion are cross-listed for both undergrads and graduate students.

Average class size: As large as 440 for introductory psychology, to about 40 students for senior-level classes, to about 15 for honors and learning community classes.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Do less. I have a bad habit of getting overwhelmed and burned out because I tackle too much at a time—major structural changes to several classes at once, changing the textbook and the assignments and the structure of a class simultaneously, or saying yes to too many service activities on top of a full teaching load. I try to fight day-by-day burnout by adopting the 1-3-30 rule suggested by a colleague when revising slides: write 1 note for next time, revise no more than 3 slides, and spend no more than 30 minutes revising. Beyond that, I’m mostly just nitpicking. And I try to fight long-term burnout by giving myself permission to make just one mid-sized change to each course each semester.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

The very first teaching book I was introduced to, during my first semester of graduate school, was McKeachie’s Teaching Tips. I still come back to it for succinct recommendations backed up with evidence. More recently, I enjoyed Small Teaching by James Lang, which is a great reminder that small changes in my teaching practices can have a big impact on my students.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course is Advanced Social Psychology. It’s comprised mainly of junior and senior psychology majors, with a few sophomores and first-year graduate students thrown in. The course is structured around a series of yes/no controversial questions such as, “Is there a replicability crisis in social psychology?” I begin each unit with an interactive lecture to provide students with a refresher of the basic content from social psychology and some relevant extensions and updates from recent research. Then students get into discussion groups of about 12 and spend 50-60 minutes in peer-led discussion, delving deeply into the empirical research on both sides of the question and real-world implications of either possible answer. Although students get panicky at the beginning of the semester when they hear they will be responsible for leading an hour-long discussion, I give them plenty of support, encouragement, and feedback along the way—and the peers they initially feared in their discussion group often become close friends. Their term paper involves an in-depth analysis of empirical work on a yes/no question of their choice, and with the weekly practice they get building their critical thinking and analysis skills in response papers and discussion, students produce some very impressive final papers. At the end of the semester, students look back with pride at having accomplished tasks that felt overwhelming just a few months earlier.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

For the past several years, I’ve presented Stephen Chew’s depth-of-processing demonstration in my introductory psychology class. The class is split into quadrants, which are asked to process a word list shallowly or deeply, and with or without being forewarned of a quiz. They score their recall on the word list, then I have the whole class stand up. I ask them to sit down when I call out the number of words they got correct. It becomes apparent very quickly that those who processed shallowly performed worse than those who processed deeply, regardless of whether they knew they would be quizzed. I finish up with a brief presentation on evidence-based learning strategies, including how they can use deep processing while reading, in class, and while studying. The demo works every time, and is a great way to introduce aspects of research methodology and memory, or just to improve study habits.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

My techniques vary widely from class to class. My 440-student Introductory Psychology class meets in a performing arts center without aisles, fold-out desks, or movable seating, so I generally use interactive lecturing (Bernstein, 2018) with clicker questions, think-pair-shares, small group work, videos, etc. In my smaller senior-level classes, I love using student-led discussions and small homework groups. In these classes, I assign groups carefully based on self-report surveys and observations in the first week of the semester, then keep the groups consistent throughout the semester so they really get to know each other. It’s so rewarding for students and for me to see how the groups negotiate differences, incorporate diverse peers, and accomplish things together that they couldn’t do alone.

What’s your workspace like?

It starts organized and gradually descends into organized chaos, with piles growing in number and volume throughout the semester, until that glorious post-semester purge.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Supportive, evidence-based, challenging

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Improve scientific reasoning and application through evidence-based practices.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

Midway through the semester in my 400+ student section of introductory psychology, I was having problems with students using their laptops inappropriately and excessively in class, to the extent that peers were complaining about the level of distraction. In response, I introduced students to empirical evidence on the harmful effects of multitasking and digital distraction, showed them why it’s better to take notes by hand than on a computer, and gave them strategies for managing and reducing distractions. I then required that students wanting to use a laptop in class had to be “pre-approved” by showing me they had been taking notes appropriately and by displaying a tag on the front of their laptop so I could tell who had been pre-approved. I thought it was a reasonable request, but a small (and vocal) group of students did not. They deeply resented the new restriction on their freedoms, and complained both in class and online. The frustration (both mine and students’) spiraled, and after three weeks of increasing tension, poor participation, and distraction from students holding frequent side conversations, I gave up and just let them be the victims of their own distraction. (I also encouraged others to switch seats if they were being distracted.) I wish I had a fairytale ending to this story, but nope—I just had to tough it out to the end of the semester. This is my own hard-learned example of how it’s better to start with restrictions and then loosen them, than to start lenient and try to introduce restrictions.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I have been in zero gravity. (Protip: It’s not for people with a weak stomach.)

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

The best book I’ve read in the last year is The Humans by Matt Haig, which tells the story of an alien who comes to Earth to kill a mathematics professor who is about to solve a major mathematical proof that will give humans the ability to travel through interstellar space, but while carrying out his mission, the alien begins to fall in love with humanity. It’s like a mash-up of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Notebook. Hard to explain, but amazing.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I have two nominees: (1) youcanbook.me to let students arrange their own appointments during my office hours, and (2) Canvas to make an entirely paperless class with easy-to-use rubrics, student-friendly gradebook, and easy tracking of student group work.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Teaching ideas, campus news, and what we’re currently reading/watching. I’m particularly passionate about non-tenure-track faculty rights and academic freedom, and as a member of my institution’s faculty senate I try to keep my colleagues updated about relevant happenings.

Jill Swirsky: I am a member of STP and this is how I teach

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 16:49:55 GMT

School name: Temple University

Type of school: Large 4-year school in the heart of Philadelphia

School locale: Philadelphia, PA

Classes you teach: Conducting Psychological Research, Learning and Behavior Analysis, TA for Honors Psychology

Average class size: 10-20

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Right before I began teaching my first course, I told my advisor that I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to answer their questions or explain the material adequately. He told me that when in doubt, act like you know it all. Don’t make up an answer, but always answer with confidence – even if it’s just to say that you’re not sure and you need to look it up and get back to them.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? I can’t say there was a specific book or article that really influenced me. However, as a graduate student I worked as a TA with the same professor for three years and she greatly influenced my teaching style. This professor was so engaging, dynamic, and passionate about what she did that it was a true privilege to learn from her. Additionally, she went to bat for her students in a way that was deeply inspiring and showed me the type of teacher I want to be.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I really enjoy letting students design their own research projects. When I teach Conducting Psychological Research, we move through the sections of a research paper one at a time. I lecture on the topic, and then we spend some time discussing each students’ individual project as a group: challenges, things they’re struggling with, etc. I love seeing each student‘s project develop over the course of the semester, and the interactive nature of them helping each other brainstorm ideas and troubleshoot problems.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. Learning and Behavior Analysis is a tough sell in my department – most students are taking it as a gen ed course rather than from a genuine interest in Behavior Analysis. Although I am in a Developmental Psychology program now, I trained as a Behavior Analyst and am very familiar with the science and research methodology of the field. However, most of the students indicate a desire for clinical psychology, which is VERY different from the goals and ideals of Behavior Analysis. At the end of the semester I always do Behavior Analysis Jeopardy which is a great way to review the topics from the course as students prepare to submit their final papers. The students get really into it and I give a few extra credit points to the winning team as additional incentive

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I very strongly believe in a student-centered approach to both teaching and learning. Each student comes to the classroom with individual strengths and weaknesses, so a one-size-fits-all model is really not effective. I always make an effort to humanize myself through sharing stories and experiences from my own life, while making it clear to them that I see them as humans too. For example, I do my best to get to know each student, their post-undergraduate goals, etc., which shows them that I genuinely care about them and helps them to buy into me as an educator.

What’s your workspace like? I am an extremely organized and detail-oriented person – and my workspace reflects that. The first thing I do when I get into the office is clean off my desk of any outstanding tasks, then clear out my e-mail. I can’t work in a messy space! I also believe in fun and whimsy, so I keep lots of pictures and colorful magnets etc. in my office. My (and my students’) favorite is one of those notebooks with the sequins that you can swipe back and forth to reveal different colors. It has a rainbow unicorn on it and when students come in stressed I have them play with it for a minute to chill out. Works every time – even for me when I’m stressed!

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Student-centered, proactive, human

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Students are individuals, treat them as such

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I’m not sure this is a disaster or embarrassment per se, but it was certainly a challenging situation. I had a student completely stop engaging in my 6-week online summer class after the first week, so I e-mailed her to see if she was still planning to participate in my course. No response. About 2 weeks before the end of the semester, she reached out to me with a sob story asking if she could catch up on all the missed work and still be able to pass my class. I was willing to work with her and agreed to let her rejoin the class and make up the missed work for a penalty. She tried her hardest but was not able to finish everything by the end of the semester. Given that she’d worked extremely hard, I agreed to let her take an incomplete in my course and finish the work before the beginning of the fall semester. It was my first time giving an incomplete… so I had no idea there was protocol to be followed. I got an e-mail from Academic Advising asking for her incomplete contract, so after I figured out what the heck that was, I completed and submitted it. Then I received an e-mail from another academic advisor saying that this student was on academic probation and was not allowed to receive incompletes. I had no idea! Fortunately, the advisor was willing to be flexible and the student ended up passing my course but it was a learning experience all around!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? For my 21^st birthday, my parents and I went skydiving. That’s right – I jumped out of a plane. Fun experience, crossed something off my bucket list… but I don’t think I’d do it again!

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I love YA fantasy novels – they are a great way to disconnect and relax. I’m currently reading a book called “The Glass Spare” by Lauren DeStefano

What tech tool could you not live without? I don’t rely a whole lot on technology in the classroom…. So the best I’ve got here is youtube! I often use videos to illustrate my points, and to break up the monotony of lectures.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? My colleagues are the other graduate students in my program, so we are all friendly. We often chat about experiences with students, whine about grading, and discuss our personal lives (relationships, family, etc.)

Ed Hansen: I am a member of STP and this is how I teach.

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 13:19:02 GMT

School name: Florida State University

Type of school: Public, R1 University

School locale: Tallahassee, Florida

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Social Psychology, Psychology of Personality, Child Psychology, Research Methods, and Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Average class size: About 100, but I’ve taught classes from as small as 19 to as large as 250.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? To be as honest and transparent with my students as possible. I can think of two different ways this has been helpful.

As a graduate student, I was particularly nervous about what to do when students asked questions that I didn’t immediately know the answer to, but it was such a relief to know that I could simply say, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” Since then, with most of my students having their smart phones with them in class, this has morphed into, “I don’t know, but let’s find out!”

Furthermore, I think that students appreciate when a teacher will take risks in the classroom, but this occasionally means that sometimes things won’t work out as planned. When this happens, rather than pretend that the activity went great, I admit that I was trying something new and that it could be improved, so I ask my students what they did/did not like about the activity and how it could be adjusted for future classes.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

This book isn’t about teaching, specifically, but the first book that comes to mind is Quiet by Susan Caine. As a lifelong extrovert, it was easy for me to forget that a large proportion of my students looked at the world in a very different way than I do, and that these students probably have much different preferences in the classroom, as well. Since reading Quiet, I’ve tried to be much more mindful about whether incorporating groupwork truly enhances my class activity/assignment or not. I’ve also been giving my students extra time to brainstorm on their own before asking students to share their thoughts on a given topic. Some students will always be eager hand-raisers (me, for example), but it’s been great to see how other students are clearly more comfortable and willing to sharing their thoughts once they’ve had time to reflect.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Social Psychology. This was one of the courses that first drew me into the field of psychology as a student, because I enjoyed how applicable its theories and lessons are to real life. Although I like teaching most lessons in this course, one of the lectures I find most interesting is about social identity. It’s fun to open students’ eyes to the ways in which we enhance our self-image and relate to others, as well as the multitude of ways that culture shapes the ways that we view ourselves. In this class, I’m able to use examples that most students relate to (such as “basking in reflected glory" when our football team is doing well vs “cutting off reflected failure” when the team is struggling). After introducing the topic with these initial examples, I can also integrate in discussions of more serious topics that some students might shy away from initially like race, religion, and politics.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

When I teach personality, I have my students think about and list some of their more dominant traits, and then I ask them to think about how these traits can be both strengths and weaknesses in their lives. To get the discussion going, I’ll highlight how students who are more introverted possess strengths that I do not, and that sometimes my high level of extroversion can present problems (again, you can see the impact from when I read Quiet in this example). I especially like this activity because I’ve had many students tell me afterwards that they’ve never considered how some of their “less desirable” traits can indeed be strengths.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

If you ask my students, I think they would say that I will provide them with examples, then more examples, then more examples after that. I know that not every student is going to pursue a career in psychology, so I really try to make the material as accessible as I can by describing the concepts from class in ways that students can relate to. Then, when students ask how they can study for my exams, I encourage them to practice coming up with their own examples as well!

What’s your workspace like? Let’s just say that my typical office layout might bother people who are especially high in neuroticism or conscientiousness. (But I’m working on it).

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Enthusiastic, challenging, and encouraging

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

High expectations don’t mean you can’t have fun.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

When I was younger, I would occasionally pull the “sit in a desk on the first day and pretend to be a student” trick. It would typically work well enough, letting my students know that this class might challenge their notion of what common sense is, but one semester…it backfired. Specifically, this innocent deception led one of my students to constantly question whether was I telling the truth. This problem culminated one day when the student raised his hand and asked whether I’d “told the girl sitting in front of him to spend the entire class playing on her cell phone because it was very distracting.” Needless to say, I had not, and the other student who’d been on her phone was mortified. I had to announce that I would unequivocally no longer be using any deception in that class, and I haven’t pulled the prank since.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I’m pretty open in the classroom, but I do think that students are often surprised to learn that I didn’t always know I was going to be a psychology professor. Sometimes, I think students feel tremendous pressure to know exactly what they should do or what their future should look like as soon as they get to college. It can also seem like everyone else is much more confident in their futures than you are, but that certainly wasn’t the case for me. When I share my experience about changing majors as a junior, I also ask other students in the class to raise their hands if they’ve changed majors during their time at school, and it never fails that a large proportion of the class raises their hand as well. I think students appreciate when I share this about myself, as it reassures them that they still have time to figure things out.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I just finished reading Dad Is Fat by Jim Gaffigan. If you’re familiar with this comedian, you likely already know that he is a parent of FIVE young children. I’ve always enjoyed his comedy, but as a new dad, myself, this was the perfect book to help me see the humor in topics like sleep deprivation and self-doubt that most parents deal with from time to time.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Youtube! This isn’t the only way to share video content into my classroom, of course (e.g. Databrary, TED Talks, etc.), but it’s hard to imagine not using videos in my classes. Videos are a great way to illustrate concepts, to show both classic and contemporary experimental designs, and to include a greater range of diverse perspectives in my courses. Sometimes I have to be careful not to overdo it (it would be easy to show too many cute baby videos in Child Psychology, for example), but if I’m ever developing a lesson where it’s apparent that I’ll be talking for too long, finding a good video resource is always my first step to liven things up.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I’ll chat about just about anything, honestly, but most recently, the topic of conversation almost always turns to my son who was born in March. It’s been an exciting and challenging transition, and he’ll definitely be included in lots of new examples when I teach Child Psychology in the fall!

Alan Swinkels: I am a member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Sat, 15 Jun 2019 16:36:23 GMT

School name: St. Edward’s University

Type of college/university (e.g., R1, community college, small liberal arts school, high school): a Masters-granting liberal arts institution. St. Edward’s has a total enrollment of about 5,000 students, with about 3,800 undergraduates. The Department of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience is the largest on campus, enrolling 320 Psychology majors and another 125 Behavioral Neuroscience majors, or about 450 students total. We currently have 13 full-time tenure-track faculty and several visiting, one-year, or adjunct positions

School locale (e.g., small town, rural area, city, country/region): Austin, TX

Classes you teach:
My duties as department chair have limited the amount and variety of courses I teach, but I routinely teach Statistics to sections of about 20-25 students, and Industrial/Organizational Psychology to similarly sized classes. At various points I’ve taught Social Psychology (my area of specialization), Research Methods, Introductory Psychology, History and Systems, Cognitive Psychology, Advanced Research Methods, Psychometrics, and a few one-shot courses here and there.

Average class size: 20-25 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?
I’ve been fortunate to have associated with really great mentors over my career, and their guidance, from many different perspectives, has strangely shown a great deal of consistency. For example, my undergraduate mentor, the late Maureen O’Sullivan, advised me explicitly through our research collaborations and implicitly through her style and approach to teaching. Similarly, I was fortunate to be a teaching assistant for the late Dev Singh during my graduate school career. I was fascinated by the way he strolled into a classroom carrying nothing whatsoever – no notes, no chalk, no gimmicks – yet held the attention of everyone in the room as he wove compelling stories of science. The secret of his success was that he invited his students to join him on a journey of intellectual exploration, investing them with a stake in the learning process as he guided their discoveries. Finally, my dissertation advisor, Dan Gilbert, and my former brother-in-law, the late Dan Wegner, showed me that great researchers also can be great teachers, and vice versa. Both Dans are renowned for their pathbreaking contributions to the science of psychology, but fewer people may know that they’re also really great instructors in the classroom. I’m sure all these people, at one point or another, gave me some specific teaching advice, but really they “advised” me more through their actions than their words.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.
With no small amount of perversity, I’d say Statistics is my favorite course to teach, but that’s possibly only because I’ve now taught about 100 sections of it. Most instructors wouldn’t gravitate toward a class that students don’t want to take, that many students think they can’t or won’t understand, and that promises such a high degree of fear and loathing from its audience. Yet those moments – and there have been many of them – when the proverbial light bulbs illuminate over students’ heads, and the “this is easier than I thought” comments flow freely, make it all worthwhile.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.
Also perversely, I’m not sure I’ve got a favorite activity or assignment. The oddity here is that I’ve enjoyed a multi-decade association with Pearson Education and other publishers, creating instructor's manuals, online content, study guides, test banks, textbook content, and yes, even transparency masters back in the day, but I use almost none of it myself. I guess I’m good at thinking up clever activities for other people to use, but you’d think that with a storehouse of suggestions that large, I’d draw from it myself a little more often!

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?Active engagement in material, peppered with liberal doses of humor – the smart kind, not “Dad jokes” or goofy asides – seems to do the trick. I’d much rather have students talking and thinking, even if they’re getting the wrong answers, than sitting around waiting to be told what to think or what to do.

What’s your workspace like?
My workspace, aka “office,” tends to be an organized jumble of curiosities (see photograph). My other workspace – the classroom – tends to be a high-energy modernist/minimalist affair.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.
Interactive. Encouraging. Hilarious.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?
Make students smarter than they were before.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.
Fortunately I haven’t had real disasters or embarrassments in the classroom, of the “did you know your zipper’s been down?” variety or delivering, say, a personality lecture to a social psychology class and never realizing it (I’m not naming names, but it’s happened). Two related events do come to mind, though. First, every fall semester, like clockwork, I’d lose my voice for a few days. I was never sick, but allergies or strain or whatever caused my main “teaching instrument” to conk out. So more than once I delivered the day’s lecture via writing on an overhead projector or (more recently) typing in a document projected onscreen. The bizarreness of students silently reading and writing, but occasionally asking a question that received my nonverbal answer, was strangely calming. To counteract my hoarseness, I eventually wised up and started bringing a glass of water to each lecture. That worked well until, during one final exam, I promptly spilled the entire glass over the entire stack of exams, minutes before I distributed them. I got even wiser and started bringing a cappedcontainer of water to class…

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?
Students might be surprised to learn that I’m a big record collector. In these days of downloaded music, I cling to having the actual vinyl article in hand, but decidedly not in any hipster-come-lately sense. Trolling thrift stores for elusive finds leads to amassing some 6,000 LPs, but I still see that as “small” compared to the real fanatics. Students might or might not be surprised to learn that I play the drums and guitar, and dabble in bass, synthesizer, and Theremin, yet I can’t play a harmonica to save my soul. And putting all that together, they’d be really surprised to learn that my first paying gig was playing drums with a Lithuanian polka band in San Francisco.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?
I tend to read books by and about musicians. I just finished Jorma Kaukonen’s autobiography, Been So Long. (Jorma was the guitarist with Jefferson Airplane and is the guitarist with Hot Tuna.) I’ve read almost everything by or about the Ramones. A Tom Petty biography is next on the list.

What tech tool could you not live without?
I could live without almost any tech tool. Does a turntable count?

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?
I’m very lucky to be surrounded by supportive, agreeable colleagues who are passionate about what they do, and that characterizes both the psychology crowd and my colleagues in other departments. We certainly chat about business – that tends to come with the chair gig – but we talk a lot about food, family, fun…the kinds of things that make Austin a great place to live and that energize people in their daily lives.

Rory Pfund: I'm a member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 17:58:40 GMT

School name: The University of Memphis

Type of college/university (e.g., R1, community college, small liberal arts school, high school): Public research university offering bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, and doctoral degrees

School locale (e.g., small town, rural area, city, country/region): Urban community of Memphis, TN

Classes you teach: Introductory psychology, abnormal psychology, and introduction to clinical psychology (co-taught with my graduate mentor) all at the undergraduate level

Average class size: 35

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice about teaching I have ever received was that “research is teaching and teaching is research.” I received that advice from a great teacher I had as an undergraduate student, John Norcross. He taught me a lot about how teaching and research are two professional activities that can (and should!) coexist in productive harmony.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Several articles and books have shaped my work as a psychology teacher. I regularly read articles from journals like Teaching of Psychology, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and Psychology of Learning & Teaching. A few books that I incorporate are entitled What the Best College Teachers Do (Bain), McKeachie’s Teaching Tips, and An Evidence-Based Guide to College and University Teaching (Richmond, Boysen, & Gurung).

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is abnormal psychology. It’s a course with a lot of inherently interesting material. I feel lucky to teach that course because students are curious and interested in the material from day one. Their curiosity raises a lot of questions and leads to interesting discussions about human behavior. I do not need to exert any extra effort as a professor to enhance students' interest.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

In introduction to clinical psychology, I teach students fundamental clinical interviewing skills – open-ended questions, closed-ended questions, reflective listening, etc. Students pair up and role play interviewer and interviewee for increasingly longer periods of time during the semester. While the students are role playing, I walk around the classroom, listen to interviews, and offer tips to guide their interviews. Students typically feel anxious to conduct interviews at the beginning of the semester, but many of them say how much they learned after we continue to practice.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I find that using a variety of teaching/learning techniques works best for me. My number one rule is not to lecture for great lengths of time because students become bored or distracted. In class, I use several semi-flipped classroom approaches, discussions, some video clips, and iClickers (they are a great tool for showing me when I was not effective in explaining a topic!). I also use a mix of weekly quizzes and writing assignments in my courses.

What’s your workspace like?
My current workspace is shared with three other graduate students. Usually there is less clutter on my desk (mine has the photo of the dog) but I am in the process of wrapping up my dissertation before heading off to internship. And yes, there is a large tin of cookies as well as two lint rollers in my workspace.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Active, organized, enthusiastic

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Meet students where they are and facilitate learning

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

One embarrassment (that I’m willing to share!) readily comes to mind. In an introductory psychology class, I tripped over a small garbage can and fell to the floor while I was teaching. My students and I all laughed hysterically when they saw I was not hurt.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

They might be surprised to learn that I initially did not intend to pursue psychology as a major when I was an undergraduate student. I started as a computer science major but quickly learned it was not for me. Then, I spent some time as a philosophy major while enrolled in some psychology classes. I did not think I would pursue psychology until I took a careers in psychology class during my junior year. That’s when I “caught the fever!”

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I am embarrassed to write that I am not currently reading anything for pleasure. There has not been much time for extra curricular reading as a graduate student… Typically I enjoy reading books about science that are from academic disciplines outside of psychology.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My personal computer. I own a small netbook that is easy to carry with me.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I primarily talk to other students (graduate and undergraduate) about our ongoing research projects. We also talk a lot about music, sports, and our pets.

Rosemarie Joy Alonzo-Schulte: I’m a Member of STP, and This is How I Teach.

Wed, 17 Apr 2019 21:04:02 GMT

School Name: University of Roehampton London – Online & University of the People - Online

Type of School: Public Universities. Both universities have a diverse student body that represents the six continents – Asia, Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Australia.

Classes you Teach: Undergraduate and Graduate psychology courses including Research Project (Master’s Thesis) Supervision

Average Class size: In undergraduate courses, class size ranges from 15 to 40 students. While in the graduate courses, class size ranges from 15 to 25 students. Supervision of master’s thesis varies from 4 to 15 students.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Out of all the psychology, undergraduate and graduate courses - psychopathology, personality, and health psychology are the courses that I enjoy teaching as I found that most students someway and somehow relate to the topics with their personal experiences, and at times discovers something new about themselves. As much as I love teaching these courses, I like organizing and presenting the materials in a way that makes it easier for the students to understand which can stimulate discussions that foster learning and engage the students in active learning.

These courses that I enjoy teaching are aligned with my research interest which reflects on the student’s masters thesis that I am supervising that has an emphasis on how adverse environmental experiences (stress, trauma, social disadvantages, alter development processes) shapes emotional, cognitive and neurobiological development throughout childhood and adolescence that predicts the increased risk for psychopathology, particularly in adulthood.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? Interactive, Engaging, and Supportive.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I am a licensed clinical psychologist and currently in active psychological practice. I amfrom Houston, Texas but presently residing in Alberta, Canada. Psychology is not my first undergraduate studies, but Business Administration.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Teaching using a learning platform can be challenging compared to teaching in a classroom as being familiarized with the different learning software is vital in facilitating the course/class, engaging the students to participate in activities must be sustained and students tend to need more support. Because of this, flexibility, adaptability, and communication are imperative.

The best advice that I learned from my professors and mentors are keeping it simple even if the course material is difficult as it enables the students to learn the material and knowing after the course is over that they have learned what should be is the rewarding part of teaching.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? I love the books that are authored by Oliver Sacks in particular, The Case of the Colorblind Painter as it clearly displays the relationship between cognitive processing and behavior.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment.

Writing a research proposal is my favorite assignment as it demonstrates the student’s subject of interest, why it interests them, and showcase their writing skills. Based on the students’ feedback, they find this assignment challenging, but they are also excited in doing an activity that they have not done before.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you? Active learning is my teaching/learning style which allows inclusion of the different learning styles and motivates students to be engaged learners.

What’s your workspace like? Tons of paper all over my workspace. It is evident that the semester term is over when all the paper disappears, and everything is organized.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

When I was new on teaching online, I announced the date and time of the synchronous class and realized the day before the scheduled date that some of my students are geographically located in places wherein the date is a day ahead of North America. Luckily, that day I managed to show up although I was ten minutes late and good enough some of my students are still online waiting. I ended up facilitating the class though slightly disorganized. Because of this error, I ended up giving two synchronous class instead of one and sending emails that contains some materials and resources that I did not manage to cover during the synchronous class.

At the time that I made this mistake, all I can do is go with the flow though I was really flustered. Now, when I look back, it always brings a smile on my face.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Recently, I became enthused about the holistic approach such as meditation that I ended up reading Aware, the science and practice of presence.

What tech tool could you not live without? Collaboration app is essential in teaching and communicating with students, and the use of SPSS to validate the students’ statistics work.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school?)

In the faculty lounge forum, the discussion between faculty members tends to be more suggestive as the topics that are most talked about pertains to student’s situations or circumstances such as academic integrity or inappropriate/unusual behaviors. In some instances, a faculty member might discuss an activity that they intend to introduce or already presented in class that is out of the ordinary that usually creates a lot of buzz.

Blake Nielsen: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 19:13:40 GMT

School name: Columbia College

Type of school: Small liberal arts school

School locale: Columbia, MO

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Lifespan Development, Research Methods, Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Capstone Research, and Writing for the Social Sciences.

Average class size: 20-30 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

In one of the first courses I TA’ed as a graduate student, the major professor gave me a Louis Pasteur quote about “chance favoring only the prepared mind.” The quote confused me at first, but I quickly realized how fast things moved inside the classroom and how quality-teaching moments were products of being prepared when students asked difficult questions.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Chickering and Gamson’s Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. I read this when I started teaching and have aspired to implement these practices ever since.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

General Psychology is one of my favorites. It’s the doorway to the rest of the major and because it has so many topics, I never get bored. I bring a lot of passion and enthusiasm into this course and love hearing students say they took a psychology course to satisfy a requirement but enjoyed it so much that they signed up for more.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

Whenever I lecture on Latané and Darley’s (1970) decision making model for helping behavior, I always recruit a student to help me create a scene at the beginning of class (e.g., falling down, spilling a stack of papers, dropping a cup, etc.). I try something different every year and I’m amazed by students’ reactions. It makes for a great talking point later in the lecture when I post an image of my student accomplice and ask why so few of their classmates got out of their seats to help (diffusion of responsibility!).

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

Retrieval practices! I read Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel’s, Make it Stick, and was immediately convinced I should implement low-stakes retrieval practice activities in all of my courses. Now, I can’t go more than a few days without engaging students in some type of retrieval practice.

What’s your workspace like?

Most of the time, my office is relatively clean. However, this is not always the case around the middle and end of the semester (see attached photo for proof).

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Energetic. Active. Fun.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Always have fun with the material.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

At one point during my first year as a faculty member, the power went out in my building 15 minutes before I had to teach. My course was in a windowless, basement classroom and I had to think fast if I still wanted to lecture about attachment theory. Instead of canceling class, students illuminated their cell phones and I taught the entire lecture by getting students to role-play Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Task. The class got a kick out of the tall student athlete from the football team playing the role of the baby. (The guy did a great job!) Every semester since, I incorporate some element of role-play when discussing this topic.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I was quite the runner in college and graduate school, completing 10K’s, half-marathons, marathons, as well as an Ironman triathlon. Exercising helped me manage all the stress that came with school.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I attended a Supreme Court session last summer and got hooked on all things Supreme Court. I started listening to Radiolab’s podcast, More Perfect, and even bought Justice Sotomayor’s autobiography, My Beloved World, in the Court’s bookstore. I get in a few chapters whenever I have “free time” during my breaks.

What tech tool could you not live without?

ZipGrade completely changed how I administer and score exams. Since adopting this tool, I haven’t looked back.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Mostly, my conversations are teaching focused. My colleagues do amazing work and I’m always fascinated to learn more about their approaches to teaching. Their stories inspire me to continue dreaming big in my own courses.

Bridgette Hard: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 17:34:03 GMT

School name: Duke University

Type of school: R1

School locale: Suburban meets small hipster city

Classes you teach: My primary focus is on teaching our large (250 student) Introductory Psychology course, but I am also teaching a first-year seminar called The Psychology of Student Success, and I teach seminars on teaching and on doing classroom research.

Average class size: My class size is bimodally distributed. J Classes are either huge (230-250) or small (<18)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I think probably the simplest, most impactful advice I received was just to be “intentional.” Instead of just doing my best impersonation of my own college professors, or trying to shove as much content into my class as possible, my teaching choices should intentionally reflect my goals for my students. This seems so obvious to me now, but as graduate student teaching for the first time, it wasn’t obvious at all. I really thought of teaching as more of a performance than as a project with desired outcomes. This advice came indirectly from two of my colleagues at Stanford: James Gross and Kelly McGonigal, who are two of the best teachers I know. They talked about teaching in this way, and it really changed the way I thought about it.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Over the years I’ve really tried to find a way to fall in love with each and every topic I teach. I have to discover something—a story, a particular study, a theme—that makes me really eager to share that topic with students. If I can’t connect with its meaning or purpose, then why am I covering it? As a result, I truly love all the topics I get to teach. If I had to pick a single favorite, I think I’d choose Sensation and Perception. Visual illusions illustrate at a very basic level how the mind constructs reality. The active role of the mind in shaping our experiences is one of the most powerful lessons that a psychology course can teach a person and this all begins with how we interpret information coming through our senses.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

For years, I have been illustrating the reconstructive nature of memory in my introductory psychology course by planting a false memory about the first day of class. This idea was originally conceived in collaboration with my former colleague at Stanford, Greg Walton. In a lecture on the brain, I describe the function of the cerebellum and offer a joke: “this part of the brain wasn’t working very well for me when I spilled my water bottle the first day of class.”

Several days later, I give students a survey that they can complete for modest extra credit (a single point on an exam). The survey contains a number of questions related to memory, including questions asking students to recall details about events from the first day of class. The false event from the first day of class—me spilling my water bottle—is listed alongside three to four true events.

Although most students report not remembering this false event, anywhere from 20-35% of my students do, and most will confabulate details of the incident, including the color of the bottle, where I was when I spilled it, the noise it made, what I said, the fact that students laughed, etc. I then use student quotes describing the false event in my lecture on memory. After sharing some of Elizabeth Loftus’ and others’ classic research on false memory, I reveal students’ own data illustrating their false memories.

Critically, we discuss the ethics of the demonstration. I explain how much I value honesty in the classroom, and don’t use deception without careful consideration. I further explain that I want students to experience the vulnerability of their memory in a safe setting, where the worst thing that can happen is that they feel mildly embarrassed that their anonymous description ended up on my PowerPoint slide. Students overwhelmingly think the demonstration is worth the mild deception, and appreciate the lengths I’m willing to go to help them understand psychology.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I have two favorite teaching techniques. First, I love telling stories as a pedagogical tool. Listening to a story has always been one of my favorite ways to learn, and I think that creating a compelling narrative is a strength of mine. My lectures are structured to be story-like, and I use specific stories to illustrate important concepts and to describe a classic experiment. Telling a successful story forces me to take my students’ perspective: What do they already know? What will they care about? What will surprise them? Anger them? Inspire them? I’m always collecting new stories by listening to wonderful podcasts that feature psychologists and their work. My favorites are This American Life, Invisibilia, Hidden Brain, Radiolab, and the Ted Radio Hour.

Second, I love a good discussion. I like to pose a good question and really listen to and build on what students have to say. I used to think that teaching was all about “talking,” until I observed some brilliant friends and colleagues who were skilled at facilitating discussions. They knew how to pose thought-provoking questions and then just listen, really listen, to what students had to say. With intense listening, they would easily come up with a great follow-up question or comment that would inspire other students to join in and create a true conversation. I’ve really enjoyed developing this skill myself because it forces me to be in the moment with my students, learning along with them.

What’s your workspace like?

When I’m getting down to the business of lesson planning or grading, my workspace is just me and my computer, because everything is digital. I have a sit-to-stand desk so that I can get up on my feet. I like to have multiple screens for lesson planning, because I’m usually doing a mix of reading, writing, and building slides all at once. I also think a lot about teaching when I’m walking and driving. While driving, I prep for class by listening to previously recorded lectures from my own classes or to podcasts that have stories I want to share with students. While walking, I sometimes use “retrieval practice” and mentally walk through the lesson I have planned for the day.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

theatrical, empathetic, meticulous

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Always start from a place of empathy.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I’ve made so many mistakes over the years, most small, but occasionally a bigger one. Probably my worst teaching disaster was when I was in graduate school, teaching a summer session course that I helped to design on “The Psychology of Mind Reading” (really a course about social cognition). This was one of my first real teaching experiences. At the last minute, I’d decided to add a description of a recently published study to my lecture plan. When it came time to explain the study in class, my mind went completely blank. I just could NOT remember the details of the study and just stood there, looking blankly at my slides for a long time. Eventually I gave up, tried my best to laugh about it, and explained that I would “study up” before our next class session. I think my students gave me the benefit of the doubt because they’d seen how prepared I’d been for our previous classes, and they knew I cared. By the next class we seemed back on track. Ever since, I’ve been extra careful to make sure I understand the studies I plan to cover in class, taking time to check out the original article and make sure I have a grasp of the methods, partly to make sure I can explain it, but also to be prepared for interesting questions students may ask.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Most of my students are surprised to learn that I’m also a group exercise instructor who likes to choreograph fitness routines to music. I love to exercise and have been teaching exercise since my first year of graduate school. Occasionally one of my students stumbles into my exercise class on campus and then takes a few minutes to recognize me because I look pretty different decked out in my workout gear.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I don’t have very “elevated” book selections—I love fantasy fiction written for young adults because I can read it before bedtime without having to strain my brain too hard at the end of the day. I most recently read Sabaa Tahir’s Reaper at the Gates which is part of her Ember in the Ashes Series. I haven’t picked a new book yet. I love audio books because I can listen while walking or driving.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I could not live without Google image search. My lecture style is very visual. I don’t like a lot of words on my slides and Google’s image searching capability makes it so easy for me to find the perfect picture to compliment whatever I am trying to say.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I definitely ask my colleagues about how their teaching is going this term. Because I’m at an R1, I don’t think faculty talk as much about their teaching, so I try to start that conversation. We also talk a lot about our kids. I have two daughters, aged 7 and 10, and they are always up to something fun that I like to share.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Bridgette Martin Hard talk with Garth about connections between teaching psychology and storytelling, theater, and improvisation!

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e015-bridgette-martin-hard-the-artistry-and-craft-of-teaching

Jackie Goldman: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 20:01:48 GMT

School name: Delta State University

Type of school: Regional State University

School locale: Small town, in the Delta of Mississippi (the heart of the blues!)

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Lifespan Development, Educational Psychology, Human Sexuality, and Statistics

Average class size: 20-30

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

My biggest fear when I first starting teaching in graduate school was that my students would see right through me. I had a fear that a student would ask me a puzzling question that I would not know the answer to and I would be caught as a fake, the ol’ impostor syndrome at work. I mentioned this fear to my advisor and he told me that there was no way I was going to know everything, and that’s Okay. He told me to not make up some answer just because you feel like you have to, that students will respect you more if you reply with, “I actually don’t know the answer to that, let me write that down, research it, and I’ll get back to you next class,” and MAKE SURE to get back to them. The relief that came with that piece of advice helped me relax into my teaching and let my passion and enthusiasm come through.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

It’s a hard choice between John Dewey’s Experience and Education and Ryan and Deci’s (2000) “Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being,” but ultimately I have to go with Experience and Education. Dewey’s description of education and its importance in being a transformative experience instead of just a means to an end constantly reminds me to keep perspective while I am teaching, because at the end of the day what is that I want my students to take away from my class? Concepts, content, and lectures will fade, but opening a student’s mind to critical thinking and the beautiful world of understanding human behavior and thought through psychology is truly transformative.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I absolutely adore teaching Statistics. It’s such a weird mixture of conceptual and procedural learning, and I just love surprising my students with how relevant it is to their everyday lives. So many students come into statistics with math anxiety and a fear of failure. They set such low expectations of themselves and the class and that motivates me to show them that the course really is not so scary. It also continually challenges me to think of different ways to describe complex ideas. Standard deviation may feel like second nature to me now, but I am constantly needing to remind myself of my very first interaction with these topics. It is like learning a new language that can make you lots of money if you get really good at it! Honestly I get so jazzed about statistics I would not be surprised if sometime down the road I get a statistics related tattoo.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

My favorite assignment is one I actually borrowed from the Transformative Experience literature (see Pugh, 2011 and Heddy & Sinatra 2013). It’s called “Use Change Value” or “UCV” responses. I do this about 8-ish times a semester where I ask students to describe how they have seen the course content in their everyday life through three prompts:

1) Discuss how you saw an example of course content in your everyday life.
2) Discuss how seeing that content in your real life experience has changed how you see that topic.
3) Discuss why that experience was/is valuable to you.

I give my students autonomy in letting them choose any course content, and given that psychology is the study of human behavior/cognition and we are all humans, they have a plethora of options to choose from. I find that this assignment is great for facilitating self-relevance so the material usually sticks better, and I get to know more about my students through these prompts. They’re also only 300 words, so it doesn’t become too burdensome for myself or my students.

What’s your workspace like?

I think my office is a reflection of my interests and sense of humor as well as my affinity for psychology. My psych side shows through my skulls, brains, and psych memes on display, but I also have a poster of one of my favorite movies (Army of Darkness) framed above my desk, and a mounted taxidermy bob cat head that I inherited from a bar I worked in during grad school. I spend a lot of time in my office and so I wanted it to be a place that brought me joy as well as a space that didn’t feel as threatening to my students. As a student, walking into offices with a multitude of bookshelves felt so daunting. It was if the bookshelves represented the vast knowledge of my professors that could come crashing down on my little brain at any minute. I keep one bookshelf of what I find to be absolutely essential texts, and the rest reside at home.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, Relevant, Eclectic

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Each student has a unique perspective, address it.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

In graduate school one of my mentors asked me to teach about operant conditioning and shaping in her class so she could observe my teaching and give me feedback. I decided to do an in-class activity on shaping where someone in the class would be sent out into the hall while the rest of the class decided on a behavior they wanted them to do when they returned. Upon returning, using M&Ms, I would reward the student as they performed behaviors that got closer and closer to the desired behavior until they finally performed it. The class chose jumping jacks, which was great and should be easy I figured. It was not. My volunteer just did not get the idea that they had to try different movements in order to be rewarded. Maybe I did not explain the activity well enough, maybe they were shy, but we stood there for 5 awkward minutes while my volunteer made little gyrations and the M&Ms melted in my hand. Finally my mentor saved me and told me that we got the idea and to just move on. I ended up carrying out the rest of the lecture with only a mild amount of sweat and shaking, and it was a very valuable lesson in how your in-class demonstrations may not always make the point you want them to and how you may need to switch things up to get things to work.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I am a big horror genre fan, so I am currently reading through some of Stephen King’s more popular titles, and at the moment am on Pet Semetary.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Honestly my LMS, which is currently Canvas. I love the organization, accessibility, and ease of communication. I’m constantly finding new ways to engage with it in meaningful ways with my students.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Usually it revolves around campus news and activities, but Cleveland is also a very small town, so we will also chat about upcoming social events or trips to bigger cities as well.

Steve Jones: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Fri, 30 Nov 2018 15:48:27 GMT

School name: City of Medicine Academy

Type of school: CMA is an urban magnet high school, a small school of 350 that’s 44% African-American and 42% Hispanic, and 82% female. We have a wide range of students who are interested in pursuing a career in the medical field, so they take extra health and medicine electives. Our students can graduate from high school with their CNA license or as certified EMTs.

School locale: Durham, NC – the Bull City!

Classes you teach: AP Psychology, Civics & Economics (and numerous other social studies courses over the years)

Average class size: 20 (has ranged from 5-30)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

In 2008 I worked closely with a fellow social studies teacher, who, like me, had spent several years out of the classroom before returning to teaching. She’d worked a lot with beginning teachers, and one day when we were talking about teaching she said, “Look, it’s not that hard – just teach every class period from bell to bell.” She was a great colleague and she of course knew that teaching was always a hard job, but that reminder has always stuck with me. I only have a small amount of time with my students every day, and it’s vital that I use that time wisely every period.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Like a lot of high school teachers, I was a social studies teacher by training, and it was a surprise when I was first asked to teach psychology. One of the most important books at that time was Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat. I was taken in by Sacks’ use of rich language to describe his patients and I became just as fascinated as he was as to what motivated them (and all of us) to think and behave in certain ways. In terms of teaching, the book Make It Stick has greatly changed my thinking about how learning happens.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

There’s not one specific topic, but one general idea, which is encouraging students to use the principles of psychology to influence the behavior of others. I don’t mean this in a manipulative way, but when I teach about methods of persuasion or reinforcement principles, I truly encourage students to go out in the real world and try out these methods in small ways. It’s always fun to have them come back and say that their parents were more likely to allow them to have a later curfew, or a friend is acting more warmly to them, because of the principles they used. What could be more enticing to teenagers than to show them the tools for improving their world a little bit?

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

“Silly snakes!” This is the activity developed by Janet Simons and Don Irwin (Bolt resources manual, 1996) in which students are asked to listen to 20 strange sentences (“The crafty surgeon won the daily double”) and write down their ratings for each sentence. Each student rates the sentences according to the instructions on their rating sheets, and unbeknownst to them, there are two different rating systems: one asks them to rate the sentences according to how well they could pronounce the words, and the other asks them to rate them on how well they can create a vivid mental picture of the sentence. I then ask the students to turn over the rating sheet, number from 1 to 20, and then I start asking them questions based on the sentences (“Who won the daily double?”) I love this because I’ve done it dozens of times and it works every time! The “vivid mental picture” group always scores higher, and it leads to a conversation about the power of visual images when trying to create memories. I collect the scores by having them raise their hands (“how many got all 20 right?” etc.) and it’s just fascinating observing the “pronounce” group respond so emotionally because they have done poorly, and cannot imagine how someone else could have done so well. I once did this in a meeting with our faculty, and principal, who was in the “pronounce” group, got very angry as I read off the questions, even slamming down her pencil in frustration at one point!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Unlike most AP Psychology teachers, I have only one semester to teach the whole course, so I have to carefully structure every unit to maximize what I can help my students learn. I introduce every unit with a calendar that lists the page numbers of the reading and major concepts for that day. I regretfully jettison fun activities and projects that I’ve done successfully in the past, but I justify it because my focus is on students doing their best on the exam and gaining college credit. I can often be found in the front of the room, but I view it more as an interactive coaching style than lecturing; the students have already done the reading, so I focus on ways to help them learn the concepts more effectively, by using probing questions, mnemonics, concrete examples, activities, demonstrations, and images to promote dual coding. I also use frequent quizzes to make use of the testing effect, and the unit calendar helps to reinforce the idea of spaced effort over time instead of cramming. (Can you tell I’m a big fan of incorporating cognitive learning principles?)

What’s your workspace like?

Organic – that’s a positive way to say messy, right? Clutter has always been my hallmark, which of course leads me to seek out those research studies that link creativity and messiness.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Relevant, responsive, and reflective.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

“Teaching is performance. Art.” I wish I had written this, but a while back I saw this comment from fellow high school psych teacher Charlie Blair-Broeker and it just clicked with me. Like performance art, teaching may seem on the surface to be easy or simple, but as we all know there’s so much work and thought behind every class period that students never see.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I know this sounds like a cliché, but it really happened. Several years ago when I was teaching memory I was proudly showing my students the mnemonic I had just learned for keeping proactive and retroactive interference straight. For years I had struggled with a quick and effective way to delineate the two, and someone shared with me this idea: you can teach students that “Proactive is when Old interferes, while Retroactive is when New interferes” by focusing on the word formed by the first letters of those capitalized words. So yes, in the midst of me proudly writing PORN on the board and boasting how effective this was for remembering interference, my new principal walked in for a little mini-observation. The debriefing after the visit wasn’t as bad as I had feared, and my students really did perfectly remember the difference!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? Okay, this is completely a lie, since I always manage to work it in to my AP Psych classes, but my other students wouldn’t know that I have had five crossword puzzles published in the New York Times. I still love solving them daily, but never seem to have enough free time to construct new puzzles any more. When I teach cognition I always do a mini-unit on solving puzzles by comparing solving methods between crosswords and cryptoquotes, two puzzles that most students have rarely done and seem to enjoy learning how solve. By the end, I can convince some to do extra credit in which they create crossword puzzle clues of varying difficulty or even complete a partially filled grid with their own letters.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Scandinavian crime fiction – my favorites include Jo Nesbø, Jussi Adler-Olsen, Camilla Läckberg, Lars Kepler, and Karin Fossum. I love the combination of the snowy bleakness, the clever twists, and the miserable detectives always trying to redeem themselves by breaking the big case.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I’m known in my own head as the “Sue Frantz of high school teachers,” so it’s impossible to choose just one. The one that gives me the most peace of mind is Dropbox, because I never have to worry about having my files on the wrong computer or a flash drive I can’t find. It’s also a lifesaver when I realize I’ve just inadvertently saved the wrong version of a file, and I can use Dropbox to download the version I’d saved the day before. Zipgrade has been great for quickly grading multiple choice using a method that gives far more data analysis and speed than the old Scantrons I once used. I’ve done lots of online quiz programs, like Socrative and Kahoot!, but my absolute favorite in the past few years is Quizizz. I can create quizzes in minutes, assign them to students, and get mountains of data back before the end of class. One of my favorite parts is giving students the option to re-take the quiz at home (using a laptop or phone) in “homework mode” so they get more practice with the questions and they can earn extra points by doing so. Oh, also I’ve been an Apple fanboy since 1984.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We’re a super small school – again, just 350 – so we get to know students much better than the average high school faculty. Most of us get to teach students in more than one class – I’ve taught one poor student four times! Our hallway chatter thus becomes conversations about our students – how’s he doing in your class, she seems sad – know what’s happening, what schools is she applying to, etc. One of our school’s goals is personalization, so having this close network of teachers who know the students well helps us all to be more responsive to the needs of the students.

Rhonda Jamison: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 15:30:12 GMT

School name: University of Maine at Farmington

Type of school: public liberal arts college (~1700 students)

School locale: small town in rural Maine

Classes you teach: Child and Adolescent Development, Research Methods, Sophomore Seminar

Average class size: 15-30

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

My teaching mentor in grad school, Dr. David Zola, modeled “ways of being” in the classroom that have shaped my teaching practices. One of the things he believed was that students learn best when they are active. Even in large lectures, Dr. Zola would have students discuss and apply concepts with each other. The lecture hall would roar with the noise of many conversations and he would smile knowingly at his teaching assistants as if to say, “This is learning. This is the way you teach!”

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown is a book that has shaped how I live in and out of the classroom. The premise is that vulnerability, although often viewed as weakness, cultivates so many positive things in our lives. Putting yourself in front of a group of students in an authentic, open way can be a vulnerable position. But, the reward of seeing students grow and growing as a teacher makes the risk worth it.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Research Methods. Every semester, the 15 students each develop their own research project. The questions they seek to answer are always very interesting. The course is different every semester because the projects the students choose are unique to them. Although the main content of research methods stays the same, the way we work to apply the concepts to each individual project changes and keeps the course exciting.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

In Child Development, during the prenatal portion of the class, we read and talk about innovations in conception and genetics. Each semester there are current events and news articles related to beginning of life issues. This semester we read about the 3-person embryo technique and about how scientists can create egg cells from stem cells. The new science is always changing and students seem very interested in keeping up to date.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I focus on how students can apply abstract concepts or theories to something in their own life. This is easy to do in a course like Child and Adolescent Development, where all students have direct experience with many of the ideas. I also try to have students apply information to their future personal or career lives (i.e., Why might a parent need to know about this theory? How might a teacher use this concept in a 3^rd grade class?).

What’s your workspace like?

The psychology building at UMF is an old church, complete with a steeple. The 8 psychology faculty are the only ones housed in this building, which also includes a small classroom and psychology student lounge. When I arrived 5 years ago, I was given the opportunity to choose a paint color for my office. I chose purple; the space feels warm and cozy. My large desk serves as both a workspace and a small group meeting space for my students and myself.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Goal-oriented, Collaborative, Relational

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Create learning goals. Develop relationships. Revise. Repeat.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

One day deep into the spring semester I walked into my Sophomore Seminar class and saw 12 exhausted faces staring at me. The goal for the day was to discuss and apply some of the theory from the reading about procrastination to our everyday lives. The irony of the topic (procrastination) was not lost on any of us. The semester had been full of short days (literally, Maine has less daylight in the winter), cold weather, and rampant flu-like illness. My students were exhausted, and I’d guess many of them hadn’t completed the reading. None of them looked energized for discussion. I tentatively began my planned class. Within 2 minutes, I could tell we weren’t in a learning frame of mind. I paused and considered how to correct our course. I acknowledged the exhaustion. I recognized the “human” in all of us. Then I made the suggestion that we walk the 3 blocks to downtown and grab some coffee. They were over the moon. We went downtown, got coffee at Dunkin’, and sat in the downtown gazebo casually discussing the reading for class. The biggest lessons I acquired: Learning doesn’t always happened as planned. Learning doesn’t always happen in the classroom. Cultivating relationships pays big dividends.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

My students might be surprised to learn that I’m an introvert at heart. Teaching is often an extroverted job. Whether I am enthusiastically getting up in front of groups of students or working to make individual connections in office hours, much of what I do at work revolves around social interactions. I think my students might be surprised to know that these interactions are not what “charges my battery.” Instead, I draw energy from lingering over a warm cup of tea with a book. Or, I find calm in my newest hobby-- sewing and quilting.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I commute 2 hours each day and so my “reading” for pleasure often comes in the form of audiobooks in my car. I vacillate between listening to fun popular fiction books (currently Crazy Rich Asians) and podcasts (like Psych Sessions Podcast co-hosted by Neufeld & Landrum).

What tech tool could you not live without?

I’m wracking my brain and habits on this one. The truth is I could live, and probably live better, without most of them. Many of the tech tools that we use on a daily basis actually facilitate our disconnection with others in the “real world.”

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Many of my colleagues are regularly in their office with doors open. We pop into each other’s spaces and discuss the hits and misses of our latest class. We talk about challenging moments or funny missteps in and out of the classroom. And more often, we discuss the latest news headline or the most recent tweet.

Danae Hudson: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Mon, 15 Oct 2018 19:50:55 GMT

School name: Missouri State University

Type of school: 4-year public institution, with Master’s degrees, and professional doctorates

School locale: Springfield, MO

Classes you teach:

Introductory Psychology
Abnormal Psychology
Psychopathology (graduate)
Clinical Communication Skills (graduate)

Average class size:

330 for Intro Psyc
30-40 for Abnormal Psyc
9 for graduate classes

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I’ve received a lot of great advice over the years! Coming to understand that “covering content” is not what teaching is all about and not what students are going to remember from my course was very liberating. Over the past decade, I have seen my role change from “content provider” to “designer of the learning environment.” This role is so much more fun and one where I believe my SoTL skills can be put to good use.

Some other advice that really promoted a paradigm shift for me came from Carol Twigg and Carolyn Jarmon from the National Center for Academic Transformation during the early stages of our course redesign of Introductory Psychology. They taught me to consider the financial costs associated with teaching and to use that information to determine how my time is best spent. Since we now teach 330 students as a team (faculty member, graduate assistant, and 6 undergraduate learning assistants) it doesn’t make sense for me to spend my time entering grades on Blackboard. Instead, I use my time to analyze the class homework data and tailor our upcoming class accordingly. Every class is interactive (even with 330 students) and recognizing that the ability to have that type of class emerged from a financial analysis years ago is pretty cool!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

What the Best College Teachers Do (Bain). I also attended one of Ken’s workshops in 2010, which was career-changing for me.

How Learning Works (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, Norman)

Make it Stick (Brown, Roediger, McDaniel)

And of course, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology and Teaching of Psychology journals.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love all the courses I teach. But Intro Psyc is probably my favorite. My favorite classes are the ones where we have all 330 students participating in an activity – The Human Neuron for the Bio chapter, Shallow vs Deep Processing Experiment for Memory, or Classically Conditioning them with Fun-Dip in the Learning chapter.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

In addition to the ones I mentioned above, I also hold a special “study skills” class for all the undergrad courses I teach. I wait to do this until after the first exam (you probably know why) and love the opportunity to provide them with evidence-based strategies and some of the rationale about why they work and why the typical study strategies students often use aren’t generally very effective.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I try to practice what I preach. So, I attempt to model “best-practices” for teaching and learning during my classes. I use just-in-time teaching to plan the class for the day, the students answer numerous clicker questions throughout the class, I use peer-instruction, and interactive activities to help the students elaborate on the concepts. I’m also trying to do a better job of making the connections between the various topics/chapter more explicit. Intro Psyc is a survey of the field, but it is not 16 distinct topics. My goal is for students to start to see some of those “Big Ideas” running throughout the course and develop an appreciation for the science.

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is generally pretty tidy and organized. It can get out of control briefly but then I have to clean things up before moving on to the next task. Our building was just renovated and I moved into my office in August – I’m taking a minimalist approach because our offices are so small now. What I’ve realized is I really don’t need much more than a computer these days!

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Energetic, Warm, and Data-driven

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Appreciating psychological science while learning how to learn.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

The year was 2008….my babies were 16 months and 5 months (yes, they are 11 months apart and I did not sleep for over 2 years!) I was teaching 150 Intro Psyc students and about halfway through the lecture I scratched my shoulder. I felt something strange and had the slow realization that what I was feeling was the inside seam of my shirt. I had been wearing my shirt inside-out all day and no one had said anything to me. I ended up finishing class 30 minutes early because I just couldn’t go on!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I’m originally from Vancouver, Canada and I’m still Canadian. I completed my undergraduate degree in Vancouver and then moved to Baton Rouge, LA to attend LSU for graduate school. There was some definite culture shock! But, I loved it and still cheer on the LSU tigers. I also met my best friend (Brooke Whisenhunt) in grad school. We have that one-in-a-million situation where we both got jobs at Missouri State University and have worked side-by-side for the past 15 years. It has been a dream come true.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I honestly don’t have much time for pleasure reading. But, the next on my list is Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. I saw him speak at APA this past summer and it was amazing!

What tech tool could you not live without?

Definitely my iPhone. I wish I could say I would be able to function without it, but I believe my entire life is contained in that little device.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Honestly, we talk most about improving our teaching to better help students. Our Intro Psyc teaching team of faculty is very close and we are always looking for new interventions to try and new ways to measure learning. Most of us are also moms so we talk a lot about the ups and downs of raising children.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to this 2018 conversation between Danae, Garth, Eric, and Brooke about an exciting intro. psych redesign project. You can hear the "origin story" of their intro. psych publishing project (a digital-first publishing idea based on learning science principles!)

Kate Synder: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 17:42:45 GMT

School name: University of Louisville (UofL)

Type of school: Large public research institution

School locale: In the city of Louisville, with Churchill Downs (the home of the Kentucky Derby) located just a few miles away from campus.

Classes you teach:

Human Development, Advanced Issues in Human Development, Learning Theory & Human Growth & Development (Educational Psychology), Learning Systems: Theory & Practice. I have also taught Research Methods, Measurement & Evaluation, a seminar on Understanding Genius, and independent studies on a variety of topics (achievement motivation, gifted education, and independent studies on teaching human development/educational psychology courses).

Average class size:

My class sizes have ranged from ~10 (doctoral student seminars) to ~40. What’s most fun is the diverse mix of students in these classes. The Learning Theory & Human Growth & Development course has music education undergraduates alongside MAT (Master of Arts in Teaching) graduate students. One semester, that class had juniors and seniors, MAT students, and two doctoral students (Curriculum & Instruction and Nursing), which was a really fun challenge!

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Make changes thoughtfully and intentionally. There is always this temptation to make lots of big changes to a course, whether after learning about a new technique that sounds intriguing, coming across a cool reading, or responding to student feedback (course evaluations or mid-semester feedback). Being adaptive in teaching is important, but it quickly can turn into too much of a good thing. Make several changes at once and it’s hard to isolate what exactly was the cause of any improvement, so then you’re left not really knowing what works and what doesn’t. I’ve found this to be especially true when making mid-course changes, such as considering changes after mid-semester feedback – you might end up changing something that had been working. I try to keep in mind that any change I make should be thoughtful, intentional, and carefully implemented.

I wish I could remember who gave me this advice, but I think I’ve heard it from several mentors and colleagues over the years. It’s probably the advice that I give most frequently to others, too.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

It’s tough to pick just one. Make it Stick was incredibly helpful in supplying clear explanations of cognitive psychology principles that improved my teaching. Similarly, I love The Learning Scientists blog and website for a wealth of resources on how to implement those cognitive psychology techniques.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I always joke with students that, "This course is my favorite to teach because every course is my favorite to teach!" I think each course is my favorite for different reasons; it's just as exciting to push the doctoral students to become theoretical scholars in the Advanced Human Development seminar as it is to get emails from the pre-service teachers and counselors in my courses about how they are putting the content into practice. Each course challenges me in different ways, too.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I have a huge fondness for myth-busting, so it might be a tie between debunking learning styles or debunking self-esteem myths. For the latter, I have students engage with two vignettes highlighting times that facets of my self-concept and self-esteem took a hit (snippets from a particularly brutal manuscript rejection and tough feedback from a lesson I took with an elite equestrian). As they answer questions around the vignettes to figure out the structure of self-concept and its relation to self-esteem, they also get to see me as a real person who receives failure feedback.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

My teaching is an eclectic mix of highly-interactive lecture interspersed with retrieval practice, small group and whole-class discussion, and activities.

What’s your workspace like?

Organized chaos. I know where things are, but it doesn’t always look that way.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, authentic, demanding.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

One that I’m willing to share for a wide audience? I’ll go with a hilarious embarrassment. It was my first year teaching at UofL and I was getting my PowerPoint set up for one of the classes in Learning Theory & Human Growth & Development. The projector screen was one of those pull-down screens with the string. For some reason I couldn’t get the whole first slide to show. I was talking through some of my frustration with students who were sitting in the front row of the class – trying to sound smart by reasoning that I just needed to adjust the screen resolution on the monitor.

And that’s when one of the students gently pointed out that it wasn’t the screen resolution. I just hadn’t pulled the projector screen down all the way. And if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, it was the week that we were covering giftedness. Which meant that I had chosen the Far Side “Midvale School for the Gifted” cartoon for the first slide – a kid pushing on a pull door. There’s really nothing much to do in these situations except laugh at yourself.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I think my students would be shocked to know that I hated developmental psychology when I took the course as an undergraduate - especially because I eventually earned my Ph.D. in it and I love teaching human development courses now! I even include “Fall in love with human development” as a learning objective for each course. At the time, I was adamant that I would not take another course in development. Looking back, it's an important reminder that whether we want to or not, we serve as ambassadors for our disciplines. I carry that forward with me now by trying to be the best ambassador I can for my content area.

For something a bit more lighthearted, one of the lesser-known facts about me is that I make really good homemade limoncello. It takes about two hours to carefully peel all of the lemons and then close to three months for it to age properly.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Like most fans of David Foster Wallace, I’m forever able to say that I’m reading Infinite Jest.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Notecards. I was recently discussing this with a colleague and we agree that while high-tech classrooms can be cool, we can accomplish a lot of magic with just notecards and sticky notes.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

There is a lot of talk these days about our new president, Neeli (yes, she prefers to be called by her first name). She is our university’s first female president and has brought a lot of positive energy to our institution. It’s not often you hear about a president giving out their cell phone number to every student they meet – so that’s certainly generated some hallway buzz!

Annette Nielsen: I'm a Member of STP and This Is How I Teach

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 17:21:12 GMT

School name: Woods Cross High School

Type of college/university: Suburban high school

School locale: 13 miles north of Salt Lake City)

Classes you teach: AP Psychology, Introductory Psychology, Quest (a credit recovery course for students to help them get on track to graduate)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice I ever got as a teacher was during my student teaching. Pam Olson, my coordinating teacher for math (I taught math for 15 years) told me that the best thing a teacher can do is let go of her ego. She went on to discuss how teachers who struggle often get caught up in battles of ego. Egos affect interactions with students or colleagues or parents. If you can let go of your ego, you can avoid all kinds of problems. I have found this to be such sage advice. When difficulties have arisen for me as a teacher, it usually goes back to ego issues more than anything else. I also find that I can have a much better relationship with my students when I check my ego at the door.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

In all honesty, it was the Myers Psychology textbook (maybe 2e) that my AP Psychology teacher adopted in 1992. In the spring before my senior year of high school, my psychology teacher came to me and asked me to look over a set of three textbooks to help him choose the best book for a new class that would be offered the following year – AP Psychology! I distinctly remember looking those books over very carefully. As a junior in high school, I knew I loved psychology. However, helping to select that text and subsequently taking the first AP Psychology class my senior year, solidified my decision to major in psychology and become a teacher. I read the text cover to cover my senior year, not because it was required, but because I could not get enough. When I began teaching AP Psychology eight years later, I was THRILLED to recognize the author, his unique and funny voice, and a newer edition of the book I had loved. David Myers’ texts have shaped my courses and helped lead me to make the decision to become a high school psychology teacher.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My students joke that I start every unit with the statement, “This is my favorite unit to cover in psychology.” Their joke has merit. It is REALLY hard for me to pick just one. Every unit has its own fun activities and demonstrations and applications to real life. Just when I start to tire of a topic, it’s time to move on to another “favorite” unit.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

As stated above, where do I begin? I have been to so many amazing workshops and conferences. I have had the pleasure of learning from so many phenomenal teachers. I have a favorite activity with every unit. My “go to” favorites are usually the ones that don’t take very long and really help the kids to deeply process the information. I’ve listed a few below, but I could go on and on and on:

Neurinal (field trip to the bathroom to demo the neuron), Pavlov and lemonade (this one quick demonstration works better than anything else to teach classical conditioning concepts and kids never forget), Andrea Yates article to teach perspectives and writing FRQ’s for AP, M & M’s to teach statistics, using social media to dispel the myth that we only use 10% of our brain.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I use many different cooperative learning techniques. My classroom has nine tables of four and from the first day of class, my students learn about the necessity of discussion. They speak the language of psychology daily through small group, partner, or whole class discussions. I am also very structured in this approach, which helps the students and me to stay focused. They number off and take turns. Everyone has to contribute. A quiet class or a class where I lecture the entire time is very much out of my comfort zone. I also make my students get out of their seats and move every 20 minutes for at least 30 seconds. I have a variety of strategies for doing this. I believe it really helps with the climate of the class, the comfort of the kids, and the ability to process information.

What’s your workspace like?

My classroom has nine tables of four. I set things up from the “front” where I have a screen and a computer. However, I constantly walk around the room and monitor or participate in discussions. When I’m planning lessons and grading, I have my own desk, table, and computer off to the side in a corner. Though, I rarely sit at my desk when students are there.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

I asked students to help me with this: Passionate, Organized, Energetic

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Love the students, love the subject, take risks!

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I have certainly had embarrassing moments that I was just able to laugh off, like walking around with my shirt tucked into my underwear for an entire class. I even walked into the class next door to take photos in order to use up a roll of film (yes, I have photo evidence) and showed off my underwear to a second class. A kind student took pity on me and told me at the VERY end of class.

I also had a glitch one day teaching functions in math. I could not say the word “function”. I kept dropping the first n in the word. The more I tried to say the word, the more I fumbled to pronounce it correctly. It was a disaster. The poor students couldn’t focus and I had to do the entire lesson over again the next time. I just had to let my ego go, laugh at myself, apologize to the kids, and move on.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I still get nervous before the first day of any class. I have two tattoos

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I just finished Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman and started The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Projector, clicker, and PowerPoint (boring, yes, but PowerPoint structures my classes and contains clips or prompts for discussions, demonstrations, and activities)

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We talk about students, parents, other faculty members as well as our own kids and pets. I share a back room and eat lunch with a big group of English and math teachers. We usually talk about the math and English departments and each other. We are great friends.

Timothy (Tim) Klitz: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 13:15:46 GMT

School name: Washington & Jefferson College (W&J)

Type of school: Small Liberal Arts College (about 1400 students)

School locale: Washington, PA – small town about 30 minutes south of Pittsburgh

Classes you teach: First-Year Seminar, Elementary Psychology (semesters 1 & 2), Cognitive Psychology, Sensation & Perception, Advanced Laboratory in Sensation & Perception (capstone)

Average class size: 12-25 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Learn how to say “no”! While this advice wasn’t initially about teaching specifically, this advice has been useful in keeping my academic life organized. My graduate advisor, Gordon Legge at the University of Minnesota, gave me this advice when I was spending most of my time teaching instead of finishing my Ph.D. research. The advice allowed me to finish my Ph.D. successfully. In semesters at W&J that I overcommit myself outside of the classroom, I struggle with teaching and advising. When I say “no”, even occasionally, teaching and advising goes back to being my primary role … and love.

What book or article shapes your work as a psychology teacher?

I guess the one book that has influenced my teaching most recently has been Small Teaching by James Lang. While there are lots of teaching books on my shelves, one of the things that Small Teaching has helped me with is understanding that making the classroom a better place doesn’t necessarily require extensive makeovers. Sometimes a small change, or a small addition, or a small subtraction is enough to make the environment of the class better. Since I have tried to make all of my classes very applied in nature, the chapter on “Connecting” has been particularly meaningful in helping me think about how to work with students to connect ideas that we discuss in class and/or things that they read about outside of class time. The time commitment to more intentionally do that kind of connecting work really is quite minimal compared to the work to learn the topics. But, making those connections really is a big part of a liberal arts education.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Although my field is cognitive and perceptual psychology, and I teach Cognitive Psychology, Sensation & Perception, and a capstone on the topic of reading, my favorite course by far is actually my section of our First-Year Seminar titled “The Art and Science of Vision and Visionaries”. We teach approximately 15-20 sections of First-Year Seminar every fall, each topic-based and decided by the individual professor but centered around students learning about the key set of skills that they need as students. The topics are just “excuses” to teach a good course about the liberal arts and what it means to be a good college student.

My course is split into two halves. The first half of the course is about visual perception, but with the spin that we learn about principles of visual perception and cognition through the study of art. We’re lucky that we live near Pittsburgh and have fabulous art museums in the city. I have the students go to the Carnegie Museum of Art early in the semester and then again later in the semester and I ask them to think about how they have changed (or added to) their way of viewing artwork. I sometimes try to get them to the Andy Warhol Museum or the Mattress Factory, very different types of art museums to see if what they have learned can transfer to different types of museums.

The second half of the course is about visionaries and how and why people get placed into that category. So, we read Where Good Ideas Come From, learn a little about Steve Jobs, and watch Flash of Genius as a few of our examples. It’s a good excuse to think about how good ideas come about throughout a liberal arts education with an important message that often those ideas don’t appear in a formalized educational setting. The course and topics also provide a good basis for discussing how a liberal arts education is set up to allow the type of visionary thinking that we read and watch in the course.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

One of my favorite in-class exercises comes about halfway through my Cognitive Psychology class. While I start the first day of the semester talking about study skills, and how those important study skills are informed by research in Cognitive Psychology, once we have studied attention and memory in the class, we are ready to talk about how we can actually support those study skills experimentally. The students in the class have read the assigned textbook pages in the Goldstein Cognitive Psychology textbook, they have done a series of CogLab exercises on memory, and they have read articles by Willingham (including “What Will Improve a Student’s Memory?”) and Roediger & Pyc (“Inexpensive Techniques To Improve Education”) on applying memory research to the topic of study skills. Students have also done brief presentations on the chapters in following books: Brown, Roediger & McDaniel (“Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning”), Willingham (“Why Don’t Students Like School?”), and Lang (“Small teaching”). The students come to class and work in groups of 3 or 4 and are given the task below which they work on for the entire class period. The goal is to get everyone thinking about how what they have been learning can be applied directly to learning, and for our Education majors, to teaching.

Assume you’ve been given a single exam question that says:

a. Briefly describe each of the 5 study techniques covered by Goldstein on pages 202-204 (Elaborate, Generate & Test, Organize, Take Breaks, Avoid Illusions of Learning) plus the additional technique I mentioned on Day 2 of the semester (Match Learning & Testing Conditions).
b. Briefly describe two pieces of evidence to support each of the 6 study techniques (thus 12 total pieces of evidence). Your evidence should come in the form of: 1) Experiments we’ve discussed in class; OR 2) Experiments from your text reading during the last couple of weeks; OR 3) Examples of principles from “What Will Improve a Student’s Memory?”; OR 4) Examples of principles from “Inexpensive Techniques to Improve Education”; OR 5) CogLabs we’ve completed and discussed in this unit
c. Briefly: How would you apply these techniques specifically to set up a study strategy for Exam #2?

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I still use lecture as a teaching tool in most of my classes, mixed with activities, class discussions, projects, presentations, discussions of primary source articles, etc. When we renovated our building a number of years ago, we decided that we wanted a seminar-style room to facilitate classes like our capstones and other smaller classes like our First-Year Seminar classes taught by Psychology Department members. The room, and the U-shaped setup of the tables, allows for a natural setting for discussions and presentations rather than lecture. Although the picture shows what the room looks like during a First-Year Seminar writing exercise, the important thing is that the room structure helps to facilitate the desired teaching and learning techniques for many of my classes.

What’s your workspace like?

While I want students to see my office as a “professional” space, I also want them to feel comfortable coming to visit. So, I’ve tried to put as much of “me” in the space as I can … soccer, Cleveland, NASA, Star Wars, family / kid pictures, etc. These extra things in the office provide a comfortable environment for me to work, but also provide a relaxing space for current students to visit. The space also provides some additional ways to make connections with current students, but also with prospective students and their parents when they visit campus. I do like to watch visiting prospective student parents gazing at the things in the room while I talk with their son or daughter. I have also tried to pilfer just about every extra chair around the building so that I can host groups of students or prospective families.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Supportive, practical, integrative

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Teaching with an eye toward real-world applications

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

The easiest example that comes to mind (yes, more than one example comes to mind!) is my first, and only attempt to teach our Mind, Brain, and Behavior course early on in my time here at W&J. The folks in the MBB program were trying to find new instructors for their program’s introductory course, and for someone interested in Cognitive Psychology, it seemed like a natural fit. Well, I made the mistake of trying to teach the course based on a syllabus from someone that had taught the course previously. I did try to modify the syllabus to be slightly more psychological than philosophical given my interests, but I didn’t do enough. I’m quite sure that there were class days where I was just as lost in the material as my students were. I tried to run the class as a discussion class but I wasn’t well enough prepared to do that, and the students certainly didn’t have the background, and I didn’t do a good job of preparing them for those discussions. It really was a horrible class. I occasionally still have a nightmare about that class! I didn’t give up on the techniques that I tried in that class … I’ve applied those in other classes. But, I never taught the class again. Maybe it’s because I was hiding under my desk when they went looking for people to teach the class in later semesters. The MBB program was later cut from our curriculum. I’m a program killer!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I occasionally wear jeans or shorts! While there are lots of ways to present yourself as a teacher, I’ve always done dress pants and shirt/tie in the classroom since arriving at W&J. During the winter, I like sweaters, and occasionally on a course evaluation I get a comment about my “matching” sweater and socks. But, once in a while on a final exam day, or a sports event on campus, or just wandering aimlessly around Washington, PA with my wife and daughter, I run into students or alums, and lo and behold I’m wearing jeans or shorts. It’s funny how many times students will remark on how “normal” I seem outside of the classroom. In the midst of a busy, and sometimes stressful college career, I’m not sure that students always think of faculty also as “people.” Being Facebook friends with a small subset of students after they graduate has also helped to reinforce the idea that professors (and students/alums!) are normal people, parents, citizens, etc. I’m looking at my wall of fun quotes in my office from former students and one of them commented: “Once you graduate college, it’s funny how you realize that your professors who you thought were so perfect are really just like you.” I love that many of my former students are now also parents and I get to follow their parenting adventures on Facebook as I struggle my way through being a parent of an 8-year-old.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I’ll just be honest. Right now I’m not reading anything for pleasure. A lot of my reading time is devoted to reading articles and books to prepare for my classes. We’re in the midst of the Middle States Reaccreditation process, reading applications for a Visiting Assistant Professor, doing a departmental self-study, preparing for college-level Strategic Planning, etc. I’m lucky at this point if I have the reading energy for the weekend newspaper right now! At some point, I’ll get back to reading for fun!

What tech tool could you not live without?

I don’t know if this is a good answer, but I don’t feel particularly married to any tech tool. I use PowerPoint in many of my classes to show primarily graphs and figures, but almost never text. I still like using the chalkboard more than any technology. I use Sakai, our Learning Management System at W&J, as a place to make links and articles available to my students during the semester to read. But, in cleaning files this summer, I came across the big stacks of handout originals that I used to use instead of Sakai. I’m happy to not be killing as many trees, but I feel like I could live without Sakai if needed. Maybe it’s a good sign that there aren’t technologies that I feel like I could live without. As I mentioned before, Facebook has become a wonderful tool to stay in touch with students that have graduated from W&J. I’m in touch with many more alums in the Facebook era than I am in the pre-Facebook era.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

At the time I am writing this, W&J is in the midst of many transitions … President, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Vice President of Enrollment … and others. So, naturally some of the hallway discussions are about how all of that uncertainty has an impact on students, faculty, and staff. But, I find more often than not that discussions are about ways to help students succeed at W&J … specific students or students in general. I am also really fortunate to have an office neighbor who also has an 8-year-old daughter, so sharing kid stories is always an important part of nearly every week!

Jeffrey R. Stowell: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 19:55:13 GMT

School name: Eastern Illinois University

Type of school: Regional public 4-year institution

School locale: Charleston, IL (Rural Illinois with lots of corn and soybeans!)

Classes you teach:

Most commonly I teach biological psychology, sensation & perception, and psychology of learning.

Average class size: 40-50 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I’m not sure where I first heard it and it’s not on the forefront of my consciousness when teaching, but in practice I think I’ve followed the advice that “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I don’t think there is any one book or article. Rather, I’ve learned so much from STP colleagues, teaching conferences, books and articles on teaching techniques, and conducting my own classroom research. Together, these simple means have had a large cumulative effect on my teaching and my students.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching hard things that students are capable of learning (action potentials, neural convergence, sensory transduction, positive vs. negative reinforcement and punishment). I love teaching students about their everyday experiences (color vision, thirst, emotion, sound localization, sleep). I also love teaching students about male and female prenatal sexual development (it’s astounding).

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

My all-time favorite activity is the Play-Doh brain. I assign different parts of the brain to small groups of students who try to come up with a creative way to remember the name of the brain structure and its associated function (e.g., “hippocampus” sounds like a hippo on campus, which would be learning and remembering just like the hippocampus does). Students are also asked to mold a 3-D Play-Doh representation of their assigned brain structure. As each group shares with the rest of the class the name of the brain structure and its function, I add their Play-Doh brain structure to the developing brain. By the end, we have a wonderfully colorful brain, which I then have a student cut in half (midsagittal section) and hold up for the class to see. This can serve as a springboard for teaching about split-brain behavior J. The next class period, I bring a Jell-O brain colored to look like a real brain and quiz students on a few brain parts before I take a bite of it.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I frequently use in-class polling questions and peer discussion of answers. More recently, I’ve been using online cumulative quizzes over each chapter for all of my courses. Students are saying they are learning more and are less stressed!

What’s your workspace like?

My office is 9x12 (I counted the squares on the floor), with one file cabinet, three large bookshelves, an office desk and chair, and three other chairs. My walls are decorated with family photos, three framed diplomas, and a few quotes “Blessed are they who go to college and never get out, for they shall be called professors” and “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” In February of 2016, I bought an under-desk elliptical to get more activity at my desk (over 5,000 virtual miles so far).

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, encouraging, engaging

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I had a student pass out after watching the re-enactment video of Phineas Gage’s accident. Fortunately, the student recovered quickly, but I don’t show it anymore in class.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I was on a Latin ballroom dance team in college.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I don’t have much time for leisurely reading, but the last book I read was a powerful story by Chris Williams “Let It Go: A True Story of Tragedy and Forgiveness.”

What tech tool could you not live without?

Classroom polling software

Stephanie Simon-Dack: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 18:32:57 GMT

School name: Ball State University

Type of school: Public Research Institution

School locale: small Midwestern city

Classes you teach:

Introductory Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Graduate Neuroscience, the capstone research course for seniors

Average class size: 40 for undergraduates, 25 for graduates

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Treat every day like a new day with the students. Love what you do. Balance enthusiasm with rigor.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

The journal Teaching of Psychology.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I absolutely love teaching students about the neural action potential. I also enjoy the lecture I give on “zombie” parasites in mammals.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I have the students “act out” the action potential physically. I like that one a lot. Also, we run a dissection lab every term in the cognitive and grad classes that is a lot of fun, and dissect sheep brains with plastic utensils in turkey tins.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I’m a lecturer, but I move a lot, and I use a lot of physical demonstrations to get scientific points across. Short, regular quizzes also seem to work well to assist students in learning the materials and retaining them.

What’s your workspace like?

I do almost everything on the computer with very little paper these days, so it is digital!

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Energetic, enthusiastic, engaged

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Students engage when materials are relevant to them.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I once, in my first year of teaching, had a piece of candy in my pockets that melted everywhere, ruining my pants! The students whispered about it, but I laughed it off and kept going. I thought for sure it would be the end of my reputation with the students, but my reaction and ability to keep going seemed to gain me some respect.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I think they’d be surprised to know I like musicals (they all already know I love zombies).

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

A mystery series called The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency about a woman P.I. in Botswana.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My laptop.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We chat about our children; we are a very family oriented department!

Jessica Hartnett: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 16 May 2018 17:59:27 GMT

School name: Gannon University

Type of school: Small, Catholic Liberal Arts College

School locale: Urban (Erie, PA)

Classes you teach:

Psychological Statistics (Introduction to Statistics), Honors Psychological Statistics, Online Psychological Statistics, Positive, Motivation and Emotion, Industrial-Organizational, Social

Average class size: varies from 10-25

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Students don’t like surprises. Given them a detailed schedule the first day of class. Stick with it. Be clear in your expectations.

These details may seem more mundane than planning an inspiring lecture or creating a psychometrically appropriate exam, but people like clear expectations.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Make it Stick.

Also, Malcolm Gladwell’s work showed me how effective it is to teach a psychology theory by way of personal anecdote, historical event, or TV show/movie reference.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

In my statistics class, I have a Harry Potter-themed review lecture for teaching ANOVA and a Hunger Games review lecture for t-tests that I really enjoy. On those days, all of my examples are based on story cannon and psychology. So, the students perform a one-way ANOVA that demonstrates that Death Eaters score higher on Fascism scales than do members of the Order of the Phoenix or a random sample of wizards. And on t-test day, my students analyze data that reveals that in Panem, Capitol Leadership and Rebel Leadership score in a statistically similar manner on the Machiavellianism scale.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

When I teach Positive Psychology, I emphasize that we aren’t studying happiness, per se, but individual differences and societal support that lead to high achievement and striving. During the second meeting of the class, everyone gives a “Best Self” talk: They describe a time in their life when they were doing their very best. The stories my students share? One of our majors talked about over coming depression and suicidal thoughts. One student’s mom had a stroke, and my then-16 year old student had to keep her family together. Another was cheated on and dumped and then took up running to get over the loss and ran their first 10K. Another related being kicked off a college sports team due to partying and low grades, then getting their life back in order. One student worked really, really hard to earn straight As while working night shift for a whole semester.

That day of class is a sacred day. Many students make themselves vulnerable by sharing very bad things that happened to them. I think we all remember that each and every one of us has done hard things and has lived to tell the tale. It also sets the stage for class and discussions of resiliency, optimism, and grit.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

Just use as many vivid examples as possible. By the time you are a college professor, your mind has been trained to think very abstractly and extensively about statistics, research methods, and psychology. Your students are not at that level. I think that using different examples and encouraging your students to come up with their own examples helps to avoid the “illusion of knowing” that comes with memorizing a dictionary definition of a concept without really understanding the concept.

What’s your workspace like?

I have a really messy office but I am particular about lighting and food. I hate florescent lights and have two lamps and a window to light my office. I also have lots of tea and snacks. My favorite teas are Wegmans Green Jasmine and Harney & Sons Green Tea with Coconut. I am usually snacking on trail mix, baked chick peas, oatmeal, and Dr. McDougall cup-o-soups.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Dress, boots-or-flats, cardigan-or-blazer.

And, yes, I know exactly what you mean, and I refuse to change my answer.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Be enthusiastic. Be genuine. Read the room.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I had a teaching assistantship my first year of graduate school. I assumed that I would hold office hours and maybe run a lab section. However, a week before classes started, I learned that I would be teaching two 60-student sections of Introduction to Psychology. I would receive twice weekly training via a practicum class lead by an experienced teacher.

For that entire first semester, I was nauseous and nervous EVERY DAY before teaching my two sections. On top of that, I had my own graduate level stats class (which also made me nauseous), which occurred directly in between my two sections of Intro. I was already struggling with my first year of graduate school and it was just so hard. But I kept showing up, I kept trying, connecting with the students with silly stories and pop culture references, and now I love teaching.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

During that horrible first semester of graduate school? I failed my very first stats exam. Like, I REALLY failed it. My professor, Dr. Britt, even put a “See me” under my terrible grade. I still have that blue book.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I listened to the audiobook for The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman over the summer/fall. It was FANTASTIC. I really recommend audiobooks for busy people who have time to listen to a book while exercising/commuting/doing chores.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Outlook Calendar. I know that isn’t a very interesting technology tool, but my memory is garbage and I have two kids and a husband and we’re a lot to keep straight.

I also love Twitter (@notawful). I use it to share posts from my blog about teaching statistics. Twitter has allowed me to connect with people I would never have the chance to meet otherwise and make psychology and statistics friends. I also like having a social media outlet that is purely professional in nature.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We’re a small department with pretty awesome psychology majors, so most of the hallway chatter tends to be between instructors and students or among students. I once overheard our majors have a very enthusiastic discussion about why they wanted a pet ocelot.

Leila Gastil - I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 03:16:43 GMT

School name: Hunter College, City University of New York

Type of college/university: Public University, 23,000 students including undergraduate and graduate students.

Classes I teach - Introduction to Research Methods, Learning Theory, Psychology 100, Evolution and Behavior, Ethology-Animal Behavior

Average class size: 35-40 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

“Learn all your student’s names. Acknowledging their real presence in your classroom assists in building an environment of mutual respect and collaboration. Sometimes the simplest gestures can have the biggest impact.” From a presentation by Kathleen Cumiskey, Chair of the Psychology Department at the College of Staten Island, CUNY.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Not a book or an article, but an event, Pedagogy Day (2015) at the CUNY Graduate Center was where I found a community of like-minded professors. Professor Aaron S. Richmond (Educational Psychology and Human Development at Metropolitan State University of Denver) presented an evidence-based guide to university teaching which has served as a foundation for my growth as an educator.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Learning Theories 350. There are usually about 35 students and for most of them it’s their last year and often their last class. I see this as an opportunity to make sure that students leave school knowing how learning has been studied, how to learn, and most importantly, loving to learn. My not-so-secret goal is to create lifelong learners.

Since most students are very interested in how they can learn better, we start the term with a study skills exercise including a reading, creating their own PowerPoint on the reading, and presenting it. After all that talk about deep encoding, the bounce back to Aristotle’s “Laws of Association” makes sense and Pavlov’s cortical mosaic concept is more accessible. From there-on-in the class follows the association theme from anticipatory association, to associations between behaviors and outcomes, right through to Hebbian synapses and all bright lights in the brain.

The syllabus progresses from lecture/discussion to an experiential assignment for each learning theory. Supplementing these basic elements are frequent 10 question quizzes and opportunities for extra credit. The quizzes serve to keep everyone’s “head in the game”. As experienced students, they know that if quiz grades get wobbly they need to study more. They can also take advantage of extra credit opportunities that may include three paragraph responses to “thought questions” like; “How has learning changed your behavior?”; or respond to a posted NY Times editorial on lecturing vs active learning.

Learning is a topic that has strong personal connections for my students and in many cases for their children. Many of the students are the first in their families to go to college, often their parents have worked very hard to give them this chance. A student of mine once commented that I teach like there is something at stake. I replied, “There is” and we both knew what I meant.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

One of the challenges of this course is that a lot of the content has been covered in other classes. They already know about salivating dogs and Bobo dolls. This is where the experiential part of the lesson comes in. In writing about this aspect of the course one student commented; “With every new lecture, followed a discussion or a group assignment that would demonstrate why a particular school of learning theory was beneficial and what importance it holds in terms of application to the real world, as well as how we as students can benefit from it.”

An example of these group assignments is, “Operant Conditioning for a Better World”. This team project asks students to identify an issue, (like recycling, or people standing front of the subway doors) and create a strategy to change behavior using stimulus, response, and outcome. Students love activism and this project brings out some great ideas. For instance: A proposal to place specially designed recycling bins outside the subway entrance that dispense a free 1-way subway pass to recyclers. The subway pass was also suggested as a reinforcer at polling places to increase voting. (This is NYC we spend a lot of time on the subway.)

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

Early in the class I set a simple framework in place. I call roll for the first two weeks. There is so much power in connecting a name to a face and it’s a sign of respect. That shared smile of recognition is so comforting.

The second structural element, is establishing teams of four to five students. These teams are not self-selected; everyone starts as strangers and through the term they become friends and study partners. Many students don’t like teamwork, which I understand, but as someone who worked in the outside world, I know that learning how to collaborate is a skill that will be useful for the rest of their lives. I share this with the class and I’m met with a sea of “nobody’s messing with my grade” stares. Class discussions about team dynamics and learning are helpful and by the end of the term, we have a classroom full of vibrant ideas and just the right amount of competition between the teams. Team projects are a significant percentage of their grade.

With this framework we build a community, where everyone has a role and a path to success. I teach, they learn; we all understand that neither role is passive.

What’s your workspace like?

Most of my class prep is done in my office at home. There is a window, a desk, my laptop, a view of the sky, and carefully managed piles of materials for each class. At my desk is an old-style metal office chair covered with this wonderful teal leatherette. Oh, and lots of books.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Intense, Engaging, Responsive

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Learning is a Life Skill.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

No disasters really, and embarrassment is an everyday fact of my teaching life. It is unfortunately true that I do not know everything about everything.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

My students are pretty unflappable, but this might interest them-When I was 6 months old I moved to Shiraz, Iran for a year.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I read a lot of everything both highbrow and low. Just finished “The Pyramid of Mud” a mafia mystery by Andrea Camilleri. Before that, Joan Didion’s amazing essays on California in the sixties: “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.”

What tech tool could you not live without?

Blackboard and My iPhone make life so much easier. With mobile apps I can work wherever I am – a mixed blessing.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We often talk about how to get enough sleep.

Julia Strand: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 17:03:15 GMT

School name: Carleton College

Type of school: private liberal arts college

School locale: small town (~20k) Northfield, Minnesota

Classes you teach:

Principles of Psychology, Sensation & Perception with lab, Human Expertise, Psychology of Spoken Words

Average class size: 15 (seminar) – 35 (introductory course)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

“Bring yourself into the classroom.” When I first started teaching I felt like I had to maintain a formal, professorial demeanor. Once I gave that up and embraced my more informal, zany style, I had more fun, and the students did too. I regularly give examples from my own life - sharing my perspectives and being open with students seems to help them be more comfortable with me and willing to ask for help.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Teaching Introductory Psychology: Survival Tips from the Experts. It was the first teaching book I ever read and I still regularly think of the advice in it. One suggestion it gives that I try to use regularly is to teach by telling stories. For instance, when I introduce the idea of localization of function in our neuroanatomy unit, I begin with, “In the spring of 1861, a man was admitted to a hospital outside Paris. He was only able to speak a single syllable, but could do it with inflection and expressive hand gestures,” and then go on to describe Leborgne meeting Broca and what we have since come to learn about the neuroanatomy of language production. Telling the detailed story of a single person seems to engage students and make them more curious about a particular phenomenon.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love all my courses equally, but Sensation & Perception is a favorite. This involves teaching students basic, factual information (e.g., anatomy of the inner ear), processes (e.g., how acoustic signals are translated into neural code in the inner ear), and more high-level abstract concepts (e.g., how we recognize spoken words). Sensation & Perception is also quite interdisciplinary, and I like getting to draw on psychology, neuroscience, physics, and philosophy all in the same course. It's also a lot of fun to get to explain familiar phenomena like why people have the flavor preferences they do, why being drunk makes you dizzy, why spicy food burns, etc.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

On the first day of my intro psych class, I give small groups of students a fictional research summary to evaluate. They all receive the same brief introduction and methods section, but different groups get different (contradictory) results. I ask students to explain why the outcome occurred and whether it is what they would have predicted. Over the years I’ve been doing the exercise, 76% of students have reported that they would have predicted the results, despite the fact that there the two outcomes were contradictory. I use this to demonstrate hindsight bias and emphasize the importance of empirical testing, because our intuitions can’t always be trusted. (If any future students are reading this - don’t wreck my demo, ok?)

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

In a typical class period, I’ll lecture for 10-15 minutes, then ask students to work in small groups to answer discussion questions, solve a problem, design an experiment, or apply something from the reading or lecture to a novel issue. We then discuss as a class and repeat the process. I like moving back and forth between a more traditional lecture format and more flexible, small group work. The discussion time also gives students who are nervous about asking questions in front of the whole class an opportunity to talk to me one-on-one.

What’s your workspace like?

Typically tidy, but with cups of tea and whatever I’m reading close to my computer.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, interactive, rigorous.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Hook ‘em and they’ll work to learn it.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

The teaching issues that stick with me tend to be the minor, but more frequent missed opportunities. I’ll sometimes realize after a class period (or even a whole course) that there was a much better way to present information, a clearer example to give, or a more interesting way to frame a problem. I have to work hard not to kick myself for missing an opportunity to have done something better. Luckily, there’s always next time!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

In college, I was premed until I failed the first few tests in intro bio. I considered going to grad school for linguistics. I came very close to quitting my PhD program. I think career paths are much less straight than students assume.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Vacationland by John Hodgman

What tech tool could you not live without?

I rely on GQueues for task management, Slack for team communication, GoogleDocs for collaboration, Dropbox for storage, and R for data analysis.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

These days it’s mostly about my two small kiddos and who is sick with what that day. When it’s not the middle of Minnesota winter, I also find myself talking about running and outdoor adventures, movies, my art, and what is going on around town.

Susan Long: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 16:43:24 GMT

School name: Lake Forest College

Type of school: Small Liberal Arts College

School locale: Near a major city

Classes you teach:

Gender-Based Violence, Cross-Cultural Psychology, Community Psychology, Research Methods & Statistics, Introduction to Psychology Laboratory, First-Year Studies: Social Labels and Identity

Average class size: 15

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Do fewer things well.

My teaching mentor, Dr. Bette Bottoms, provided this guidance while teaching a “how to teach” course in graduate school. It’s now my mantra – for class lecture, syllabi, research, committee work…and life! Focus on a few things you can do well and farm out the rest!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

The classic, McKeachie’s Teaching Tips, and recently, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014).

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching z-scores in Research Methods and Statistics. Calculating probability using the Normal Distribution is such an elegant and beautiful visual on the whiteboard. It’s when I can really see statistics beginning to click in my students’ brains. It adds a tangible element to the rather esoteric study of probability theory.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

In my senior seminar, Gender-Based Violence, each student chooses a country and complies data on violence against women, violence prevention, and social services for sexual assault and intimate partner violence in that country. There is little psychological research on these topics, in comparison to the United States. Thus, students use new types of sources (e.g., WHO reports, United Nations Reports) to summarize the state of sexual violence globally. This assignment is eye-opening to cultural differences and attitudes about violence against women and children.

Students write up a report on their chosen country, and we hold a session of the United Nations in our classroom. During the most recent session, we discussed how the refugee crisis intersects with violence against women, and what each welcoming country could do to address that violence.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

When I write my lectures, I always consider the question, “Why is this important?” I’m an applied community psychologist, so it’s hard for me *not* to think about real world applications of the material. For students, I think this grounds the lectures in the real world.

What’s your workspace like?

Standing desk with a table for meetings—I prefer a round table for meetings with my colleagues and students—we’re working TOGETHER.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Energetic, Fair, Clear

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

Our statistics teaching lab has a telephone. During class the phone rang, and I looked at the students bewilderedly and asked, “Should I answer it?” They were just as surprised as I was, so I picked up the phone, turned on my pre-grad school telemarketer voice, and answered, “Hotchkiss Hall, Room 9.” It was a fax sent to the wrong number. The students cracked up and remarked on that day throughout the semester.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I see many, many concerts and host bands passing through Chicago.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Without You There Is No Us by Suki Kim

What tech tool could you not live without?

My iphone

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Gardening, kids, and future avenues for students.

Anne Wilson: I'm a member of STP and This is How I Teach

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 18:44:50 GMT

School name: The Ohio State University

Type of school: Large, public university

School locale: Columbus, Ohio

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology

Average class size: 60

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Wow, it’s hard to think of just one piece of advice! My mentor, Missy Beers, always has nuggets of teaching wisdom that I take away from my conversations with her. One that sticks out to me is that there is no “perfect” teacher, and that the best teachers are the ones who are always assessing their effectiveness and adapting to meet the needs of their students.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Mindset by Carol Dweck. It helped me to adopt a growth mindset as a teacher and gave me tools to help my students develop a growth mindset as well.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I teach Introduction to Psychology and my favorite topic to teach is Memory. I love how relevant the chapter is to students' lives, as well as all the fun and memorable activities and demonstrations.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. My favorite in-class activity is one that I took from another instructor, Kristin Supe. On the first day of class, I ask my students to get into small groups and think of as many subjects/areas of study that are NOT related to psychology. Then, each group presents their list of topics to the class. If anyone in class can think of a way that a specific topic listed relates to psychology, we cross it off our list. By the end of the first day, our list is quite short. I take a picture of the list and return to it on the last day of the semester and ask students if, after learning about psychology for the last 12 weeks, they think we can cross any more topics off our list. Each semester I’ve done this, the list is eventually empty and students can see how psychology relates to so many other areas of study, often in unexpected ways.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? It really depends on my learning objectives for the topic. In general, using the process of backwards design has been a total game-changer in my teaching. My teaching techniques are now very much driven by my goals and learning objectives, which has led me to be much more intentional about my teaching methods and techniques.

What’s your workspace like? Organized! I have a hard time being productive if I don’t have a tidy workspace.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Enthusiastic, supportive, and organized.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Guide students to become curious and compassionate learners.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? That even though I am energized and outgoing when I teach, I am actually an introvert!

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

What tech tool could you not live without? My apple watch.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? It really varies. Sometimes my colleagues and I are chatting about psychology-related topics, while other times we’re talking about our weekend plans, or just catching each other up on our lives.

Paul Thibodeau: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 01:03:00 GMT

School name: Oberlin College

Type of school: Small liberal arts college

School locale: Small town: Oberlin, OH (population ~10,000) in a fairly rural area about 45 minutes west of Cleveland, Ohio

Classes you teach:

Introduction to Psychology; Research Methods; Cognitive Psychology; A Research Practicum in Cognitive Psychology; a seminar called Language & Thought

Average class size:

Intro Psych: 120

Research Methods / Cognitive Psychology: 40 each

Research lab / seminar: 15 each

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Make sure the students understand the question/problem/issue before you start explaining the answer.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Bain (2004). What the best college teachers do.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Research Methods because I love teaching students the analytical and quantitative reasoning skills that research requires. I like to help students who think they hate math develop their ability to make arguments with numbers. I like seeing students feel empowered as a result of learning the material. And I like grading / giving feedback in this class: because it can feel a little more "grounded" or "objective" than in more conceptual classes.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

At the beginning of each Research Methods class, I post a "question of the day." Students have about 10 minutes to work on it. Then we go over the problem together. It helps get the class started. And students show up on time, ready to work.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I try to make my courses as active for the students as I can. I don't love to stand in front of a room and talk at students. It's just not my style. I try to create to develop classes around questions/problems and tasks that are actively engaging for the students -- for which I am more of a facilitator than one-man-show.

What’s your workspace like?

I usually work in my office on campus or in my basement at home. My office on campus has a nice desktop computer and a large desk (that ends up sort of messy and cluttered, no matter how hard I try to keep it organized). I also have a nice desktop computer in the basement of my house. I usually work at home for a few hours in the morning before going into the department. It's a little less likely that I'll get distracted when I work at home.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Dedicated, student-centered, a-work-in-progress

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Inspire students to become excited about what they are learning.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

Every once in a while, there will be a (really bad) typo on a slide or handout. This is especially challenging in research methods, where we're working with formulas that are fairly rigid. I tell students in advance that this may be an issue. When it comes up, I try to be self-aware and self-deprecating -- students seem to appreciate that. Most importantly, I do everything I can to communicate the corrections.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

That I was a pretty decent long distance runner in college (and for a few years after college). I ran a marathon in 2 hours 49 minutes in 2006 (6:30/mile pace).

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

What tech tool could you not live without?

Tile -- which helps me keep track of my keys.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I have two daughters, 2 and 4. I talk a lot about them. Most of my colleagues also have kids, so it is fun to talk to them about being a parent.

Danielle Dickens: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 16:41:35 GMT

School name: Spelman College

Type of school: A private historically Black liberal arts college for women

School locale: City

Classes you teach:

Psychology of Women, Psychology of Racism, Research Methods in Psychology, and Advanced Research Seminar

Average class size: 20

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best teaching advice I received was that teaching is all about taking risks and failings are essential to bring clarity, understanding, and innovation into the classroom. Also, I was told to be honest and upfront with my students. In addition, it’s important to be thorough when instructing students to help them understand the purpose of assignments, in class activities, and course policies. I always try to reiterate the purpose of an assignment and in class activities.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Two books that have shaped my teaching are Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks and Intersectional Pedagogy: Complicating Identity and Social Justice by Kim Case.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Psychology of Women. This course serves as one of the race and gender required courses for psychology majors and an option for the general women’s studies required courses for all students. I enjoy interacting with students and helping them explore the intersection of their own race, gender, and other cultural identities, while examining the social construction of gender. Specifically, I especially enjoy teaching about the experiences of women in the workplace because this is my area of research interest which focuses on how Black women and other women of color navigate through workplace politics.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

My favorite in class activity is a role playing activity on the topic of gender comparisons in social behavior and communication. The goal of this activity is to encourage students to develop their own critical intellect with regards to culturally inherited gender stereotypes. Also, it helps students look at their own assumptions about what it means to act like a man and what it means to act like a woman. I ask for two volunteers to come up to the front of the room. Using the gender binary framework, I assign the student volunteers to be either the man or woman, and according to their assigned gender, they are asked to do the following: a) walk to the other side of the room, 2) sit in a chair, and 3) and make a comment about a class topic. I then ask students, “Where do we learn gendered behavior?” and “How do your own behaviors relate to the gendered behaviors illustrated in the different scenarios presented?” Students openly express how their own behaviors were consistent or inconsistent with the actions of the student volunteers. At the end of the activity, students identified ways in which their own behaviors have been affected by gender stereotypes.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

Think, pair, and share using a photo, video, or discussion question is my personal preference. This strategy gives students time to think about their responses and helps all students become active participants in learning, especially those who might not feel comfortable sharing their responses with the entire class. Also, peer learning is an effective teaching strategy that I use involving student learning with, and from, each other. I have students serve as “discussants.” In groups of 3-4, students are required to facilitate class discussions based on their selected course topic using supporting materials, such as news, articles, media, and in class activities.

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is cozy, but often times it is messier than I would like for it to be! I wanted to make sure that I created a vibrant office space where I would enjoy completing my work and a space that is a welcoming environment for my students and colleagues. I have inspirational quotes around my office and some of my favorite books. From time to time, I get compliments from students and my colleagues on my office.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Engaging, motivating, and inclusive

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Inspire students to be innovators and change agents.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

There’s been days where I could not say anything right. I would mix up my words or could not get the technology in the classroom to work. When it happens, I tell students that I am having an “off” day and I make sure I’m on point for the next class.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

If I was not a college professor I would have been the next Misty Copeland! At the age of four, I started taking ballet and tap dance classes. I also was on the dance team my senior year in high school and on the dorm stroll team in college. I always thought that I would become a professional ballerina and teach ballet classes for a living.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

My friends and I started a book club and we are currently reading bell hooks’ Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self Recovery.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My laptop and cell phone!

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I typically talk to my colleagues about effective classroom management strategies, what’s happening on campus (there are always interesting things happening on campus), and plans for the weekend.

Jamie Peterson: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 21:28:40 GMT

School name: St. Catherine University

Type of school: St Kate’s is a private Catholic university. The undergraduate college is for women only; its associates and graduate colleges are co-educational. I teach primarily in the College for Women.

School locale: urban area

Classes you teach:

Seminar courses with service-learning, Learning Principles & Applications, General Psychology with Laboratory, History & Systems

Average class size: 18

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I take a lot of my inspiration from great teachers I’ve had. It isn’t so much what they said or the advice they gave me, but what they did. They valued each student in their classrooms and taught with passion.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Fink’s Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. I read this book and attended a day-long workshop Fink was facilitating when I was a graduate student. It has shaped how I view the potential opportunities I have to work with students.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Learning Principles and Applications. I love digging deeper into topics students are only able to touch on in introductory psychology courses. I require students to apply and practice everything we learn about and I like to think students have as much fun as I do!

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

In all of my courses students need to work in teams in some capacity and in one of my classes students work together throughout the semester on a research project. One of my favorite in-class activities is building team-work norms and skills. When I introduce that we will work together in teams for the semester, I put students into teams and I give them the task of building the tallest tower out of toothpicks and Dots. It’s fun and silly, but afterwards we have opportunities to debrief and talk about the essential components of team work and face-to-face communication.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I have embraced the flipped teaching style for content-heavy courses. Students tell me they prefer to watch lectures (or professionally produced videos) on their own time as they value the practice and application activities we engage in during class time. The in-class activities also allow me to tailor my instruction to students who are more advanced as well as intervene with students who are struggling with the fundamentals.

What’s your workspace like?

I think I’d lose my mind if my office weren’t neat and clean!

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Relational, engaging, humble

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Building relationships, engaging students authentically, learning from students.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

In class one day I was going through an example of classical conditioning and it had something to do with sheep in a field with an electric fence. A student made a silly comment about the example and I responded with “Not baaaad.” I flushed at sharing such an awful pun and my students broke out in uproarious laughter. I thanked them for laughing with me at such a bad pun!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

In a seminar course in which we explore career options and discuss career preparation, I often tell students about how I worked at a one-hour photo shop after I finished my Master’s degree. (I’m not sure if they are more shocked that there used to be one-hour photo shops or that I had to work there after I earned a Master’s degree, but it opens the door to some great conversations about the paths our careers can take!)

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

The book I’m reading now is kind of “meh.” But I love listening to podcasts! My favorites: More Perfect, Code Switch, and Radio Lab!

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

It’s Minnesota, so we talk about the weather a lot! I also chat with colleagues about weekend plans, someone’s child care crisis (because there’s always one!), and great restaurants.

Laura Terry : I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Wed, 29 Nov 2017 19:53:17 GMT

School name: Grand Canyon University

Type of college/university: Private Christian University

School locale: City; Southwest; Phoenix, AZ

Classes you teach: General Psychology; Senior Capstone Class; graduate classes in Social Psychology, Human Development, and Ethics.

Average class size: 90 students in General Psychology classes; 30 students in Capstone classes; 10-20 students in online graduate courses

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. Psychology is such an exciting field. I may be biased, but I think we have the most interesting and relevant topics to present, which leads to really fun and engaging activities for students. I try to meet the needs of every student in class by considering different learning styles and presenting information in various ways. However, I love hands on activities. For that reason, I really like a neuroscience activity that I do at the beginning of the semester in my General Psychology class. Student are asked to create a neuron using every day household items. When they share their projects with their classmates, they are asked to describe how their selected item illustrates and represents the actual neuron and its functions.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. Conditioning videos - Students are asked to create a video that demonstrates classical or operant conditioning. They work in small teams and make short 1 - 3 minute videos that are later shared in class. After presenting their videos, they are responsible to describe the different elements of classical or operant conditioning that were included in their video.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you? Several years ago, I decided to give blended learning a try, and it was worked out really well in my classes. Through the blended learning experience, I have become a more dynamic instructor. My classes have evolved from passive environments where I lectured and students took notes to classes where students are actively involved and engaged. Students still take notes, but they also participate in activities to help to apply the information that is being covered. In all of my classes, I have incorporated more active learning activities and less lecture. In addition to lecture, I incorporate videos, case studies, presentations, technology, and independent and group activities to present and apply the course content.

What’s your workspace like? I have a variety of work spaces. Pictured is my office on campus. I spend time working with Instructional Assistants and students in my office. I also mentor adjuncts. This provides a nice place to meet and chat with them. My couch at home is another comfy work space that I love! When it comes to grading, this is my workspace of choice.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Active, Engaging, Enthusiastic

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I am not sure if this qualifies as a disaster, but every semester, I fight the technology distraction battle. This semester to overcome this problem, I implemented a technology-free lecture period into my classes. I am working to teach students to use technology as a tool rather than allow it to be a distraction. So far, this new classroom policy has been working very well. Students take notes by hand during lecture. Then when they are participating in classroom activities or assignments, they are permitted to use laptops or tablets. So far…so good!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I am fluent in American Sign Language. I learned to sign when I was in middle school from a girl who transferred to my school and quickly became my best friend. Learning sign language provided me with more than the ability to communicate in another language. It provided direction and purpose for my life. I earned my bachelor degree in deaf education. Then, I was accepted to a fully funded graduate program in School Counseling at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, which is the only university that fully focuses on education of the deaf and hard of hearing in the world.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy by Jon Gordon. Gordon describes how important positive energy can be to steer life in a successful direction by sharing a story about George, a hypothetical character, and how is life is changed when he was forced to ride Joy’s Energy Bus. She shares the ten rules he used to turn his professional and personal life around. Every leader should read and implement these rules into running successful teams. Every person should read and implement these rules into relationships with their spouse, family, friends, and coworkers. Focusing on the positive completely changes a situation - perspective is everything.

What tech tool could you not live without? My clicker! It was not until it ran out of batteries one day that I realized how much I relied on it. A clicker allows me the freedom to move around the classroom as I lecture while easily clicking through PowerPoint slides. I am not tied to the podium in the front of the room, which definitely helps with classroom management and making connections with the students.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Life events seem to be a popular topic this year. One colleague became a grandparent, one is getting married, one is in the process of adopting, and several have children, so these stories permeate the halls. Occasionally, we will talk about research projects or presentations that we are working on. We often work on these together and so chatting in the hallway quickly between classes may be the only time we can find to collaborate.

Neil Schmitzer-Torbert: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 18:44:46 GMT

School name: Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN

Type of school: Small (<900 students), all-male liberal arts college

School locale: Crawfordsville is a small city of about 16,000, located about a 50 minute drive from Indianapolis and about a 2.5 hour drive from Chicago

Classes you teach: Behavioral Neuroscience, Introduction to Psychology, Research Methods & Statistics, Human Sexual Behavior, Drugs & Behavior

Average class size: Usually small, but a bit variable! My largest class is Introduction to Psychology (typically capped at 40 students, but often with approximately 30 students), but this semester, I have one advanced course with 7 students, a first-year seminar with 15, and will have a half-semester course with approximately 20 students starting in October.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I am not sure if I can recall one specific piece of advice, but I do feel that I have been fortunate to have an excellent community of mentors and colleagues here at Wabash, and in my earlier teaching positions (as a visiting professor at Knox College, and as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota). In each of my institutions, I have been grateful for the advice and support I found when I had concerns in my teaching and other professional work. Recently, though, one question that I recall being posed at a conference session (on how to structure a faculty development program) has been resonating with me: How can we make the best use of our limited time? As I enter mid-career, I find it just as much of a struggle to do everything that I think should be done. I think this is true for many of my colleagues as well, and we are all looking for ways to focus on our core work of educating students, while also balancing our service and research. I find questions such as this one to be very useful, especially as the semester ramps up, as an opportunity to step back and reflect on how well my activities – how I spend my time – matches my priorities.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Earlier in my career, I think I was most influenced by P. F. Kluge’s Alma Mater, in which Kluge describes his experiences teaching at Kenyon College, his alma mater. I read the book as an undergraduate, and I found the portrait of the college professor presented by Kluge to be compelling, and one that I had in mind as I took my first full-time teaching position as a visiting professor (at my alma mater, Knox College). More recently, I have found myself often returning to Maryellen Weimer’s work, especially her posts on the Faculty Focus blog. As Wabash College’s Coordinator of Faculty Development, I have found the Faculty Focus pieces to be very useful in my own teaching, and as resources to share with my colleagues.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My main research is in the neuroscience of learning and memory, and I especially enjoy talking with my students about memory in my behavioral neuroscience courses. I find memory, such a critical part of our identity, to be endlessly fascinating, and I always enjoy getting the opportunity to talk with students about what we know about the physical processes that support memory: what is it about our brains that allows us to lay down some lasting trace? Why does memory sometimes fail us? What can we do to intervene in disorders that impact memory? Like many areas in neuroscience and psychology, I feel that we are living through an opportune moment, in which we have learned a great deal about these processes, but that there are still many exciting puzzles to solve about memory.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

Last year, I experimented with having students self-grade their exams, after having a conversation with a colleague in our department who was interested in the technique. It was the first time that I had used the technique, but I found it especially interesting after coming across a journal article by Nelta Edwards on using self-grading in a social sciences statistics course. I found the experience very useful, though admittedly time-consuming, as I dedicated most of a class session to having students grade each question on their own exams. When looking over the scores students gave to themselves, I found that I largely agreed with my students’ self-assessment (though, I was likely influenced by my awareness of the scores students had given themselves). I did find that students who I assigned low scores in some cases overestimated their performance (which can be a useful opportunity for conversation, to help students be better able to recognize what a strong answer should look like), and in some cases, I was able to correct an important misconception that a student had, but was not clear from the answer given on the exam, so that self-grading became another opportunity for review and learning.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I prefer smaller discussion-based courses, or smaller courses in which I combine short periods of lecture with discussion, where students have opportunities to make sense of class material and put it into their own words. The challenge, however, is to ensure that students are keeping up and engaging with the readings (and are prepared for discussion). So, I have moved towards the use of low-stakes reading responses and reading quizzes (to help me quickly assess my students’ preparation), but also to scale back some more dense and technical readings (or provide reading guides) in some of my upper-level courses.

What’s your workspace like?

Outside of class, most of my work is done in my office. I prefer to have an open space, where I can easily meet with students. So, I have placed my desk and computer against a wall, and have several chairs and a small side table arranged around the room, allowing me to meet with one to three students easily. I prefer this style to one where I have a desk between myself and my students, which would feel more formal than I typically want my meetings to be. In my neuroscience courses and in summer research, I spend a fair amount of time working in our behavioral neuroscience lab with my students, which has several open spaces that I can configure for work in behavioral testing or other lab work.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Learning how to learn is a critical outcome.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

One that comes to mind was not in one of my own courses, but one of my colleagues’ classes. Several years ago, I agreed to hand out an exam in a section of Introduction to Psychology while a visiting faculty member was out of town for a job interview. But, when the day came I forgot about the exam, and did not arrive until well after the class should have started. By that time, many students had left, and it was too late to hand out the test. I felt terrible about the error, and my main concern from that point on was to ensure that the students in the course knew that the error was mine, and did not believe that their professor had failed to show up.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I think that some of my students might be surprised to learn that I was the first member of my immediate family to earn a bachelor’s degree (from Knox College, in Illinois), and that I was a Pell Grant recipient (along with other need-based aid). Some have seen a talk that I gave at Wabash, but many students would probably also be surprised to learn the origins of my last name, Schmitzer-Torbert – my wife and I chose to hyphenate our last names, and I was originally the Torbert, and my wife was the Schmitzer.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

In August, I started reading George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, but now that the semester is in full swing, I may not be able to finish it for some time! However, I am fortunate this fall to be teaching a first-year seminar, which I have designed around how we can use science fiction to explore what it means to be a person, and the implications that some potential technologies will have for our identity as humans. For that course, I have assigned several books that I enjoy, including Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Professionally, the most important tool for me is simply my laptop, and a high-speed internet connection, and I would have to drastically change my work habits if I did have access to both! Recently, cloud file storage has also become a very important tool for me. Using Dropbox and Box (which Wabash has recently adopted) makes it easier for me to have access to key files from any internet connected device. These services have also made it much simpler for me to share files with colleagues, collaborators and students. Over the summer, I worked with two students on research project in which we used video recordings of rats trained to find food on a maze. With Box, I was able to easily share the video data with my students (about 33 GB of video), so that they could process each file (to allow us to track our rats’ position during the task). In the past, this would have been a much more difficult process.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Wabash has a small faculty (less than 100 full time faculty), and one of the aspects of our college that I have always valued is the strong sense of community and collegiality. In my typical day, I will most often run into colleagues whose offices are on my floor (which includes four of our five Psychology faculty, and three faculty members from Economics this year). Our conversations are generally a mixture of socializing (asking about family members, and activities), talking through issues that come up in teaching (asking if one of our students is doing well in another faculty member’s course, sharing ideas for handling group projects, etc.), and talk about other issues (at the College or beyond). I hope a visitor to our floor would find a friendly, welcoming group, and feel comfortable joining in!

Ginger Wickline: I'm a member of STP And This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 21:50:55 GMT

School name: Miami University Middletown

Type of college/university: State institution, regional commuter campus

School locale: Small town

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology; Foundational Experiences; Career Development; Psychology Across Cultures; Personality; Abnormal Psychology; Research Design & Analysis; Introduction to Counseling; Special Topics in Psychology; Psychology Capstone Experiences; Independent Studies in Teaching, Community Service, and Research

Average class size: 25-30

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?
When I was in graduate school, Bill Buskist did a workshop just for our graduate student teaching cohort. In several ways, he not only discussed but modeled how our primary job as educators is to make learning real…and personal. He made every person in that small room matter. To this day, I’ve tried to remember to show instead of say what’s important. I use nameplates in my classes so that I know all students’ names within a few weeks. I am always looking for ways students can see or apply their lives in the constructs that we discuss in class. They may study a list of facts for an exam and remember it for a moment…but if they can see an idea in their lives, they will remember and revisit it much more often and more deeply. If they know we see them, they will feel they belong in higher education and be more eager to work for and learn from us.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?
Recently, I have been influenced a great deal by a series of works by one of my mentors and friends, career advising guru, Drew Appleby. See, for example, Appleby & Appleby’s (2006) Teaching of Psychology article entitled, How to Avoid Kisses of Death in the Graduate School Application Process. For years, I have taught psychology because I love the subject, and my students do, too. My students, however, do not always know how to translate this thing they like into a viable career or calling. If I cannot prepare them for life after graduation, I feel I am not doing my job. A lot of my emphasis on experiential learning – including service-learning, research mentoring, and community placements – is founded on the idea that I need to help provide them the skills and experiences they can sell in a job or graduate school interview.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.
My absolute favorite class to teach is Psychology Across Cultures. Many young people do not yet grasp just how much their culture or cultures have shaped them. This seems especially true for a lot of my students who are White, working-class Americans, and/or first-generation students. I love exploring my students’ cultural identities, then having them learn about others, so that all can develop the three core components of intercultural competence: knowing about one’s self and other cultures, caring about culturally different others, and being able to act effectively and appropriately in new contexts.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.
For my Psychology Across Cultures and Introduction to Psychology courses, I pair with English as a Second Language professors to have our U.S. domestic and international students perform a series of four shared cultural experiences across the semester in a program called Crossing Borders (Wickline, 2012). In large group and small group experiences, students discuss themselves, their families, and their cultures while experiencing new things together - for example, a basketball game, hayride, rodeo, pottery painting, bowling, or dinner at a new restaurant (perhaps with chopsticks). They learn to expand their comfort zones, try new things, and see new layers of similarities AND differences between themselves and others. When it works well, they stay in touch on WeChat or Facebook or develop organic friendships that last beyond the classroom and semester.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?
I am a huge advocate of active and experiential learning. For example, I can lecture about intercultural competence and empathy until I am blue in the face, and students will go, “Sure, sure. That’s important.” However, that does not touch them or teach them empathy. Instead, if I start the first five minutes of Psychology Across Cultures in sign language…then French…then Spanish instead of English…well, then students know for themselves, even if briefly, the frustration that English-learning international students go through almost every day of their lives in a new culture. I can talk about discrimination, privilege, or prejudice in the same way with the same effect. However, when our Crossing Borders partners go out to eat together in public, and people stare at them or make rude comments, then my domestic students know what it feels like to experience these things. In a similar way, service-learning helps students know what to do with the collection of facts they have learned in classes so they know things, not just know about things. I find most forms of active or experiential learning help students go much deeper on Bloom’s (1956) learning taxonomy when compared to lecture or reading alone.

What’s your workspace like?
My workspace takes three forms. During the day, I am mostly in my office, which is decorated with photos, art from previous students and colleagues, and posters from large scale community events my students and I have hosted over the years. As I have a lot of community partners and mentees, my second workspace is the local coffee shop – planning meetings always seem to go better over shared food or a latte! My third workspace is my brown recliner, where I work in the quiet of the very early morning in my house, uninterrupted, before my family wakes up. Although it does not always work, this vampirish schedule enables me to keep more daylight, evenings, and weekends as sacred time, set apart from my job. I’ll admit I am giving up on work-life balance, for this seems to always make work and non-work life compete. My new goal is work-life integration, as both my family and my vocation are huge parts of who I am.

Three words that best describe your teaching style: Challenging, Supportive, and Personal

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Get wet – you see rainbows when facing rain.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.
One day in Psychology Across Cultures, we did what I call “Snowball Stereotypes.” Each person writes down a stereotype she or he holds (whether or not they believe it), crumples it up, and throws across the circle a few times until they are randomly distributed. We then flatten, read, and discuss them. The point is to show that stereotypes do not belong to any one group: We all have ones we working through, holding onto, or re-learning, and we have stereotypes about a wide variety of kinds of people (e.g., age, nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.). This particular day, several of those stereotypes were about African Americans. We ran out of time to mention how we often have these stereotypes but we want to unlearn them – or how our families gave them to us, but we are embarrassed by them. Thus, it sounded at first like these are all stereotypes to which my students were wedded. Two of my three students with African American heritage left angry and disheartened, which they shared with me in my post-class reflection assignment, noting they wish we had more time on the topic. Per their request, the next day back in class, we deferred the day’s topic and returned to stereotypes so the group could process and unpack everyone’s reactions. Both African American students showed relief, noting how important this was to revisit the topic and deepen the discussion so they could begin to trust our class (mostly White people) again.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?
I could probably beat most of them at air hockey. I was a mime for 4 years in college – it’s part of what got me interested in the formal study of nonverbal communication, which I am still doing. Lastly, I have also travelled to 15 different countries (and mimed in 4 of them).

What are you currently reading for pleasure?
I am catching up some Malcolm Gladwell books on my own and loving Nick Bruel’s Bad Kitty series with my kids.

What tech tool could you not live without?
That would have to be my laptop with WiFi connection. Some days I cannot bear to sit in my office with no windows any longer and need to catch some sun, even if I am still working. There is a balcony at my office building that frequently beckons my name…

What’s your hallway chatter like?
It seems that higher education, like many careers, is asking for more and more of us with fewer resources, time, or staffing. We are all trying to work smarter, not harder, and find ways to manage the load. Particularly for my adjunct friends, that also means finding ways to manage the bills – part-time educators are so needed, so dedicated, and so underpaid. Some days “supporting each other” means sharing teaching joys and ideas over the copy machine. Other days it means sharing concerns and struggles over margaritas, coffee, or chocolate. Either way, my colleagues are some of the best and hardest working people I know. They care deeply, and they wear it on their sleeves, in their classes, day in and day out.

Ciara Kidder: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Sat, 30 Sep 2017 15:17:36 GMT

School name: Marian University (Wisconsin)

Type of school: Private Liberal Arts College

School locale: Small town/rural

Classes you teach:

I primarily teach Statistics, Research Methods, and General Psychology; I also occasionally teach Social Psychology and Cognitive Psychology

Average class size: 20

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I was told about NITOP (National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology) from a fellow graduate student and my undergraduate mentor. They attended the conference as graduate students and couldn’t say enough good things about it. They both went directly to teaching jobs after school, and I knew I wanted to do that too, so I decided it was important to go. My first time at NITOP was during my last year in grad school. I learned so much from the other attendees that I immediately started using the ideas I had, in the class I was teaching in the spring semester. I’ve now gone a second time and the feeling is the same. I got a chance to meet up with folks I met last year and meet some new ones. I think the best thing about NITOP is the collaborative nature of it. Everyone loves teaching so much and just want to share their experiences, ideas, and even their materials!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

If I had to pick one thing its David Gooblar’s Pedagogy Unbound blog on the ChronicleVitae. I get the most out of talking with other teachers, so blogs and articles like David’s are among my go-to when I’m not conferencing.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching statistics. It’s one of those classes that is hard from the start because students don’t want to be there. I really push my students with application based assignments, exams, and projects so I know some students leave still hating it. But every class also ends with a handful of students who really got a lot out of it and some who even say they loved the class. With a class like statistics, that’s the best feeling!

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

One of my favorite assignments is from General Psychology. I have students create a study plan for an upcoming exam based on principles of learning and memory. It asks students to think about how things like operant conditioning or the testing effect can help them be better studiers. Some students really get into it and I’ve gotten some great plans.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I’m only in my second year of teaching full time so I’m still exploring, but I have had good success with short lectures meant to build on readings with more emphasis on in-class work. In statistics, I like that it gives me time to work one-on-one with the students who really need the help and allows for students to help each other. I love hearing a student explain it to another student in a different way than I’ve taught it.

What’s your workspace like?

I’m pretty Type A so I like to keep my workspace organized and clean, with everything at my fingertips. When my desk and office get messy mid-semester, I have to take the time to organize and clean out or I can’t get anything done. I also like to have a lot of color around the office to combat the boredom of white cinder blocks. I like to tell myself it makes up for not having a window (it totally doesn’t).

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Evolving. Research-based. Real-world.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Develop independent learners with real-world applicable skills.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

This spring I lost my voice out of the blue for a couple of days. On the worst day I had three classes to teach. In one of my classes I had to write on the board instructions for the day and had the students work through the posted lecture on their own. I then went around whispering to students who had questions. Luckily, a lot of students were absent that day.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I’m a bookaholic. I read more than 100 books a year. Mostly fiction.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I just purchased The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King. I saw the trailer for the movie and it had Idris Elba in it. I knew I would want to see it, but I also knew the book would be better so I’ve got it on the docket.

What tech tool could you not live without?

E-readers. It’s the bookaholic in me. While I definitely prefer the paper versions of books, the cost savings and convenience of reading from an app on my phone or tablet wins out.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We mostly chat about work related things. There has been a lot of new initiatives on campus that have sparked great conversations. We also talk a lot about our kids. As a mom of a toddler, I get a lot of great advice and stories from moms whose kids are older; I also get babysitters!

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Eric talk with Ciara about her blog ("The Novice Professor,") , her path from her original major toward psychology, and her career as a new-ish college teacher.

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e088-ciara-kidder-persistent-perfectionist-decisive-founder-of-the-novice-professor

Ashley Waggoner Denton: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Sat, 16 Sep 2017 01:43:09 GMT

School name: University of Toronto

Type of school: Large research-intensive university

School locale: In the middle of the largest city in Canada (and one of the most diverse cities in the world!)

Classes you teach:

Introductory Psychology, Social Psychology, Statistics, Social Psychology Lab

Average class size:

My class sizes have ranged from 5 (summer lab course) to 1,500 (Intro Psych), so providing an “average” isn’t particularly useful!

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I think probably just the idea that there isn’t a single prototype for being a “great teacher.” We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and the trick is to figure out what works best with your own personality and style.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Two that come to mind are Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do and Carol Dweck’s Mindset, which I am now in the habit of recommending to my Intro Psych students. But there are many more!

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching anything that really surprises the students and changes the way they understand or approach the world. Introductory Psychology is ripe for these kinds of discoveries, and because I know that this will be the only psychology course many of these students take, I do my best to try to instil in them a sense of humility regarding their own self-understanding. In a 12 week course I can't possibly teach them everything that psychologists have learned about the ways in which our minds work, but I can at least get them to realize that our minds are often far more faulty (e.g., biased and error prone) than we realize. For example, when we talk about false memories, I will have the students recall a memory from their childhood and ask them to reflect on all of the ways this memory may be incorrect or tainted by other sources, etc.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I don’t think I could pick just a single favourite. But one thing that comes to mind as something I always look forward to is the ‘moment of meditation’ I do during one of my Intro Psych lectures. What makes it so great, is that this is a HUGE room, filled with over 1000 students, and for 1 solid minute, there is absolute silence as everyone (including me) sits in a moment of peaceful meditation. I am nervous about it every time, but not once has a student ever decided to blurt something out or ruin the experience. Everyone seems to take it seriously and it’s just this really great moment that refreshes and resets the whole class. Such a small thing, but I love it, and I should probably do it more often!

What’s your workspace like?

Because I have young kids (three year old twins) at home, the majority of my work gets done at my office. And despite my best intentions, my office workspace is usually a bit of a mess. Post-it notes everywhere, stacks of articles and folders and notebooks piled along my desk. On the plus side, I do have a couple of plants that I have miraculously managed to keep alive! And of course photos of my kids everywhere.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Engaging, Supportive, Conversational

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Teach with purpose.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

A few years ago, we had a mix-up where all of the rooms that had been booked for an Intro Psych test were actually booked for the wrong day. So 1,500 students showed up at a dozen or so rooms across campus, that we didn’t actually have booked. And because some of the rooms just happened to be available (including the room I was proctoring in) we didn’t realize right away what had happened. So some students started writing the test, while at other locations the test proctors were trying to figure out why something else was happening in the room. Eventually (after receiving enough phone calls to realize the problem wasn’t just localized to one or two rooms) I checked the room bookings and realized what had happened. We had to stop the students who were in the middle of the test and explain that it had to be cancelled, since about half of the class would be unable to write it that day. It was such a disaster! In the end, we got new rooms booked for the following week, and it all worked out okay, but you can bet that we really double-check those room bookings now!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I am pretty much an open book with my students, so I feel that they typically know me fairly well by the end of the semester! However, they might be surprised to learn that I was so nervous on the morning of my qualifying exams in graduate school, that I threw up! And as less gross example, they might be surprised to learn that I know all of the lyrics to Super Bass by Nicki Minaj.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Right now I’m reading The Theory That Would Not Die by Sharon McGrayne, which was a recommendation from my husband (a diehard Bayesian). I’m also reading Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which is just one of those books that I have always meant to read but somehow never managed to do so (until now!).

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

So many people in our department have young kids/babies, it’s a little ridiculous (in the best possible way!). So it’s not unusual to find an actual baby chattering in the hallway. But it’s awesome, because we all have stories (not to mention clothing and stuff) to swap. Being in Canada, we also have a wonderful maternity/parental leave policy that helps make the transition into parenthood so much easier than it otherwise would be.

Ziv Bell: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 19:11:25 GMT

School name: The Ohio State University

Type of school: Large, public research university

School locale: City – Columbus, OH

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology, Abnormal Psychology

Average class size: 65

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Make eye contact with every student at least once during each class. It takes some practice, but it makes every student feel important and ensures that you are always thinking about teaching every student in the class and not just Hermione in the front row.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

It’s not a book or article, but Crash Course! The videos are fantastic, interesting, and freely available. The videos cover most of the content of most Intro textbooks, students know exactly how long the videos take to watch, and they can pause and rewind or rewatch the videos whenever they want. I can assign my students to watch videos before they come to class and then we can spend the time in class putting that information to practical use!

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Memory is my favorite lesson to teach in my flipped Introduction to Psychology course. Students complete a series of memory tasks that demonstrate concepts like the primacy effect and false memories. Then students give short presentations about how they would correct a layperson's misunderstanding about the fallibility of memory or where memories are stored in the brain, for example. Finally, after they have learned tips for memorizing information quickly, I show them what I tell them is my credit card number for just 15 seconds, and if they can memorize all the information, they get a prize. Every time I've done this, one student in each class has able to memorize the whole card.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

“Speed Reviewing,” which I modeled after speed dating. Students pick a concept on their study guide to briefly review on their own. Then they all walk around the room, introduce themselves to another student, and ask if that person knows the concept they reviewed. If yes, the student who was asked tries to explain it, and if they don’t already know the concept, then the student who asked about that concept explains. Then, they switch roles. After both students ask about their concepts, they thank each other and find new students to ask about their concept. I also walk around and participate in the activity, and students generally report the social pressure to sound smart in front of their peers is highly motivating.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I taught music before I taught psychology and I loved conducting because my students were completely in charge of actually making the music. If I conducted the start of a piece, but they weren’t paying attention, there was no sound; if I wanted them to play louder but they weren’t paying attention, nothing changed; and if students never practiced outside of rehearsal, I couldn’t play their parts for them. In fact, I never even made a sound on the podium while conducting. I now teach psychology, but I still feel more like a band director than a lecturer because in the same way I couldn’t play for my students, I can’t apply psychology for my students. There is no amount of me talking at my students that will allow them to practice implementing important applications of psychology in their own lives, so every class I direct activities that put my students in charge of their learning. For example, when my students go home for Thanksgiving, I want them to be able to refute myths their family members believe about mental illness, explain why correlations don’t prove causation, and demonstrate how someone should act differently after learning about implicit biases. So that is what we practice during class: students role play responding to questions laypeople ask about psychological disorders, they find articles in the media that conflate correlation and causation, and they take an implicit association task and write about policies the university could implement to reduce adverse effects of negative implicit associations on campus.

What’s your workspace like?

Barren. I get distracted easily, so if there are lots of things on my desk or on the wall, I will not be nearly as productive. I even prefer having an office without a window!

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Energetic, Engaging, and Empirical

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Non Nobis Solum Nati Sumus (Not unto ourselves alone are we born)

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

While discussing consciousness, I pulled up CleverBot and I dictated what my students said so that we could chat with artificial intelligence and discuss what principles help us differentiate human language and thought from that of computers. However, CleverBot started hitting on my class, eventually asking “What are you wearing?” before I shut it down. It did spark an interesting discussion, though.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

My wife and I started dating at the end of our freshman year of high school, and because we were so young, our moms had to drive us to our first few dates. When we were planning to go to the same college together, our high school English teacher told us that he had never seen a couple last through college. He recommended that we shouldn’t go to the same small college together; so I bet him a steak dinner that we would still be dating two years into college. I won the bet and the steak was delicious. We continued dating and got married after 9 years together, and that same English teacher agreed to be the officiant at our wedding.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. It explains in accessible terms how properties of systems can keep institutions from changing quickly or how negative feedback loops can dramatically change relationship dynamics. It has applications in development, psychopathology, social psychology, university administrations, politics, etc. In short, reading this book feels like being escorted out of Plato’s Cave and realizing that you’ve been seeing only shadows before now.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I love using Google Docs! One of my favorite applications is for student-generated study guides. For several topics, I create a document with a bare-bones outline of concepts such as social psychology phenomena or brain regions, and then my students populate the document with descriptions and examples. Everyone participates, they generate far more examples than I could in the same amount of time, and the class gets to keep the document as a resource. It also allows me to correct misunderstandings in real time. For example, if a student writes an example of positive punishment under negative reinforcement, I can immediately find that student or ask another student to politely explain the difference.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Unfortunately, a lot of the hallway chatter is about how little time we graduate students have and that research, classes, clinical work, and teaching (and possibly even a personal life) are often difficult to balance. However, I am always down to talk about teaching and how teaching undergraduate courses in the 21^st century must be qualitatively different from any previous time because of the availability and accessibility of information on the internet.

Bryan Karazsia: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 01:13:44 GMT

School name: The College of Wooster, Wooster, OH

Type of college/university: Small Liberal Arts College

School locale: Micropolitan – The city of Wooster, OH is a small but thriving city in the middle of a rural area of Ohio

Classes you teach: Statistics, Clinical Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Health Psychology, Personality Research

Average class size: 20-30 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I asked a senior colleague, David Elkin, PhD from a professional organization, Division 54 of the APA, how he manages to publish, teach, and engage in clinical work. His advice changed my perspective on everything I do professionally. He said: Whatever you do, double dip. If you see clients, then do research with them. If you teach, collect data on your teaching. This advice really resonated with me. I believe that this approach will close the gap between research and practice (either clinical practice or teaching practice). I’ve since published several papers based on my teaching practices, and this advice has really helped me engage my research activities from a pedagogical perspective to promote student learning.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” is something I return to every year – both the book and the video. If you have never heard of it, block 1 hour, google it, and watch the video. It’s less about teaching psychology, and more about being a good human who happens to teach.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching statistics. To borrow a term from Pausch’s “The Last Lecture”, I see this course as a huge head-fake. In many sports, athletes will perform a head-fake; they make a defender think they are going one way, but they are actually going a different direction. Students often think statistics is about one thing, but it’s really about something else. Most students enter statistics classes thinking that the class will be about math, but it’s really a class on scientific or empirical thinking. It is epistemological at its core – how do we know what we know in psychology? Yes, math is involved, but only as a means to an end. I try to focus on the end – the way of thinking. I try to keep it very practical and applied – using math in this way, in this context, helps us understand if a treatment for depression really works (as one example).

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I’ve had really positive reactions to a N of 1 research design project in my health psychology class. I use N of 1 research designs in quite a bit of my published research, and I’ve learned so much about their value, yet they are often ignored or overlooked by many research methods books and by many leading researchers. So, most undergraduates, in my opinion, are under-exposed to this family of methodologies. Therefore, I developed a semester-long project in my Health Psychology class to address this issue. The semester is divided in to typical N of 1 study phases (baseline, intervention). They track a specific health behavior of their choosing. Common examples are sleep amount/quality or healthy eating. We work collaboratively on operationalizing the behavior and developing systematic approaches to measuring it. As students learn principles of health behavior change, they develop an intervention for themselves, and then apply it. They track their behavior to see if it works, and we analyze the data using a mixture of statistical and graphing methods. I literally had a student quick smoking one semester! Another student developed a new life habit of teeth flossing.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I learned about an approach to teaching called “Interteaching” at a workshop from the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP), led by Bryan Saville, PhD. Given that my clinical background is very behaviorally-based, I had tried various applications of behaviorism to a classroom, but failed repeatedly. Interteaching is a very well thought out approach that focuses on learning behaviors (class preparations, study skills, dyadic discussions, asking good questions). Effective use of interteaching increases the likelihood of students engaging in these behaviors through positive reinforcement. High-stakes testing is minimized and replaced by frequent low-stakes assessments with rapid feedback and daily engagement or monitoring of students’ pre-class preparations and in-class discussions. I now do classic lectures very little (almost never), because they are very inefficient for helping students learn how to learn.

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is changing! I just changed offices on July 1 to assume duties as a full-time administrator (Dean for Curriculum and Academic Engagement). This followed a short stint of 1.5 years as an Associate Dean, which was a half-time appointment. So, I was spending half of my time in the Psychology Department, and then the other half in another building. So, I’ve been in 3 different offices over the past 3 years! I try to create a welcoming environment by situating the office so that students or colleagues feel comfortable. A constant throughout these transitions, however, is my research lab. It has a huge white board (two-tiered), various instruments and computer software, and a locked closet. I refer to it as “the vault”, because it’s behind a hallway that is somewhat hidden, then there’s another locked door, and there are no windows. It’s a great place to focus. I suppose a third workspace in this modern world is wherever I can write. I enjoy finding quiet spaces with nice views anywhere I travel. If I have my laptop, I can write!

Three words that best describe your teaching style

Engaging, enthusiastic, supportive

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Provide opportunities and get out of the way (I learned this from Michael Roberts, PhD, another senior colleague from Division 54 of APA).

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

Chai Latte spilled all over a tile floor at the beginning of class! I was a graduate student, literally living in my pastor’s basement to save money. I was teaching an Introduction to Psychology Course early in the morning. I treated myself to a Venti Chai Latte that morning – I felt so academic! Unfortunately, the entire beverage slipped out of my hands and this view of myself as an aspiring academic spilled across the entire floor. It was embarrassing, disruptive, and a great reminder that it doesn’t take name brand coffee-like beverages to be a good teacher!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

A lot of people think that I’m extroverted because I am very high energy and I say Hi to everyone. However, extraversion is multi-dimensional. I tend to score high on warmth/friendliness, activity/activity level, and positive emotions/cheerfulness. However, on other facets of this personality scale I score very low (or high if you think of introversion as a strength!). I have low scores on Gregariousness and excitement-seeking. I thrive in focused, alone time, and my hobbies align with that. I enjoy woodworking (think hours alone in a woodshop) and hunting (think hours alone in the outdoors). My family enjoys the outdoors as we do our ‘vacations’ with camping gear. We look for seclusion, peace, and tranquility (which is hard to find with young children in tow!)

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

My summer reading aligns with the College of Wooster’s assigned summer reading for first year students – Writings on the Wall by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I love the outdoors, so I like to think that I could live quite well without access to any modern technology. We say we couldn’t live without this or that, but humans thrived (perhaps more than we do now) for a very long time without what we currently call technology. In my professional world, however, I am so very grateful to a tremendous staff in our Libraries. They enable me to access virtually any scholarly resource from virtually anywhere in the world, in a very short period of time.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I like to think that I talk with them about whatever they want to talk about, but that’s a hope more than a reality, perhaps. I’m usually joking around, being silly, and trying to make the people around me smile and enjoy their time at work. Ask me about my research, and I can talk for a while. Ask me about my hobbies, and you better grab a Venti (without spilling it).

David Myers: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Mon, 10 Jul 2017 20:13:18 GMT

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE:

School name: Hope College

Type of school: 4-year liberal arts college

School locale: Small city (100,000 in postal region)

Classes you teach and average class size:

I’ve taught several dozen sections of introductory psychology and of social psychology, but now am focused on reading, writing, and guest speaking.

Average class size:

30 to 35, with little variation (apart from an occasional seminar)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

As my writing coach taught me, often “less is more.” So teach fewer things memorably, with activities that bring the material to life and engage students actively. There’s no need to teach all the information that’s in a comprehensive text—let the book do that, and instead focus on what you love to teach.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

As a to-be-college senior (and premed chem major who got as far as taking the MCAT and half completing my med school applications) I decided instead to become a professor. Needing something to profess that wasn’t chemistry, I recalled enjoying my long-ago intro to psych class and, on not much more than a whim, decided to pursue psychology. In that senior year I read books by Gordon Allport. As a deeply humane, literate, faith-motivated scholar of personality and prejudice, he defined the psychology that attracted me.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

As a social psychologist, I guessed that writing and teaching about sensation and perception would be a struggle. But then I was awe-struck by the intricacies of the matter-to-mind process by which we convert physical energy into consciousness. As a person with hearing loss and a hearing advocate, I especially love talking about the psychology of hearing and hearing loss.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

In social psychology classes, a favorite day was demonstrating “group polarization” (my research focus)—with a class demonstration that never failed. In introductory psychology, my favorite in-class activity was a day devoted to analyzing ESP claims and playing stage magician, by demonstrating pseudo-psychic ESP tricks.

[Editor's Note: David was gracious enough to send along these demos, which you can download below.]

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

A mix of lecture on favorite topics, illustrated with video clips and active learning (demonstrations and discussion).

What’s your workspace like?

I’m surrounded by a U-shaped desk, which typically is clean—but on which I can lay out materials while writing.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic. Organized. Focused.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Teach with passion. Activate learners. Life relevant focus.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

During one of those group polarization demonstrations, a small group was unable to open the door and extract themselves from their small group lab room. I failed to notice that they had not returned to the class, and came within a whisker of leaving them stranded (overnight?). Even so, to my great embarrassment, they were not released before all other students were long gone.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

That, as a child I stuttered, for which I received speech therapy from Seattle Public Schools.
That my great grandfather—whose name is my middle name (Guy)—invented the ice cream soda. See here for my deer-in-the-headlights photo that accompanied an article in papers nationwide.
That I’m a lifelong basketball nut—having
- as a child read every basketball fiction book in the Seattle Public Library system and attended University of Washington practices as well as games,
- played pickup basketball throughout my life, and
- scheduled my college’s men’s and women’s games into my calendar nearly a year in advance.
That without hearing aids I am deaf (in bed I cannot hear my wife from the adjacent pillow, unless I put an ear to her mouth) . . . but that this has enabled an avocational purpose. For the past four years I represented Americans with hearing loss on the advisory council of NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. And, in collaboration with others with hearing loss, I have created www.hearingloop.org, and written almost 20,000 e-mails and three dozen articles that advocate a transformation in American “assistive listening”—with a technology that enables hearing aids also to serve as wireless, customized, in-the-ear speakers for sound from PA systems, TVs, etc.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I daily read the New York Times and admit to being a political junkie.

What tech tool could you not live without?

The hearing loops that broadcast directly to my ears the sound from my TV and the spoken word in most of my campus auditoriums and community worship places.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I’m blessed to be part of an amazing group of psychology faculty that, without exception, love, support, and cheer on one another. We can discuss anything from campus politics, to family life, to new research, to . . . basketball.

Teaching Demonstrations

David Myers - Group polarization.pdf

David Myers - Pseudopsychic demonstrations.pdf

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Dave Myers talk with Garth Neufeld about the beginnings of his intro. psych textbook work and how he uses that work to support high school and college psychology teachers: https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e005-interview-with-david-myers

BONUS PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Dave came back for another interview with Garth. This time they talked about current topics like hate speech and how psychological research can inform critical thinking and communication about difficult topics. https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e092-david-myers-part-2-social-respectful-discerning-generous-inclusive

Guy Boysen: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Wed, 31 May 2017 04:43:12 GMT

School name: McKendree University

Type of college/university: McKendree is a small, liberal arts college with some specific graduate and online programs.

School locale: We are in a small town 20 minutes east of St. Louis.

Classes you teach: I primarily consider myself a generalist, so I teach Intro, Methods, and other courses that span the field. However, I have a background in counseling, so I also teach Abnormal, Theories of Psychotherapy, and Tests and Measures. In addition to regular classes, I provide individual mentorship of student research in the form of honors theses and independent studies.

Average class size: Our introductory courses tend to have about 30 students, and advanced courses are rarely above 20.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I have the distinct pleasure of being married to a wonderful woman with graduate training in both psychology and higher education. Like all romantic partners of academics, she gets to hear about my teaching triumphs and tragedies every night over dinner. Now and again, when I am particularly frustrated by something that didn’t go the way I wanted, she will point out that “It’s not about you. It’s about the students.” It is easy to fall into the trap of pedagogical narcissism – thinking in terms of my lessons, my classes, my students, my major (Even this blog is called How I Teach, not How Students Learn.). So, it is essential to be reminded now and again that students really are at the center of what we do.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

My teaching mentor in graduate school gave me a copy of Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses: Shifting the Focus from Teaching to Learning by Huba and Freed (2000). Although the title makes the book sound like it is only about assessment, it actually provides a full outline of course design from writing objectives through evaluation of learning. I can only compare my experience with this book to that of reading Dan Wegner’s The Illusion of Conscious Will for the first time or hearing John Coltrane’s Giant Steps for the first time – it caused a complete shift in my perspective. Before reading Huba and Freed’s book, I taught by intuitively miming what my favorite teachers had done. After reading their book, I designed intentional experiences to foster student learning – and they even worked sometimes!

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Abnormal Psychology is simply the best. It is the only course I teach that requires no extra effort to spark student interest – they are inherently fascinated from start to finish. Sometimes I think I should just hand them the DSM and get out of their way. It is also the only course in which I have to convince students that they should not go too wild in applying concepts to their own lives – “Students, please don’t try to diagnose your roommate, your aunt Sally, or your professor!”

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I have students in Research Methods and Tests and Measures design and attempt to validate a survey measuring a construct of their choosing. We take the data they collect into the lab and see if the alpha scores and correlations work out the way they predicted. This assignment is great fun because students are so motivated to demonstrate that they have created the best scale ever that it tricks them into being excited about running and interpreting statistical analyses. Inevitably, they also learn that writing a good survey is a lot harder than it seems.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I am a big fan of various forms of collaborative learning. I have used Johnson and Johnson’s collaborative learning methods and interteaching for many years. In general, my courses all have some form of written assignment that prepares students for in-class, team-based discussions of the learning objectives. Once teams understand the basic objectives, we move on to large-group discussions of case studies, problems, or other applications of the objectives.

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace requirements include, in order of importance, (1) a computer, (2) coffee, and (3) music. Without those three essential ingredients, the magic of psychology cannot occur.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Active, challenging, organized

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Engaging students in the science of psychology.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

In graduate school I was teaching a large section of Abnormal Psychology in a stadium-sized classroom. As part of a brief aside about serotonin and depression I decided to diagram action potential on the chalkboard. It being an oversized classroom, I had to make an oversized drawing. So, not paying much attention to the details, I drew two enormous, jutting neurons of what I thought was indistinct cylindrical shape. I was intently diagramming neurotransmitters spurting out of one neuron toward the other when the sniggers started and then outright laughter. I took a few steps back to get a broader sense of my diagram and realized with horror that I had unwittingly drawn a rather grotesque pornographic cartoon. Turning silently to face the students and then back to the board several times, I finally owned up to it and said “Yes, I realize that I just drew two enormous penises on the board.”

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I was once a 250 pound offensive lineman. Occasionally the fact that I played football will come up in class, and I ask students to guess what position I played. I can see the wheels turning as they think “This guy couldn’t knock over a small child,” which of course leads them to guess “Kicker!”

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Ten Restaurants that Changed America is sitting on my bedside table right now. It combines two of my avocations: history and food. It is fascinating to learn about how much our culture has changed (It was scandalous for women to dine alone in the 1800s!) and how many popular delicacies of the recent past would be revolting to the modern palate (Anyone want to go out for calves’ head and pancreas?).

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I’m a nerd. I talk about psychology and assessment.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Guy talk with Garth and Eric about teaching abnormal psychology and keeping up with research projects while teaching. https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e075-guy-boysen-prolific-persistent-estimable-and-exceptional

Nancy Furlong: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 15 May 2017 19:44:20 GMT

School name: Alfred University

Type of school: Small but comprehensive University (bachelors through doctoral programs)

School locale: Small, rural community in western New York state

Classes you teach and average class size:

Psychological Methods & Statistics (Average Class Size = 39)

Research & Design 1 (Average Class Size = 14; two sections per semester)

Cognitive Development (Average Class Size = 28)

Social Development (Average Class Size = 38)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Rather than advice I received about teaching, I was most heavily influenced by the teachers in my favorite classes (which included History, Math, Computer Science, Anthropology, and of course, some Psychology classes). I realized that I most enjoyed classes where the teacher presented the material in a coherent, organized narrative format.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I was teaching years before graduate programs began to prepare doctoral candidates for academic positions. My preparation to teach undergraduate classes involved sitting in on classes taught by my advisors. Consequently, my work as a psychology teacher was shaped more by models rather than books or articles. I have, however, adopted some assignments and teaching tips from Teaching of Psychology. For example, students in my Cognitive Development class design a game for children, observe children of different ages play it, and then report to the class the differences in cognitive development they detect. This assignment was based on an article by Georgia Nigro (ToP, December 1994)and it has been students’ favorite part of the course ever since.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

If I have to choose only one, my favorite class is Cognitive Development, and my favorite lecture is on the development of the concept of reality, when I get to talk about Subbotsky’s studies on children’s belief in magic and Harris’ studies on imaginary monsters.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

My students in Research & Design hold a conference-style Poster Session to present a research proposal they have developed on a topic I have assigned. I work with them as they generate their research questions, experimental conditions, and measurement procedures, and then I invite my faculty colleagues to attend the Poster Session. The students find it nerve-wracking, but my colleagues report that they are generally impressed with the students’ first research efforts, and the number of students electing to take an advanced R & D course has increased.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Lecturing – or telling an organized, coherent “story” – is what I think I do best (and it is what I enjoy most).

What’s your workspace like?

My office is crammed with filing cabinets, books, journals, and notebooks. I think I have the notes from every lecture I have ever delivered. I also have every exam I have ever administered. Because I spend so much time in my office, it also contains a stack of music CDs and photos of places I have traveled. I used to know exactly how to find anything, but in recent years, I find I sometimes need to search for things!

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

“Lecture, almost non-stop.”

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Intellectual growth is facilitated by breadth of knowledge.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

A couple of years ago, I was asked at the last minute to offer a section of Parenting Seminar. One of the topics is the use of corporal punishment, and I was taken aback when most of the students argued in favor of spanking children, and persisted in this position even after we reviewed the research showing that spanking can result in a number of negative consequences. In my surprise, I am sure I made it obvious that I expected them to use the scientific findings to inform (i.e., change) their attitudes, but that did not happen. These students did not even try to appease me by simply saying what they knew I wanted them to say, and they had multiple opportunities because the issue came up over and over again over the semester. My response to this experience was to discuss it with the colleague who first developed this course and who had been teaching it for 20 years or so. His first question to me was about the background of the students, and that is when it struck me that they were either African-American or from lower SES homes. As a result, I have done some additional reading on cultural differences in parenting attitudes and in my Social Development class, I now discuss the possibility that effective discipline techniques may vary based on cultural and economic conditions.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

My favorite forms of exercise are Karate and Line Dancing.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I am currently reading Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire– an account of the 1949 Mann Gulch forest fire where a dozen “smokejumpers” died.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I think I could give up everything except my Fire Department Pager (because as Assistant Fire Chief and Critical-Care EMT with our local volunteer emergency services department, I am on call 24-hours a day).

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Most often, the topic is what students are up to now – good, bad, or baffling.

Chantal Poister Tusher: I am a member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Sun, 30 Apr 2017 17:05:14 GMT

School name: Georgia State University

Type of college/university: R1 university; my position is teaching focused

School locale: Downtown Atlanta, GA

Classes you teach: Research methods and statistics, Introductory psychology, Interpersonal Behavior, a capstone seminar on parenting, and for the first time this semester, Positive Psychology. I like variety, and find that teaching different classes in the same semester actually helps me to focus better on each class individually.

Average class size: This varies widely – from 25 students in advanced research design and analysis to 120 in Introductory psychology

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? One of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten is not to be shy about asking for advice – so I’m not! Along the way, I’ve been fortunate to receive lots and lots of helpful information from colleagues in my department and through conferences. Another piece of advice that helped me most when I was feeling very overwhelmed in my first semester of teaching full-time was when my teaching mentor told me that teaching would get easier as I did it more. Thankfully she was right!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? I don’t have a particular book or article to point to, but ideas from these sources have shaped my teaching. For example, based on all of the empirical evidence (presented in books and articles) on the value of ensuring that students have read the chapter before class, all my classes now involve reading quizzes that students must complete before the class meets. This requirement allows me to approach the material from that minimal level of preparation by students.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I have favorite lecture topics within each class I teach, but my favorite class overall is research methods. We offer a two-semester sequence of integrated research methods and statistics, and I love both of them. Students are typically very concerned about these topics and classes, and I love to show students how the material is relevant, why it matters, and to support them in mastering the concepts. It’s always my hope to move students (at least a few) from research methods haters to research methods lovers, like me.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. Again, I have many activities that I enjoy doing with my students, but one of my overall favorites involves article analyses in my research methods courses. I have students read and answer a series of questions about an empirical journal article before class, and then we discuss the article more in-depth in class to illustrate certain concepts. For example, in my Intro to research methods class, I have students pretend to be members of the IRB and discuss if they would approve Middlemist et al.’s (1976) study, which was conducted in a public restroom. In my advanced class, we consider design and statistical concepts as they relate to the study, considering questions such as if the study could be conducted differently and why the researchers made certain methodological choices. I love seeing students light up when they realize they can really understand the methods section and can read the results section of an article – areas they previously would have skipped over.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you? I find that my best classes are those in which it feels like the students and I are having an open conversation about the topic, so I strive for that atmosphere and approach on all my classes. I also try to make sure students are doing as much hands-on experiential learning as possible.

What’s your workspace like? I work in a variety of places, but the most consistent is in my office at GSU. It’s fairly organized because too much clutter distracts me, but there are also always a couple of piles of papers on my desk during the semester, including notes I make for myself on random pieces of paper. I have a “clean out day” in which I clear out all of the piles, recycle old papers, file things, etc. at the end of each semester because I really like starting a new semester with a clear and open work space.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Enthusiastic, supportive, interactive

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Support students in reaching a high standard OR Enthusiasm is contagious

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. During one of my first classes, my cell phone went off. I was mortified. There was nothing to do but to apologize and assure my students it would not happen again (and it hasn’t – that was the first semester I was teaching and I’ve not repeated this mistake again). Occasionally there will be a mistake on an exam – something mistyped, two correct answers in a multiple choice question, etc. In these cases, I have found it’s best to reassure students that I will address the issue in grading (e.g., both right answers will get credit) and then I like to give my students a point or two as bonus for my error. I explain that as I mark off points for their mistakes, it’s only fair to give points for my mistakes.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Unfortunately, I don’t accomplish too much pleasure reading during the semester, but I still try to read whenever I can. I love memoirs, and right now I’m reading “Glitter and Glue” by Kelly Corrigan.

What tech tool could you not live without? In terms of tech tools, it’s really basic – I find the internet is a great starting place for any topic. But I’m actually more old-school and I like to talk to my colleagues and to look through instructor manuals as other starting places for ideas. Good manuals that expand the content and provide ideas for interactive activities, such as Martin Bolt’s companion for teaching Introductory psychology and Beth Morling’s Instructor guide for her research methods text – not manuals that just present the chapter framework on power point slides – are really useful to me. I then modify these ideas to best fit my particular class and topic.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Everyone at my work is pretty busy, but we do check in to discuss how the semester is going, including what is happening at our university and in our own lives as well as the world in general beyond academia.

Autumn Hostetter: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 00:16:35 GMT

School name: Kalamazoo College

Type of college/university: Small liberal arts school

School locale: City

Classes you teach: Cognitive Psychology, Experimental Research Methods, Language and Mind

Average class size: 25

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Teach what you’re interested in. Students will not remember most of what you teach anyway, but they will remember whether you were passionate about the topic or not, and with any luck, that passion will rub off on them a little.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

No specific book or article, but my training as a Cognitive Psychologist definitely influences my teaching. It would be hard to spend so much time thinking about how people learn and remember without letting that affect my choices in the classroom!

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching about the Psychology of Language. This was the topic that originally got me interested in Psychology, and I still enjoy it all these years later. These days, I especially enjoy teaching about language acquisition because I can incorporate so many examples of my two young children’s developing language.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you? Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

Most of my classes involve short bouts of lecture interspersed with opportunities for students to engage with the material. For example, in my Cognitive Psychology class, I spend 15 minutes explaining Hockett’s six design features of language. Then I give students a handout describing three animal communication systems, and in small groups, they spend 15 minutes talking through the extent to which each communication system has each of the six features I just told them about. I like this approach because it breaks up class time and encourages active learning, while also giving students practice retrieving and applying what we are learning.

What’s your workspace like?

Messier than I would like! No matter how often I straighten up, the chaos has a way of creeping back in.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Emphasize not just what, but how and why.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

On the first day of my Cognitive Psychology class several years ago, I went into the classroom where it is always held and began my first day spiel. The students all looked particularly wide-eyed and fearful. Finally, one student raised her hand and said “um, I think this is supposed to be Intro to Psychology.” Indeed, I was in the wrong classroom! Now, I am always sure to double check where my class is scheduled before the first meeting and ask the students if I’m in the right place before I begin!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I enjoy writing children’s books. I have created several books for my kids, including “Riding on a Rhinoceros”, “Geoffrey the Giraffe Goes for a Walk” and “A Day with the Dinosaurs.”

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I just finished reading Michael Lewis’s “The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed our Minds” about the Cognitive Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. It was the perfect blend of reading for work and pleasure, as it gave me a new perspective on the history of these two influential figures who I teach about in my courses, but I also really enjoyed the story of their lives and friendship.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Definitely my iphone!

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We have several young moms in our department, so there is lots of parenting chatter. We also talk about things going on in our classes, and news stories that are related to Psychology.

Bethany Fleck: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:31:45 GMT

School name: Metropolitan State University of Denver

Type of school: MSU Denver is a large public 4-year teaching university (19,800 students enrolled). We are a commuter campus and have a nontraditional and diverse student body. What I am most proud of at this institution is our commitment to diversity. “INSIGHT Into Diversity” magazine recognized MSU Denver as one of 10 Diversity Champion colleges and universities nationwide for our unyielding commitment to diversity and inclusion. We are affordable, have small class sizes, 73 bachelor’s degrees and 5 master’s degrees offered.

School locale: Urban, we are in the heart of downtown Denver.

Classes you teach: I teach a range of developmental and psychology courses including: Developmental Educational Psychology, Introduction to Psychology, Child Psychology, Human Growth and Development, Adolescent Psychology, Developmental Research Methods, Cognitive Growth and Development, Senior Thesis, Teaching of Psychology. Two of my classes have a service learning component where we are paired up with the Boys & Girls Club of Metro Denver and Reading Partners as community partners. I also mentor students as teaching assistants and research assistants. My Introduction to psychology course is taught flipped and I teach classes face-to-face, hybrid or completely online.

Average class size: 20

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice I received was to always think about the end outcome or goal I want my student to achieve. This guides my decision-making. Sometimes the outcome I want is strictly related to learning and the content is so important it needs to be mastered. In this case if a student needs an extension on an assignment I might grant it because it’s more important for them to learn the material and the assignment works to achieve that. Other times the content is not as important and instead I want my student to be responsible, accountable, or to follow directions. Part of getting a college degree is being accountable and committed. In this case an extension would not be granted. This conscious process extends past individual students and their assignments and into the classroom. By thinking about the end outcome I want my students to achieve, I can intentionally decide how we approach material in the course.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

The most influential book that has shaped my work as a psychology teacher is Maryellen Weimer's Learner-centered Teaching.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I enjoy teaching about Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. It has it all: social interaction, active learning, language, memory, and clear application to learning that students can use to help them be better students or teachers.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

In Cognitive Growth and Development my students complete a service project with a community partner called Reading Partners. The project has them paired up and tutoring a K-6^th grade public school student who has fallen behind in reading. My students reflect on their tutoring and connect concepts from class to their experiences.

Reading Partners (RP) is a national organization so I encourage anyone teaching development of anything to get involved. This is a great organization to partner with for a service-learning course. In my class an associate from RP comes in during the first week and does the tutor orientation for my students. Then, they pair each student up with a child who has fallen behind in reading in a Denver school (they operate in 9). The student tutors the child for one hour every week during the semester. Each week my students complete online reflection questions where they tell me what they covered in their tutoring session (RP has a great curriculum to follow) and how their experience connects with something that we learned in class that week. The make connections between their service and concepts such as Piaget’s theory, motivation, self-efficacy, reading development, information processing theory, memory and many more. Finally at the end of the semester they write a paper that details their experiences and reflects on the course content in light of those experiences.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Teaching by doing works best for me. Many of my students are studying education in hopes of becoming a teacher. I like to show students the application of cognitive educational theory by modeling a theory using it in my own teaching. Then we talk about the theory and how it was applied. I then ask them to do it. They have to show me the application either in-class through activities, or out in the field using service learning community partnerships.

What’s your workspace like?

I have a large blue chalkboard wall that is covered in student messages and pictures. I use the wall to organize my conference travel deadlines as well. My desk is small and my bookshelf is so full I need another one. I always have coffee and I have cookies or candy for students in need (not for me…most days).

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Social

Engaging

Intentional

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Get engaged with the material and community!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I rapped Salt n’ Peppa’s “What a Man” to my husband and our guests at our wedding reception.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

What tech tool could you not live without?

My iPhone calendar. Seems basic, but it organizes where I need to be and when. I even put to-do tasks in there so they become a scheduled priority.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Recently my hallway chatter has been political. It is hard to avoid. I am a strong advocate for social justice issues and I am excited and committed to energizing people to work towards the changes they want to see in our communities. More enjoyably I talk with my colleagues often about our children! I have a one-year-old daughter. It has been really amazing to connect with my co-workers and students about being a parent.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Bethany talk to about work-life balance, pervasive mommy-guilt, and the partial solution of double-dipping method. The interview closes with her new project, a blend of civic engagement and service learning, leading to the American Democracy Project.

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e028-bethany-fleck-role-model-high-achieving-double-dipping-and-mommy-guilt

Julie Lazzara: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 01:26:41 GMT

School name: Paradise Valley Community College

Type of college/university: We are one of the ten community colleges that make up the Maricopa Community College District which is one of the largest community college districts in the United States.

School locale: We are located in the north east part of Phoenix, Arizona in an urban area. There are approximately 10,000 students at our college.

Classes you teach: I currently teach Introduction to Psychology and Lifespan Development. I teach a combination of online, in person, hybrid, and OER classes.

Average class size: I am lucky to have a maximum class size of 32 students.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?
I received this advice quite recently and it made an impression on me. I want to give credit to a presentation that I attended by Danae Hudson and Brooke Whisenhunt from Missouri State University for their insight. The role of the professor has been changing over time. Today students can get the content anywhere. Our job as professors is to be designers of the learning environment.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?
I recently have read “Small Teaching” by James Lang and “Make It Stick” by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel. Both books address ways that we can change our classes to help students learn better. I have now dedicated a class day in the beginning of the semester to teach students the psychology of studying to help them understand the research behind why my class is designed the way that it is. If given the choice, students will often take the easiest approach to learning even if it is ineffective. These books as well as similar research in this area have given me the tools to design my courses in a way to incorporate the most learning science practices possible.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.
I love teaching Intro Psych, but I am also passionate about teaching Lifespan Development. Usually the students who are enrolled in the class will be entering a career where this information is directly relevant. This makes them especially engaged and interested in the course content. In this class we are able to look at the amazing changes that take place in a human life that starts with conception and goes through the entire lifespan. We are also able to build upon many of the theories that were briefly presented in intro psych and go into much more detail on them.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.
Instead of conceptualizing extra credit as a way for students to simply make up points, I think of it as a way to engage students beyond the classroom. I call this experiential extra credit and allow students to use it for up to 5% of their overall grade. I also tie this into general educational assessment and have students self-reflect on the experience as part of our college civic engagement rubric. Students must relate the outside campus experience to something that we have learned within psychology. I assign the experimental extra credit opportunities that I deem relevant for a particular course.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?
Class discussion is extremely important to me. I encourage this both in my online classes and in my face to face classes. I feel that this is what makes the material come alive for students and it is an important skill for students to practice in college.

What’s your workspace like?
I like to keep a clean and cozy office for the rare chance that a student may come to visit during office hours! I even have a bowls of mints for positive reinforcement.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.
accessible, thought provoking, engaging

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?
Every student fosters our classroom learning environment.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.
When I cover the social psychology chapter I like to send out my students on campus to collect data either as an observation or structured observation. One group decided that they wanted to measure helping behavior if a student looked like he fell off a skateboard in front of a group of strangers. The group happened to conduct this demonstration in front of a group of administrators including the college president. Luckily, they discovered that the administration was very eager to help the student in need! I now require the students to give me the details of their plan before they leave the classroom and encourage them to stay away from the administration building.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?
I am passionate about volunteering and raising money for nonprofit organizations, especially ones that support children’s chronic health issues. To me, nothing is more important than giving children the chance to have the happiest and healthiest childhood that they can.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?
I am currently reading “Yes, Please” by Amy Poehler. I have been on a kick of reading books by female comedians including Tina Fey and Mindy Khaling.

What tech tool could you not live without?
When it comes to teaching, I cannot imagine being without my LMS Canvas. It is user friendly for both students and professors and very customizable. When prepping for a new semester, I start with prepping my Canvas course no matter which modality I am teaching in. I have also started using Twitter professionally to connect with colleagues and keep up to date on news within psychology. Follow me @explorepsych

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?
I really enjoy going to conferences both locally and nationally and I love discussing the ideas that I learned with colleagues. I was recently elected as one of the new reps for the STP Early Career Psychologist Committee. Being on this committee allows me to grow my network of colleagues across our discipline. Check out our page here http://teachpsych.org/ecp and send me an email anytime you have an idea to discuss or share at Julie.Lazzara@paradisevalley.edu.

Marc Schipper: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 21:40:46 GMT

School name: APOLLON University of Applied Sciences and University of Bremen.

Type of school: Both are universities in Bremen, a city in northern Germany

Classes you teach: Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology
Cognitive Psychology

Average class size: APOLLON University: 12-20 students, University of Bremen: 40 – 200 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Well, I guess the most important thing that makes a good teacher is that one really loves what one does: An experimental psychologist who is really fascinated by what she/he does (e.g. designing and conducting experiments) is way better at educating students than one who just provides the course because he/she has to. Students recognize the teacher’s intrinsic motivation and enthusiasm and get motivated, too. Hence, good advice would be: in order to be a good teacher one should only teach topics (1) which he/she is burning for (in terms of being very interested in something) and (2) which match her/his competences and skills. To put a long story short: Motivation is contagious!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? 
Two books I really like due to their didactic qualities are “A student’s guide to Social Neuroscience” by Jamie Ward and “Discovering Statistics using …” by Andy Field [it’s a series of books providing hands on experience in statistics based on different packages like R (“Discovering Statistics using R”) or SPSS (“Discovering Statistics using SPSS”)]. “Teaching of Psychology”, the official Journal of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (APA Division 2), often comes up with great articles concerning the teaching of psychology: some of them have definitely shaped my work as a psychology teacher!

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.
Basically I like courses most which (1) illustrate how psychological theory can be applied to solve real world problems (e.g. “Applied Social Psychology”) and (2) integrate approaches from different (psychological) disciplines. My favorite course is social neuroscience because here theories and methods from Psychology and Neuroscience are integrated in a very sophisticated way. My favorite lecture topics are cognitive control (executive functions) and emotion regulation.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.
This highly depends on the course: in courses on social psychology and counseling I use role-playing games (or other games in which students need to take over others roles or perspectives) in order to train certain communicative skills. On the other hand, in cognitive psychology courses for instance, I think it is important to get hands-on experience in experimental work, hence I give students tasks like designing an experiment on their own or writing a research proposal.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?
This again depends on the setting: when I give a lecture in front of 200 students I prefer to provide teacher-centered education, which means giving a classical lecture (standing and presenting in the front of a huge lecture hall). In smaller groups (up to 40) I prefer the student-centered approach, meaning that there is lots of interaction between teacher and students and that students work on several hands-on tasks in small groups.

What’s your workspace like?
Let me call it “creative chaos”: many books and manuscripts all over the place, some pieces of art on the walls and lots of interaction due to an open-door policy.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Open-minded, compassionate, interdisciplinary.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Motivation is contagious!

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.
Once I was booked for a seminar, but the institution which booked me forgot to make any advertisement for my seminar. Hence, no one knew about it. Or no, one person did: one woman knew it directly from one of the oblivious organizers. But does it make sense to provide a seminar for only one person? Not really, don’t you think? Anyway, instead of going through the entire seminar we chatted about the seminar contents for more than one hour and I guess my lonesome student could even grasp some information from our chat. Hence, the situation was certainly embarrassing, but in the end not everything turned out being negative: finally one person got a one-to-one lecture (which is a quite good student-teacher ratio ;)

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?
Well, I guess they would be surprised that I was a "goth" for quite some years when I was younger. I still love the music of Peter Murphy and Bauhaus and listen to stuff from Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), the Beauty of Gemina or Aesthetic Perfection in order to calm down (I believe that many people would rather get upset than calming down while consuming these sounds :)

What are you currently reading for pleasure?
Currently I'm reading two books in my free time: one of them is Neurotribes by Steve Silbermann (for quenching my thirst for non-fiction), the other (for quenching my thirst for fiction) is a novel from german author Frank Schulz called “Onno Fiets and the white Stag (German: Onno Fiets und der weisse Hirsch)”. Unfortunately the second one is only available in German, which is a great pity due to Frank Schulz being an amazing writer, perfectly combining intellect, humor and suspense enriched with psychological subtlety.

What tech tool could you not live without?
In the domain of education there are many! The most important one to me is definitely the computer itself. Anyway, to give a more “fine-tuned” answer I choose for “presentation tools”, under which I sum up the projector, the pointer and the presentation software. These tech tools kind of revolutionized modern education standards (which does not necessarily mean that this revolution is per se positive!).

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?
Our hallway chatter has many facets: Topics range from teaching via research to private stuff like e.g. cooking, holiday/weekend plans or thoughts about the worlds’ current cultural and political developments.

Erin Quinlivan Murdoch: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 16:41:15 GMT

School name: George Mason University

Type of school: R1

School locale: Fairfax, VA (Northern Virginia area)

Classes you teach: Statistics, Research Methods

Average class size: 34

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Teach in the style that works best for you – play to your strengths. There are so many great teaching ideas out there, that I often feel inspired and start thinking that I should incorporate some new strategy or activity or project into my class…and then I realize that it doesn’t fit with my personality or teaching style. When I read about people’s ideas for improving a class, I have to think carefully about whether their ideas would work for me. I love reading about new and effective strategies that others have used successfully in their classrooms and then finding ways that I can comfortably incorporate the spirit of their ideas in my own classroom.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching undergraduate Statistics. It’s my absolute favorite course to teach. I was assigned this course when I started teaching ten years ago and have chosen to teach it every semester since. There’s something extra rewarding about taking a topic that students dread/fear/avoid and changing their view. I’m so encouraged when my once fearful and anxious students leave the course feeling confident and proud of all that they have accomplished in the semester.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

On the first day of Statistics, I do my best to create a comfortable learning environment for my students. One of the ways that I accomplish this is by handing out index cards and having students anonymously share their thoughts and/or feelings about Statistics. This could be a word, a phrase, or several sentences. I then collect the cards and read them out loud to the class. I’ll usually have a couple that say positive things about Statistics, but the overwhelming majority are people who express their dislike or their fear for the topic. This creates a good deal of laughter from students and helps to create a bond between them, as they now know that they are not alone. It then gives me a chance to reassure them about the supportive structure of the course and to start getting them excited about the things that they’ll be able to do by the end of the semester.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I like my students to be activity engaged in what they’re learning. Even with the standard lecture format that I typically use to start class, I insert lots of opportunities for them to answer and ask questions. If I’m teaching a new statistical analysis, I’ll typically go through the conceptual part and then the calculation and then follow that with practice problems for them to work through on their own. I like to have them work through problems in the classroom so that I can see where they’re having trouble and help them right then, rather than having them struggle at home and then have to wait for help until the next class period. I also like to have them learn new concepts by doing class activities that get them moving around and working with each other. Learning about survey design in Research Methods by creating their own surveys, for example. Or learning about standard deviations in Statistics by separating the class into small groups and then doing group comparisons using height as a variable – a great visual to help them understand the concept of variability!

What’s your workspace like?

Very organized, both at home and in my office. I can focus and concentrate on doing my work much better when my surroundings are neat and orderly. I’ve tried to lower my standards about everything being ‘just so’ (two kids will force that on you!), but I also accept that this is part of who I am.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Structured, supportive, enthusiastic

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I once made copies of my exam and handed them out to the class…only to find out that I had made copies of the answer key! Luckily, I had a group of honest students in the front row who immediately told me about my mistake. I very quickly took back the copies that I had passed out. Fortunately, I was teaching in the same building where our offices were located, so I could run down the hall and quickly make copies of the right version. Yikes. I don’t even make an electronic answer key of my exams these days!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

That I still feel anxious going in to my first day with a new class. I want to create a positive first impression so that the rest of the semester goes smoothly, but I’m still surprised at how nervous I am to start. I relax within the first few minutes after starting class, but I still get those butterflies in my stomach as I walk to class at the start of each semester!

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I recently finished re-reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. I became Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies this semester and knew that some of the advice in this book would be useful for situations that could arise in my new administrative role. I like to avoid conflict as much as I possibly can, which is impossible to do when part of the role requires addressing student complaints and concerns! Re-acquainting myself with the strategies in this book has been helpful in creating smooth interactions throughout the semester. (Wait, does that count as reading for pleasure?!)

What tech tool could you not live without?

Although I couldn’t live without my computer for most work-related things, I’m really old school when it comes to how I handle time management. My calendar and to do lists are all on paper. I write a LOT of lists. The act of writing things down reassures me that I’m not going to forget to do something – putting research into practice!

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

This is my third year at Mason, and I feel so fortunate to be surrounded by incredibly supportive colleagues. We talk about what’s happening in our classrooms, what’s happening at home, and what’s happening at the University. There’s always someone that I can go to when I have a concern or question or want to share some news. We’re all respectful of each other’s time but also willing to stop and listen when a colleague stops by.

Chuck Schallhorn: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 20:05:30 GMT

School name: Mountain House High School, Mountain House, CA

Type of school: 4-year high school--opened in 2014

School locale: Depending upon your perspective, it is either far East Bay near Oakland and San Francisco, or far West Central Valley. Near both the Pacific Ocean and Yosemite, so a wonderful location.

Classes you teach: Advanced Placement Psychology, Psychology, and World History with Sociology on the horizon for next year. I have also taught World Religions, US Government, World Geography, Cultural Anthropology, Philosophy of Human Nature, History of Chicago, Hindu Literature, and Popular Culture.

Average class size: 26-36, average about 31

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

● Treat students with respect before you demand it from them. This little maxim has been a key to my success over the years. I begin by treating my students respectfully. Once I do this, I establish credibility, and over time, a reputation. This habit of respect means a lot when students know that my classroom is a safe place where they can take intellectual and emotional chances. For some, I am the only or one of a few safe adults in their lives. I want my kids to experience both the challenging aspects of academics, but also the kind side.

● No matter how sophisticated high school students look and speak, they are still children. Young adults, but still children. Despite any outward confidence or sophistication they may exhibit, there is still a little kid inside trying to figure out the world. On a recent note, I have about 25 stuffed animals in my classroom. They are very popular and the early kids search the room to find their favorites before class begins.

● Never berate a late student. You never know where they have just come from--they could be lazy, but they also could just have come from an abusive situation at home. Do not add insult to injury.

● Don’t take it personally. When students are acting out, I try to understand rather than judge. It is incredibly rare that a student acts out against me personally.

● Listen. When I complete a new activity or a unit where I’ve tried things out, I look to my students to offer me feedback about how I did and how the lesson could be improved. I have learned so much from my kids. They give me insights I could have never thought of on my own.

● Lose your ego--it’s not about you, it’s about the kids.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I’ve read too many psychology books to count. The biggest influence on my work as a psychology teacher has been my colleagues from other schools. While I will no doubt miss mentioning some people, I’ve learned countless lessons and insights from Kent Korek, Steve Jones, Barb Loverich, Drew Appleby, Rob McEntarffer, Karl Honma, Amy Ramponi, Kristin Whitlock, Randy Ernst, Ken Keith, Charlie Blair-Broeker, Jim Matiya, Doug Bernstein, Charles Brewer, David Myers, Martin Bolt, and so many more.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I rarely lecture, but when I do, I do so interactively. I’ve been teaching Advanced Placement Psychology in one form or another since 1992. I love that course. I appreciate those who can go into more detail with an advanced course, but I love introducing the field of psychology to high school students and their parents.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

Yes. All of them. Most have had a great deal of success over the years. But perhaps I like the ones that have failed. The frustration I experience is not pleasant when something fails, but it forces me to go back and see what I did wrong. And I do something wrong every day. Even after 30 years of teaching, I am still learning every day in terms of both content and pedagogy. On the first or second day of class, I nearly always use the Drew Appleby demonstration about deja vu from one of the Teaching Psychology Activity Books. However, I tend to use the demo for schemas, associational learning, and priming. When describing the meaning as we debrief how on earth I was able to get more than half the class to recall the same thing, I use a multi-colored netting I draw on the board to represent schema that grows more and more complex as they experience life. I then use schemas throughout the course to talk about how people’s understandings of behavior have changed as a result of learning new things.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Over the years is what works best for me does not necessarily work best for my students. Rather than focus on what I do best, which is interaction with students, I find that I have to adjust every semester and from class to class. I enjoy learning by reading and then viewing videos that supplement the reading, so I do incorporate a lot of that in my class. However, my ability to absorb information quickly is a skill that not all of my students have so I have to incorporate retrieval practice in my class. Using Kahoot is one example of that. The kids enjoy the games occasionally, but I resist it. Conversations about ideas is my personal favorite. Socratic questioning in those conversations are what I relish.

What’s your workspace like?

More organized than anywhere previously. I now work in a school that is nearly all digital. Most assignments are turned in online, so I do not carry around large folders of paper. The piles of papers are are now replaced with toys and stuffed animals. Going mainly paperless means retraining my brain and habits into a different ways of dealing with information. Like the entire staff here, we practically live with our laptops attached to us. At home, I have a nice set of tables with my Mac Mini and Macbook Pro and speakers so I can jam to my tunes. That said, because I have three different classes consecutively, I usually have at least 15 tabs open on my browser which can get pretty messy.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Involved, passionate, interactive

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Constructivist; always curious, learning, reflecting; no straight lines

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

The first year I was teaching we were talking about myths about suicide. The myth was “people attempt suicide in order to get attention.” After a bit of discussion one student claimed that there was no way this was true--she knew because when she attempted suicide, it was a cry for help. A second student claimed that he attempted suicide in order to get attention. Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. Somehow, I pulled myself together enough to honor both statements and talk about how “attention” would best be defined by getting help. Not totally sure how I made it through that class.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I’m not sure they would be surprised to learn anything as I am pretty much an open book. That said, I imagine that they would be surprised at how much I have experienced that could have negatively impacted my life and attitudes. Between family and students, I have experienced suicides, accidental deaths, funerals, wars, loss of limbs, loss of mental capacity, murders, rapes, hate crimes, cancers, weddings, more funerals than I can count, and more. Despite of that, or because of that, I continue to see the positive side of humanity and choose my attitudes rather than let my experiences choose my attitude for me.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I am in the midst of finishing writing an AP Psychology text/review book, so I have not been reading for pleasure. That said, I primarily read non-fiction related to history and the social sciences for pleasure. Occasionally, I read Thomas Perry novels and read A Song of Fire and Ice series a couple years ago. Between Facebook and Twitter, I read at least 15 articles a day on various social issues and research. For me, that is pleasure reading. Strange, I know.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Aside from a computer hooked to the internet? I’m big into Google Docs and Drive. Canvas is my current LMS and I love it. It provides a new way for organizing information and assignments--making me think differently. I rely heavily on Canvas for my AP Psych classes with the emphasis on testing. All my students have chromebooks, so I am converting much of my content into online formatting through Canvas. I just got a demonstration of Peardeck and was very impressed. I love YouTube for finding original footage of psych research. I love Twitter for communicating articles and quotes for my students. I love the Facebook groups I am in for collegial support and ideas. In short, I love tech that allows me to communicate complex ideas in efficient and effective ways. If the tool helps people learn, I tend to love it.

Laura Madson: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Tue, 20 Dec 2016 20:27:53 GMT

School name: New Mexico State University

Type of school: Doctoral-granting, Hispanic Serving Institution

School locale: Las Cruces, NM, a medium size city in southern New Mexico in the shadow of the Organ Mountains

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology (undergrad), Human Sexuality (undergrad), Teaching of Psychology (grad)

Average class size: In a typical semester, I teach two sections of Introduction to Psychology, each enrolling 140 students. I occasionally teach Human Sexuality with 80 students, and a graduate course in Teaching of Psychology with six students.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Practice backwards course design:

Decide what you want students to be able to do (not know, understand, or appreciate) by the end of the course
List the knowledge and skills students will need to be able to do those things
Determine what students need do (in class and outside of class) in order to develop that knowledge and those skills
Figure out what you can do (in class and outside of class) to help students develop that knowledge and those skills.

With backwards course design, course alignment and other best practices in teaching and assessment are very straightforward (for more detail see Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses, 2^nd Ed by L. Dee Fink, 2013).

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

My teaching is a product of Ken Bain, Larry Michaelsen, and L. Dee Fink, run together at high speeds. I structure my Intro Psych class around one Big Question and summarize course requirements in a Promising Syllabus because of what I learned in What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain. I plan every course from the starting point of “what do I want students to be able to DO at the end of the term” based on L. Dee Fink’s principles of backwards course design (see above). Finally, Larry Michaelsen and colleagues taught me how to use team-based learning (see Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching by Larry Michaelsen, Arletta Knight, and L. Dee Fink).

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I’ve been specializing in Introduction to Psychology for the last decade. Although I teach other courses occasionally, my usual course load is two large-enrollment, face-to-face sections of Intro each semester. This near-exclusive focus on Intro Psych began as a survival strategy, when my children were very young and I was new to living and working in different cities. I needed a course I could teach in my sleep because there were days I almost did.

During this time, my thinking about Intro Psych was revolutionized by my friend and colleague, Dr. Tara Gray. Like many psychology faculty members, I had viewed Intro Psych as a relatively unimportant service course. When I voiced this sentiment, Tara gasped and observed, “Introduction to Psychology is the most important because it is the only psychology course most people ever take!” Now I view the course as building a Swiss Army knife; I want students to assemble the knowledge and skills offered by psychology that will be the most useful to them throughout their lives.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

Although I haven’t taught undergraduate Human Sexuality in a while, it is the source of my favorite in-class activity. The chapter on male and female reproductive anatomy has the potential to be a first-class bore – until you add PlayDoh! The moment students detect that distinctive smell, the classroom becomes joyous. When they learn their task is to build models of male and female anatomy using the PlayDoh, the giddy laughter begins.

I love this activity because it is a vivid example of deep learning through fun. In order to build the models and identify all the relevant structures, they must consider how the structures are related in 3-dimensional space. They must also consider the relative size and shape of each structure. This kind of learning goes beyond the memorization of terms and definitions that students typically do with this material. Plus, it is one class day they will remember for a long while.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I am a dyed-in-the-wool practitioner of team-based learning. Team-based learning (Michaelsen, Knight, & Fink, 2002; Sibley & Ostafichuk, 2014; Sweet & Michaelsen, 2012) is a teaching paradigm in which students are assigned to permanent teams that provide students the intellectual and interpersonal resources necessary to perform authentic disciplinary tasks that would otherwise be too difficult. Students are held accountable for completing pre-class preparation, allowing class time to be spent on activities that require teammates to resolve differences in their understanding of class material. Subsequent full-class discussion facilitated by the instructor highlights analogous differences across teams, broadening everyone’s thinking about the material (including the instructor’s). Thirty years of research indicates team-based learning improves learning and engagement particularly for struggling students.

I use team-based learning in every undergraduate course I teach, including Introduction to Psychology. I use it because it facilitates many important learning objectives, such as engaging students, developing their communication skills, and creating the opportunity for students to think deeply about class material. It is also consistent with my training as a social psychologist. An implicit assumption underlying team-based learning is that properly constructed teams and team activities make positive team interactions and deep learning highly likely; in short, the situation drives behavior.

Personally, I like team-based learning because it transforms class time. Years ago, when I lectured, I poured my energy into writing and delivering engaging and content-rich lectures that were frequently received by empty seats or barely conscious lumps of humanity. With team-based learning, I work hard outside of class creating sound in-class activities. I am rewarded during class by a roomful of enthusiastic, creative young scholars who need to be reminded when class is over.

[Editor's Note: Laura also has a published textbook for Intro to Psych designed for team-based learning.]

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is variable. My home “office” is a southwestern-style recliner with wide wooden arm rests and a lap desk for my computer. When on campus, it might be one of the many chairs in my faculty office or a table at the nearby food court. The two constants are my laptop and a beverage.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, humorous, organized

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Design the activity, get out of the way.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

When I was new to teaching, I had what felt like an array of disasters (e.g., falling in front of class, assigning a multiple-choice item with no correct answer, being unable to successfully use the technology in the classroom, coming to class prepared for the wrong activity, confusing myself in the middle of an explanation, being unable to spell or do arithmetic correctly on the chalkboard). What’s changed over time isn’t the frequency of these events but my reaction to them. I used to view them as unpredictable disasters that would inevitably destroy my credibility with students. Now I view them as guaranteed snafus; the only unpredictable part is the nature of the mistake and how far into the semester I get before one occurs. Recently, I messed up the correct answers on a quiz over the syllabus I gave on the second day of the term! Whatever mistake or embarrassment or “disaster” that might befall you in your teaching career, don’t beat yourself up over it. Not one of the nearly 10,000 students I’ve taught in 20 years has ever commented on my blunders.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Despite my extraverted classroom persona, I am quite introverted. I’m the one at the party who is happiest sitting in the corner interacting with the household pet.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I’ve been exploring books on work-life imbalance, starting with The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy by Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber. Thus far, the journey has included:

Unwinding the Clock: Ten Thoughts on our Relationship to Time by Bodil Jönsson
The Seven Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer's Block by Hillary Rettig
In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honore’
Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte
America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks by Ruth Whippman

What tech tool could you not live without?

This question makes me grin as I have a low-tech soul. That said, my professional life would be untenable without a laptop, WiFi, and podcasts. I live 45 miles from my office. These tools make my work sufficiently portable when I’m not in the office and the commute tolerable when I am.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Pre-election 2016, the chatter was mainly sharing tidbits gleaned from podcasts, Facebook, or NPR. Having self-imposed a media blackout after the election (denial isn’t just a river in Egypt), casual chat is now limited to sharing stories from weekend activities or other kid-related anecdotes.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Laura discuss team-based learning and the long term benefits for your students.

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e027-laura-madson-powerful-advocate-and-expert-on-team-based-learning

Ben Bullock: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 18:48:25 GMT

School name: Swinburne University of Technology

Type of school: University (post-secondary, tertiary education institution)

School locale: Hawthorn, which is an inner suburb of Melbourne, Australia (about 10km from the CBD)

Classes you teach: Introductory Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Psychology of Personality

Average class size: 200-400 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

An ex-colleague told me to always use evidence-based teaching methods. As a starting lecturer this was a new idea for me. It sounds strange for me to say now that I didn’t know there was research being done on teaching in higher education, but at the time… We teach our students to base their assignments and arguments on evidence so we should practice what we preach, as a starting academic it was a new idea to me that there was an evidence base to teaching, when I was doing casual tutoring during my PhD teaching was based on gut feel/instinct, there is a place for this but....

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

“Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology” by Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, and Willingham and published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. While many of the ideas are not new (and that is kind of the point of the article) it was good to see a comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of learning strategies in different contexts. I try to structure the learning activities in my units around the strategies shown in this review article to be most effective for students in higher education.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I would have to say Abnormal Psychology is my favourite course to teach. It is the course that every student looks forward to throughout their undergraduate degree. The students are often very engaged with the content – it is a good opportunity to bust some of the common myths surrounding public perceptions of mental health and how ‘abnormality’ is defined.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

In-class activities on sensation and perception always get a good response from students. Explaining how illusions like the ‘stopped clock’ and motion and colour after-effects work in the brain and visual system demonstrates how the ideas we are learning can be applied to real-life situations. Many students have experienced these illusions but don’t yet know how to explain them, so I kind of feel like a magician giving away his secrets!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

In terms of achieving learning outcomes for students, a brain jigsaw activity I have adapted from a worksheet developed by Valeri Werpetinski at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne works really well. Students work together in small ‘expert’ groups to apply biological aspects of psychology (brain structure and function, neurotransmitters) to a real-life scenario. They then return to their ‘home’ groups to teach their colleagues what they have learned from their ‘expert’ groups. The activity serves many purposes, including group interaction and learning how to teach, as well as engaging them in a topic (biological aspects of psychology) that many of them wouldn’t ordinarily be interested in.

What’s your workspace like? I would describe it as organised chaos.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Relaxed, receptive, inclusive.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I'm sure there were many early on in my career but I seem to have repressed them! Forgetting during a live lecture why I have put a particular PowerPoint slide in or losing my train of thought are probably the most common embarrassments. I have learnt that the best response is to own up to a memory lapse and try to inject some humour into the situation.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Even after all these years of teaching I still get nervous before each and every lecture. I like to think that I come across as relaxed in the classroom (see above), so students would be surprised to know that I still have an edge of nervousness, particularly early on in the semester.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Zero K by Don DeLillo. I also like to read the newspaper every day so I can keep up with what’s happening in the world outside the academic bubble.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My iPad – I take it with me everywhere (except when I go on holidays)

Justin Lehmiller: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 20:34:59 GMT

School name: Ball State University

Type of school: Public research university

School locale: Ball State is in Muncie, Indiana, which is a relatively small town. I currently live in Indianapolis and commute to campus.

Classes you teach: I am the Director of the Social Psychology Master’s Program at Ball State and, right now, I primarily teach graduate courses related to social psychology. These include Advanced Social Psychology, Social Cognition, Attitudes & Persuasion, Intergroup Relations, and Counseling Applications of Social Psychology.

Average class size: Currently, the average class I teach has about 8-10 graduate students. However, when I used to teach at the undergraduate level, I routinely had classes of several hundred.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

The biggest influence on my teaching hasn’t come from readings—it has come from experience. And I’ve been very fortunate to have had a very diverse teaching background. It started while I was a graduate student at Purdue University, where I funded myself partially by teaching small evening courses for continuing education students, many of whom came from non-traditional backgrounds. Upon graduating, I taught at an R1 institution (Colorado State) and in the Ivy League (Harvard), I taught at the graduate and undergraduate levels, my classes ranged in size from 5 to 250 students, I taught both online and face-to-face courses, and I worked with students who varied dramatically in their academic abilities and majors. To make a long story short, I’ve taught in quite a range of learning environments and have worked with students of vastly different backgrounds. The culmination of those experiences has helped me to develop a very flexible teaching style that focuses on adapting to the needs of the students in a given class. The most valuable thing I’ve learned is that there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all teaching strategy—the best teachers will adapt their approach to meet the needs of their students in each and every class.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Human Sexuality. I’ve taught it regularly over the last 10 years and I like it so much that I even wrote my own textbook on this topic entitled The Psychology of Human Sexuality (I’m currently at work on the second edition, which should be out next year!). I’m passionate about sex education because it’s a topic that far too many of us know far too little about. One of the things I like most about this course is that it provides students with a lot of practical information that they can use in their everyday lives; however, I also really like the fact that this course exposes students to a lot of new ideas and perspectives that many of them have never really thought critically about before. I’m humbled by the fact that so many students have told me that this class is their favorite course they’ve ever taken—and not just because it’s fun, but because they feel that it has truly had an impact on their lives.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

One of my favorite assignments is from my Human Sexuality course and it involves giving students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a sexually diverse environment. The goal is to expose them to some form of sexual diversity they do not have much familiarity with and write a paper detailing how it changed their worldview or perspective. This can take a lot of different forms. For example, a student who is unfamiliar with asexuality might spend an hour or two on the Asexual Visibility and Education Network website combing through the discussion forums. Alternatively, a student who has little familiarity with trans or sexual minority issues might attend an event that our local LGBTQ student organization is putting on. This is consistently my students’ favorite assignment of the entire class because immersive learning experiences like this help them learn things in a way that a book chapter or lecture can’t quite convey.

What’s your workspace like?

I have a lot of workspaces. I alternate between working from home (either at the kitchen table or in my office), working in a coffee shop (you don’t want to know how many Starbucks rewards I’ve earned to date!), and working in my office on campus. I need the change of scenery—otherwise, I tend to get a little stir-crazy.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, inclusive, conversational.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Adapt to students’ learning style. Encourage critical thought.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

My worst teaching experience was my very first one. I was assigned to teach a Health Psychology course during the second year of my doctoral program and, not only had I never taught a college course before, but I had never even taken a Health Psychology class myself! Needless to say, I didn’t quite know what I was doing. Attendance dropped off a lot during the first couple of weeks and I became very concerned (and embarrassed). So, I took it upon myself to administer a survey of the students to see what I was doing wrong and how I could better meet their learning needs. I used that information to adjust my approach to teaching and found that attendance perked back up. In the end, I was able to salvage the course, but only because I took the time to gather careful feedback and really listen to what the students were telling me.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

One thing that always seems to surprise my students (and my colleagues) is that I don’t have my work email on my phone. I try really hard to have some degree of work-life balance and I find it’s impossible when you’re essentially carrying your work around with you at all times and allow it to interrupt you when you are out having fun or are on vacation. It’s important to be able to shut work off entirely sometimes to just relax and enjoy life. Some of the ways I like to enjoy life include travel (I visited four countries this past summer: the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Canada), learning how to cook multicultural dishes (my specialty is chicken tikka masala. I won’t lie—mine is pretty delicious), and Netflixing with my spouse (we’ve been together 17 years!) and our pup (an Australian Cattle Dog mix we rescued in 2005).

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I don’t have a lot of time to read for pleasure, so when I do, I select my books very carefully. The most recent book I finished was Galileo’s Middle Finger by Alice Dreger, which was absolutely fantastic. It’s all about cases where science and politics collide and the potentially disastrous consequences that can occur. I ended up writing a review of the book on my blog and have been encouraging my colleagues and students to check it out ever since.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I need two: My MacBook Air and an internet connection. Not only do I do almost exclusively online research these days, but in my spare time, I run a blog, Sex and Psychology, which aims to educate the general public about the latest research on the science of sex, love, and relationships.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Donuts. Us Hoosiers love our fried food.

Sandra Sego - I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 19:11:42 GMT

School name: American International College, Springfield, MA

Type of College/University: small liberal arts school

School locale: urban

Average class size: 30

Classes you teach: Statistics, Advanced Statistics, Intro to the Major, History & Systems, Cognitive Psychology, and General Psychology

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

You have to make each class your own. You can borrow notes and ideas from others, but you have to be comfortable with the activities and lectures.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

There are so many! The Psychteacher discussion list, where I am a lurker, has inspired lots of ideas. I gotten ideas from so many articles, books, and conferences that I can’t begin to list them all.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is statistics. Students are always nervous and frequently warn me on the first day of class that they are bad at math. I know they can be successful if they pay attention in class and do the homework. It is very satisfying to see students begin to like statistics and develop some confidence about doing math.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

My favorite assignment is in my Advanced Statistics class. Students have to make a music video about statistics. The students take a song and change the lyrics to be about statistics. I don’t give any further instructions or guidance on this assignment, but every semester they do an amazing job and have fun with the videos. And they develop a variety of skills not typically used in statistics – project management skills, interpersonal skills, communication skills, and they learn to do a multimedia presentation. It may not make them better at statistics, but it is fun and memorable.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I favor a frequent, low-stakes approach to grades. I give a variety of homework assignments, each of which is worth only a few points. But it requires students to continually work on material related to class, which helps them learn the content.

What’s your workspace like?

Disorganized. There are random sheets of paper scattered over the desk and I can’t get rid of them because each one has something important on it.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Homework intensive, student-centered, and supportive.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Use the principles of psychology as a guide.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

It’s a secret.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I typically read a couple of books at once, fiction and nonfiction. I like to read mysteries, nonfiction, and I read for my book club.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Paper and pencil. I remember things better when I write, I can sketch out ideas, doodle… the best inventions are the classics.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We talk about the events of the day, how our classes went and what is going on within the college.

Laura Brandt - I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Fri, 14 Oct 2016 20:37:23 GMT

School name: Formerly Adlai E. Stevenson H.S. in Lincolnshire, IL. Moving to College Du Leman, Geneva Switzerland

Type of school/School locale: Stevenson is large (4,000) student high school district in the northern suburbs of Chicago

College Du Leman is an international preK-12^th grade school with about 400 students in the international section of the high school, on the outskirts of Geneva.

Classes you teach/ Average class size:: Stevenson: Constitutional Law and AP Psychology with an average class size of 28

College Du Leman: AP Psychology, IB Psychology with an average class size of about 12

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Assume positive intent and work as a team. This has been of great help when in potentially frustrating situations, it has helped to proactively avoid misunderstandings and helps to create relationships that are more collaborative and understanding.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I just finished reading Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele about Stereotype threat, and in addition to being an interesting read regarding Social Psychology, there are many elements that can be incorporated quite easily into any classroom to reduce the impact that particular groups may feel regarding a deficit in their academic performance. This seems to useful for instructors to be aware of as all students should be able to learn in an environment in which they perform to the best of their ability without the expectations of others limiting them.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I enjoy Social Psychology, because students can clearly see the connections to their everyday lives. If they can carry this throughout the AP Psychology curriculum they will understand the information at a much deeper level and enjoy the course more than if they are simply trying to memorize facts and vocabulary. For this reason, I begin the course with the Social Psychology unit. I particularly enjoy discussing attribution, because one again we all make internal or external attributions everyday but even after one day of class students can better understand what mechanisms make us more or less likely to use dispositional or situational dispositions about our own or others behaviors. This is great example of a microcosm of the goals of psychology

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I love using the stroop effect and animal stroop effect to teach proactive interference. The room is loud and students are laughing and engaged and will remember the challenges they had with the task because of their prior learning.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I love the inquiry based learning technique, it relies on students coming to class prepared to discuss the material and building on their outside readings, but I also love learning as a story, if the story is engaging enough, students remember the stories and the concepts easily fit into this framework.

What’s your workspace like?

I work best at home in a quiet space and generally choose to work in a room with as many windows as possible. At the moment this is my kitchen table overlooking Lake Geneva and the French Alps, it is tranquil and quiet and helps me to concentrate.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Interactive, clarifying and personable

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

To help each student find their particular talents

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I was trying to do a quick demonstration with Weber’s law in the Sensation/Perception unit, I had taped some pennies into cups and students had to arrange them in order from the lowest to highest weights. I had to mix the cups up so that they were not already in the correct order and while mixing the cups I mentioned that I felt like I was at the circus (the guessing game of finding the peanut under the cup) and I began singing circus music and I asked the class if “anybody wanted some peanuts?” at least that what I intended to ask, what came out was not peanuts but something that sounds sort of like that, after the laughter subsided we discussed Freudian slips and perceptual sets.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I love American History

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

David Bowie’s Biography by Paula Trynka

What tech tool could you not live without?

Haiku, a great learning management system that is easy to load information, easy for students to access and aesthetically pleasing.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

At the moment, the upcoming presidential election and some recent SCOTUS decisions

Natalie J. Ciarocco: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 16:00:00 GMT

School Name: Monmouth University

Type of School: Private Liberal Arts University

School locale: Suburban New Jersey (The Jersey Shore; 1 mile from the Atlantic Ocean and about 1 hour from both NYC and Philadelphia)

Classes you teach: Research I: Research Methods and Lab, Research III: Experimental Methods and Lab, Research IV: Psychology Thesis and Lab, Social Psychology, Social Cognition, Personality Theories

Average class size: My classes range from 12-35 students, but on average my class size is 20 students.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Like most graduate students, I received my training at an R01 institution with a heavy research focus. When I discovered that I really enjoyed the classroom, it felt like a dirty little secret I had to keep. I didn’t receive much advice on teaching, so I had to draw from my better experiences as a student to figure out how to best teach in my early days. What I have learned is that just like research endeavors that benefit from collaboration, so does my teaching. Finding others that teach similar classes to yours, both inside and outside your institution, to share ideas, struggles, assignments and activities with will keep you fresh and excited about your teaching. Others can give you new ideas and perspectives. You can build off of what others are doing, and along the way, find that you have good things to share too.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Early on I would say McKeachie's Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers. I think Teaching of Psychology and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology are both really great resources as well. For me what book or article is influential depends on my current teaching goals. I go through phases in my teaching and I rely on the scholarship of teaching and learning to help me through that phase. For example, in the past I was very focused on making research methods more relatable and enjoyable for students. Now that I think I do a much better job with that, my mission is to help students recognize and market the skills they receive in my classes.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is research methods because the class provides so much opportunity for students to develop marketable skills. I have worked hard to design the class with a learn-by-doing approach and give students ample opportunity to interact with the material in a meaningful way. I see research methods as a tool box for them to use to answer research questions. While you can read and listen to instructions on how to use a hammer, you don’t really understand it until you get to build something with it. It is fun to give students as many opportunities as possible to play around with their tools in their toolbox.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

My favorite activity to do with students is the lab I do with my experimental methods class as they are learning about two-group experimental designs early in the semester. Based on a general research topic (e.g., influences on attraction), students develop, conduct, analyze, and report the findings of a research study in small groups. It is a big and daunting assignment. At first it is disorienting to them because they have never been asked to develop and test their own research questions before. They don’t believe they have the knowledge and skills to do so. By the end of the lab, they are able to see that they can use the very same tools that “experts” in the field use to conduct research. It is my favorite because during three hours of class instruction I get to see them become research psychologists. The transformation is rewarding to see. We do similar labs using different experimental designs throughout the semester. By the end of the class, developing, conducting, analyzing, and reporting on a study is a set of skills they have mastered.

What teaching or learning techniques work best for you?

I think what works best for me depends on the goals and content of the course. I generally use a variety of techniques in each of my classes. In the research methods classes that I teach most often, I use a student-centered learning as well as inquiry-based learning frequently.

What’s your workspace like?

I work like a nomad traveling from place to place. I use my office mostly to meet with students and answer emails. I also meet students in my research lab to work on our research projects. I do most of my writing and class preparation at home and during times of intense grading I head to Panera to keep myself from procrastination and interruption.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Stimulating, Challenging, Supportive

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

building knowledge and skills through inquiry-based learning

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

Like everyone, I have had technology problems in class or left a vital activity in the copier and had to improvise my way through it. I am naturally hard to embarrass but for several years I taught a student that was deaf and had an interpreter with her for every class meeting. One of the classes I taught at the time was Evolutionary Psychology, which involved talking about all sorts of potentially embarrassing topics. It is one thing to have to say potentially embarrassing things yourself, but to know that someone else has translate your words adds another level self-consciousness to the situation. When I would get to the more interesting concepts in the lecture, I would see all the students eyes dart over to the interpreter so they could attempt to learn the sign language for the particular term. I tried my best to lecture like I would in any other class and not show any hesitation in talking about the concepts. I also ignored their wandering eyes. I thought if I showed any signs of being embarrassed by the topics, it would trickle down to everyone else involved.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

That I can do a lot of home repair work. I can tile, drywall, replace electrical outlets and fixtures, and some basic plumbing. I bought an old house that I have been fixing up for the past 8 years.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

What tech tool could you not live without?

I guess it would be Google. Personally and professionally, I often start with a Google search when I am looking for information on a new topic and then sort through the results to find information I need or other resources where I can find it. I recently started sending my research assistants YouTube clips on how to conduct SPSS analyses. Yep, I find them through Google.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I am lucky to have great colleagues that are also my close friends. Our faculty offices are all together in one large suite. We talk about the good and bad things that are happening in our classes and with our students. We often share about our personal lives as well. I benefit a great deal from the different stages of life my colleagues are in both personally and professionally. My colleagues promise that one day my toddler will be able to pour a bowl of cereal herself and let me sleep in on a Saturday morning. You might also hear some chatter about what happened on Game of Thrones this week!

Anne E. Stuart: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 20:43:14 GMT

School name: American International College

Type of school: Small Liberal Arts School; but we do have Master’s programs in business, education, and the health sciences; also Doctoral programs in education (Ed.D.) and health sciences (DPT, DOT).

School locale: Urban – small city (150,000 in city; 700,000 in entire metropolitan area)

Classes you teach: Human Sexuality; Topics in Psychology – Group Processes; Experimental Psychology; Statistics; Social Psychology; Social Influence; Introductory Psychology.

Average class size: This ranges depending on the course. Due to the workload, Experimental Psychology is limited to 15 students. Statistics courses usually have around 30 students. Human Sexuality, Social Psychology, and Introductory Psychology usually have around 35 students. Social Influence and the Topics in Psychology course vary from semester to semester; I’ve had as many as 28 and as few as five.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Be firm, but be flexible. I can’t say I was ever given this advice directly, but it’s what I saw in many of the excellent professors I had as a student. It’s like being an authoritative parent. I see so many of my colleagues struggle with their classes because they are either too rigid, or too permissive with their students.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I have horrible source memory. I’m forever saying “I read somewhere…” I explain to my Experimental Psych students that this is why I am obsessive about documenting sources when taking notes for research.
But I do remember, early in my career, reading Zimbardo’s chapter in Teaching Introductory Psychology: Survival Tips From the Experts. In particular, I recall him telling about teaching his course for the type of student he was, and it failing miserably. This helped me broaden my ideas and ways of reaching students. How I was as a college student (and how it was for many of us who have become professors) is very different from most students. It has also helped me seek out and reinforce the individual strengths, talents, and experiences of my students.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

It’s a tough call to choose between my Human Sexuality course and my Statistics course. No surprise, I’ve been teaching both of these the longest. I really enjoy Statistics because I can see so many of my students succeed in an area they thought would be difficult. Nearly every semester, I see a student develop a sense of accomplishment and pride when they see their hard work and effort pay off – not only with grades, but with an understanding of the material.

Human Sexuality is my opportunity to be a bit rebellious. I start every semester telling my students that I went into teaching human sexuality (I started as an undergraduate peer educator) to horrify my parents. I still enjoy the fact that some of the topics I cover ruffle the feathers of my more conservative colleagues. I am also extremely glad that I have the academic freedom to teach my course.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

My favorite assignment is the Experimental Psychology Posters. Each student develops an idea, creates study materials, collects and analyzes the data, writes up a paper, and creates a poster which is presented at a campus-wide poster session at the end of the semester. This is by no means an easy project for them. It is also a challenge for me to keep up to 15 projects mostly on course. However, when the students present for the campus community, they shine. All the students step up and surprise themselves. It’s always amazing to see the confidence they build as they present their work.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

What works best for me is to use a variety of methods and to be flexible to the students’ needs and the culture of a particular class. Over the years, I have shifted to using more in-class assignments and activities that allow for on-the-spot feedback. In Statistics, I use a lot of in-class assignments where students work on problems while they have me there as a resource in the room. This helps because there are often students who won’t seek me out for assistance outside of class. In Social Influence and Human Sexuality, I use in-class assignments where students work in groups to connect the course material to information they find on the internet.

What’s your workspace like?

I split getting work done between my campus office and my home office. Occasionally, I can be found holed up at Barnes & Noble doing some work. My home office is smaller, warmer, and cozier than my campus office. My home office also has windows! I would describe both offices as organized chaos. Although, I probably see more of the chaos and observers see more of the organization.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Organized, eclectic, committed

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Help students think about the world around them.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

My most memorable embarrassment happened while still in graduate school during my first semester teaching Human Sexuality. I was so proud to be “cutting edge” and using PowerPoint for my lectures (this was 2001). Things were going great until I got to the chapter on sexually transmitted diseases. Taking advantage of the technology, I included images of the symptoms of the diseases on my slides. What didn’t seem so bad in the textbook or on my computer screen, were HORRIFIC when projected onto a 12-foot screen in a lecture hall of 150 students. During that particular class, I skipped through the images to a plain text slide. Ever since, I don’t include images of STD symptoms with my slides. I do tell my students this story each semester when we get to this chapter.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I think my students would be surprised to learn how proud I am of them. Related to that, I think they’d be surprised to learn how fiercely I think of them as “My Students”. I might grump about them to colleagues, but I will defend them against outsiders who want to criticize who my students are and where they come from. Additionally, I think my students are surprised when they learn that I have run two half marathons and am training for my third.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I am currently reading a wide variety of children’s books with my 2.5 year-old son. My current favorite is Wookiee the Chew: The House at Chew Corner written and illustrated by James Hance. Inspired by the work of A.A. Milne and George Lucas, it is a reworking of Winnie the Pooh but using Wookiee the Chew, Droidlet, Owlbi Wan, and Chrisolo Robin.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My phone’s timer, particularly with the iOS “Hey Siri” function. Over the summer, I have mostly been using it to set timers for my son to indicate a transition to another activity and how long I’ll stay in his room with him after he gets in bed. It is so much simpler to say: “Hey Siri, set timer for 5 minutes” than to unlock the phone, open the clock, and set a new timer. I use it so much that my son tells me to say “Hey Siri” when I mention setting a timer. I also use timers to stay focused when doing work. If I feel that I’m in a highly distractible mood, I’ll set a timer for 15 minutes. I’ll focus and work for that time. When the timer goes off, I reevaluate my focus and either reset the timer to work another 15 minutes or go do something else.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

There’s the occasional Pinky & the Brain reference about plotting to take over the world. We’ll often chat about what didn’t work in a particular class, and brainstorm ideas of things to do differently.

Elliott Hammer: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Sun, 31 Jul 2016 15:23:31 GMT

School name: Xavier University of Louisiana

Type of school: Xavier is the only Catholic, historically Black university (HBCU) in the country.

School locale: We’re located in the heart of New Orleans and are a big part of the Gert Town neighborhood.

Classes you teach: I’m a social psychologist by training, but my main courses are Introduction to Psychology, Research Methods, Psychological Statistics, Advanced Research, Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, and The Psychology of Stereotyping & Prejudice.

Average class size: Average is around 22 or so, but the range is about 12-40.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

“Teach less, better.”

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Wow, that’s a tough one. It’s hard for me to point to one specific teaching reference, but a lot of things have had an indirect influence on me. Because I’m White and most of my students are Black, I pay attention to research on interracial interaction, such as Jennifer Richeson’s collaborations with Nicole Shelton, as well as topics that individuate minority students, such as Robert Sellers’ "Multidimensional Model of Racial Identity". It’s nice for me to appeal to evidence of differential experiences and to have them in mind as I teach and advise my students.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching statistics because I struggled with it and therefore see why analyses—the basics anyway—seem harder than they are. And because the material builds (rather than being lateral, like in most classes), there’s a clear plan for each day. It also lends itself to interaction as students collaborate on analyses and interpretations, so I think I’m at my best with it.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I’m always a sucker for the Deese-Roediger-McDermott “sleep words” demo that I’m sure a lot of teachers use. I’ve added a lot of embellishments with it to match my style, but I like encouraging students to question their assumptions. I also have had success with a “bad APA style paper” where students collaborate to find APA style errors I’ve inserted in a short manuscript. It’s a bit of a scavenger hunt, and everyone picks up on different style rules, so it gives us a chance to talk about the writing and style without a straight lecture.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I generally have a casual approach to a class session, and there’s a good bit of give and take. Still, I’m most satisfied when I have regular chances to break things up for students to collaborate and report. I know a lot of teachers ask colleagues for examples of concepts, but I much prefer to have students generate examples, and then the class can examine them and see what about them work and what doesn’t. I get more chances to get to know my students that way and to break up their day. I’m also trying as of late to drop the word “study" from my vocabulary in favor of "practice." It’s difficult to get students to be more active in their approach, and I want them to get beyond simply trying to read and call that studying. I don’t have data showing that the switch is working, but it feels more genuine.

What’s your workspace like?

It’s an absolute mess. I never seem to finish anything, so I have a ton of papers and things piled up until I decide that I don’t need them anymore. I don’t like it this way and always vow to keep things tidier, but I continue to fail at that. I do have a nice office at home and at work though, so I have nice opportunities to stare out the window when I get stuck.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, challenging, inclusive

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Students learn best by producing, not consuming, information.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

As I was handing out an exam in an Intro class a number of years ago, a student who’d received it raised her hand as if to ask a question about one of the items. I thought this was very rude so I ignored her until I had handed them all out. When I finally went over to her, she showed me that I had printed the keyed version of the exam. I was mortified and didn’t know what to do, so at first I just said, “Ok, everybody turn your test over, and let me think about this.” I tried working through my options and decided that about all I could do was take them back up and put the test off to the next class period. Fortunately, my students know I’m easily distracted, and we could laugh about it together.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I think they’d be surprised to know how hypocritical I am when I discuss proper study and preparation strategies with them. My habits in school were terrible—I got through because I was conscientious enough to put in the time, but I certainly didn’t do it the right way most of the time. I sometimes admit this to students I know well, but I don’t want students thinking that they’ll still get to have a great job if they procrastinate and cram.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Mostly, I’m trying to catch up on my New Yorker articles and taking a break with the Onion about every day. For more long-term, I’m half-way done (remember, I never finish anything) with a biography of Johnny Cash and the Book of Barely Imagined Beings.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Dropbox! I remember the days of emailing stuff to myself or trying to keep up with various storage devices, but Dropbox has changed everything for me. Aside from that, I’d say my Mac touchpad so that I don’t have to clear enough desk space to move a mouse around.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I’m usually running late, so it’s often just a pleasantry, but this is New Orleans, so it’s usually about plans for an upcoming festival or storm, or a recent scandal or Saints game. My colleagues are generally a very harmonious bunch, so I love getting the chance to chat. But even at our happy hours, we talk about teaching and students about as much as anything.

PsychSessions Update: listen to Elliott talk with Garth about Elliott's research interests and ideas about racism/stereotyping research and his path toward teaching at an HBCU (Xavier U in New Orleans) https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e070-elliott-hammer-social-psychologist-social-justice-advocate-savvy-decision-maker

Deepti Karkhanis: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 21:43:25 GMT

School name: Bellevue College, WA

Type of school: Bellevue College is an open-access, community-based public institution of higher education located in Bellevue, a city on the Eastside of Lake Washington, near Seattle

School locale: Bellevue is the largest suburb of Seattle, WA

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Lifespan Psychology, Cross Cultural Psychology

Average class size: 38

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

To be genuine and honest in the classroom, not to be afraid of sharing life stories and personal experiences (when appropriate), and to be caring and friendly towards students so they can see me as approachable and helpful – all together, those things help make a classroom a welcoming space for students and supports their learning. For me, a welcoming space is where we hear diverse opinions and ideas with an open mind, while critically evaluating ethnocentric thoughts.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do, Ambrose et al.’s How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, Peck's The Road Less Traveled, Seligman’s Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being – to name a few – have influenced the way I approach teaching and my relationships with students. I also regularly read the Teaching of Psychology journal by STP and attend teaching conferences to help inform and advance my pedagogy. Based on readings and conversations with colleagues, I’ve come to understand the importance of creating an organic, learner-centered environment that encourages students to critically rethink assumptions, and provide them opportunities to cooperate and collaborate with peers.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Emerging Adulthood is by far one of my favorite topics to teach as it is so relevant to 80-85% of the students in the classroom. They are in that age range and understand how this crucial life stage can shape their future. We watch the TED talk by Meg Jay titled “Why 30 is not the new 20” and I have my students reflect on the goals Jay mentions in her talk.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

Favorite in-class activity: At the start of class on the topic of Emerging Adulthood (EA), I post the question – “Do you think you have reached adulthood?” on the whiteboard and have my students think about that question for a few minutes. I ask them to write down Yes / No / Yes & No and the reasons for their answer. Then I have them stand up and walk to the right side of the room if they said “Yes,” left side if they said “No” and middle of the room if they said “Yes & No.” They discuss among themselves in small groups what their reasons were, then they share them with the whole class and I write the reasons out for each group on the whiteboard. This activity helps demonstrate the five characteristics of EA as given by Arnett, and it also reveals cultural differences that exist vis-à-vis EA.

Favorite assignment: In Lifespan Psychology, I have my students do a group project at the end of the quarter, wherein they choose a life stage (e.g., adolescence) and test relevant theories by applying their knowledge of research methods and statistics. [Editor's note: this is pictured in the two pictures below.]

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

While trying new things in the classroom, I am not afraid to show my vulnerabilities and talk about my mistakes, as it makes me be human and relatable. Owning up to one’s mistakes while being kind and understanding towards oneself helps demonstrate self-compassion (Neff, 2008), a trait that is much needed to succeed in today’s day and age. Additionally, being open and willing to share life experiences with students, as storytelling can be a vehicle to establishing validation, identity, and emotional regulation among college students. Finally, TED talks are “essentials” to my teaching.

What’s your workspace like?

My office space is organized; it has books and journals, a picture of my family, my diploma in a wooden frame, and comfortable chairs for my visitors. I believe that my office is inviting to others – I have chocolates, tissue box and inspirational posters on the wall. I’m a true believer in the power of relationships, and I use my office space to have meaningful and open conversations with my students and colleagues.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Encouraging, Helpful, Passionate.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Positive relationships and genuine interest promotes active learning.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

My students are often in disbelief when I tell them that I experienced high levels of test anxiety during school years and was an average student. I became an “A” grade student in grade 11 when I chose to study courses that were of interest to me. I often tell my students the vital role of curiosity and personal relevance in learning and academic success.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I recently completed Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, and I’m currently reading Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My laptop and Logitech wireless presentation pointer

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

At our college, we are very student-focused so we talk about effective classroom management strategies, how to report and handle concerning student behaviors and lately, we’ve been talking about how to get the administration to understand the need to lowering class caps to have a better student-teacher ratio, the one that promotes individual attention and high-quality classroom interactions.

Yana Weinstein: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 03:43:16 GMT

School name: University of Massachusetts – Lowell

Type of school: Public University

School locale: urban

Classes you teach: Cognitive Psychology (200-level); Research Lab (300-level); Applying Cognitive Psychology to Education Seminar (400-level)

Average class size: 15-20 (300 or 400-level); 30-40 (200-level)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

“Be better organized”…from student feedback. No-one likes a disorganized teacher.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

When I started my faculty position, I read the first few chapters of James Lang’s On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching, and this greatly calmed my nerves. Then I got too busy and never got a chance to finish it.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching about memory. False memory used to be my favorite, but after 100 times of demonstrating bed-rest-awake-sleep?, I had to find a new favorite. So now, I really enjoy teaching about superior autobiographical memory. This is the phenomenon where a person remembers everything from their past – you give them a date, and they can recall exactly what they did that day! It is really fun teaching this, because students are so amazed (it’s such a rare phenomenon), and at the same time there are many teachable moments, too: no, it’s not photographic memory, which doesn't actually exist; and no, it’s not domain-general (working memory is no better in these individuals).

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

My favorite thing to do is to describe the methods of a study, and get students to draw a graph predicting the results. It’s great because there are no right or wrong answers – the students just need to demonstrate that they understand the manipulation, and how to graph data. I then go around the room and ask each student to briefly justify why they predicted that pattern of data; this helps me make sure that they didn’t just plot random data points (I’m happy to say that this has actually never happened). The first time I have students do this activity, half the class totally freaks out. By the end of the semester, they are comfortable drawing predictions for two-way interactions. It is very satisfying!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

My research is in applying cognitive psychology to education, so techniques that draw on that research are on the forefront of my mind when I plan teaching and learning activities for my students. For example, all my lectures include a quiz component – usually low-stakes questions distributed randomly throughout the lecture. I also make a lot of use of self and peer review so that students can learn how to critique writing. This also drastically reduces the amount of grading I do, which one might think is a good thing…but I’m actually a weirdo who loves grading!

What’s your workspace like?

I work everywhere: in my office (very rarely), at home in bed (much too often), and in cafes (my favorite!). But this semester, I’ve discovered a really amazing teaching space. It is a “maker space” that was entirely created by a colleague in my department, Dr. Sarah Kuhn. This space has all sorts of arts and crafts materials, Legos, and a coffee maker. I found that the atmosphere the room created was unlike any teaching experience I’ve ever had! Students come early and make themselves coffee, and seem much more open to discussing the material than my last semester class that met in a regular classroom (though of course, I fully recognize that this is a terribly confounded observation). I also found myself moving away from PowerPoint to more spontaneous drawings on the whiteboard, which has been really fun.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Animated, awkward, and engaging? I don’t know! This was hard.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Engage students so they learn instead of sleeping.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I recently made a really awkward joke that made it seem like I was making fun of a student when I wasn’t intending that AT ALL (obviously). I was trying to scaffold the student to help them remember something, but the hint I gave them inadvertently made it seem like I thought they didn’t care about the class. The student – clearly not getting the hint at all – glared at me like I had just killed their puppy. And the worst part? My Chair was observing the class. I dealt with it by protesting too much – “oh, no, of course, I KNOW you care A GREAT DEAL about this class!!!” which in the case of this particular student, luckily (ironically?), was quite true.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

In my spare time, I perform in a ladies Latin dance team!

Here's a photo – I’m the first lady from the right in the front row!

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Elena Ferrante – I felt like I read about her novels every day in 2015, so it’s finally time to actually read her.

What tech tool could you not live without?

As of recently, I can’t live without Twitter. In January 2016, I started a community called the Learning Scientists (@AceThatTest on Twitter) where we discuss evidence-based practices in education. Although it started out as a small spontaneous idea (click here for the story) and mushroomed into a huge project with an extremely productive blog (learningscientists.org) and lively community! These days, I spend most of my spare moments on Twitter arguing about the role of cognitive psychology in education with teachers and other academics.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Feminism. I didn’t give being a woman a second thought until I got pregnant in my late 20s. Then – BAM! – suddenly life was all about being a woman, and it’s like a whole world of sexism and barriers opened up in front of me.

Jamie McMinn: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Sat, 30 Apr 2016 18:13:05 GMT

School name: Westminster College (PA)

Type of school: small liberal arts school

School locale: rural area

Classes you teach: I have taught introductory, social, organizational, personality, human sexuality, psychology of the internet, research methods, and senior research/capstone

Average class size: 17

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I have to select only one? The great thing about an organization like the Society for the Teaching of Psychology is that you are able to network with some of the most successful teachers of psychology, and they are always eager to share their knowledge with you. Teaching me to be better in my field and profession is how they advise me best. Every conversation with a Dana Dunn, Ken Keith, or Janie Wilson is a moment when I can learn something that will help my students to achieve learning outcomes. I guess the best advice about teaching (warning: shameless plug!) was to join STP!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

One of the best illustrations of my teaching philosophy comes from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Early in the novel, Coelho’s old king tells the story of a young boy who is sent to meet the wisest man in the world, with the hopes of discovering the secret of happiness. After a 40-day journey to find the man in a castle atop a mountain, the boy is told that the man is too busy to meet with him and that he should wander about the castle until the man is available. The wise man first gives the boy a spoon filled with oil and tells him to carry the spoon with him as he wanders, being sure not so spill any oil. When the boy returns a few hours later, the man asks him to describe all the palace wonders that he saw. The boy, embarrassed, responds that he was so focused on the oil in the spoon, that he didn’t pay attention to the treasures in the palace. The man sends the boy to wander through the palace again. This time, he returns having viewed many of the palace’s treasures, only to realize that he has spilled all the oil from the spoon. The wise man counsels the boy: “The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.”

A good teacher knows that the academy is filled with treasures that have been collected across millennia, and we believe that those treasures bring happiness (and also tremendous responsibility). But a great teacher recognizes that students come with a spoon that holds the drops of oil they have collected in their short lives. Those drops of oil are important—they are motives, dreams, abilities, traditions—and we will help students find happiness to the extent that we and they appreciate the spoon and what it holds.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Social psychology is my favorite course to teach because it is about the lives of my students. Everything students do has a self or social component, and so it is really easy to engage students with course material. Also, they can “see” social psychology all around them. For many of them, neurotransmitters are abstractions that are not visible to the naked eye, but they can more easily notice conformity, attraction, persuasion, groupthink, and so on. These are phenomena that matter to them on a daily basis as they negotiate with bosses; resolve conflicts with significant others; attempt to change other students’ opinions about campus issues.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

One of my favorite activities to conduct in the laboratory component of my social psychology course draws on an experiment conducted by Tim Wilson and Jonathan Schooler (Study 1, 1991). These researchers suggest that people do not have much insight into their own cognitive processes; that is, we often do not know why we have certain cognitions, like attitudes that can be vague and unspecified. Moreover, Wilson and Schooler believe that reflecting on our attitudes and decisions can actually be unhelpful. They suggest that when we think about why we hold certain attitudes, we attend to explanations that easily come to mind. But those accessible explanations may not be accurate or complete, thus having little effect on their attitude. Ultimately, thinking about reasons can lead people to make choices that are not ideal. To help students understand this, I bring in their favorite condiment—different varieties of salsa that have been rated by Consumer Reports. I ask students to taste each salsa on a chip and to evaluate it, with half being prompted to think about reasons for their evaluation. After we analyze patterns in the data, we talk about the original research and ways that we would have improved on my taste-test methodology were we to implement it in a well-controlled study. (I intentionally create a weakly controlled taste-test “experiment” so that students have plenty to critique—and they do!) So in the context of doing something they enjoy (eating salsa), we can talk about research and good experimental design. It’s like when Mom got us to eat our vegetables by covering them with cheese.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Students’ learning is vital to what I do. I do not believe that learning frequently occurs by happenstance. It is my responsibility as a faculty member to think about what students need to learn and then to shape a course curriculum that helps them to achieve that learning. It is also my responsibility to monitor progress so that I can provide assistance when students are not learning what they need to know or do. This has led to more careful planning when writing assignments and student learning outcomes, creating assessment strategies, and providing feedback on student performance. Learning that informs assessment that informs teaching is critically important to me.

We know that students learn best when material is connected to them and their interests. Students also learn best from High-Impact Practices that engage them with material, versus being passive recipients of information passed through lecture. My class sections certainly have the lecture component so that students have the knowledge they need, but more than likely students will be found doing. They will be engaged in critical analysis of video clips (Big Bang Theory offers many examples that are helpful in psychology courses); discussions with their peers; Plicker-based activities (thanks to Sue Frantz for turning me onto Plicker!); experiential learning in the laboratory or field. Involving students in and making them responsible for their own learning is vital to my teaching.

What’s your workspace like?

Unfortunately, my work space is not as tidy as I would hope. I live my life in neat piles that do not necessarily have an organizational scheme. Fewer piles are a bucket-list item, but I won’t be disappointed if it is never crossed off my list.

Other than that, my workspace is comfortable because I spend a lot of time in my office. I use lamps instead of horribly institutional halogen lights, and my teapot is always ready with jasmine or English Breakfast tea. I have a collection of Dunkin Donuts mugs from different cities I have visited, and those line my shelf with a collection of Big Bang Theory bobble-head figures. Near my desk, I keep a string of thank-you cards from students who have written me over the years. These cards remind me of my passion: students and their learning.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Example-rich, student-orientated, accessible

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Every day, increase your excellence.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

The disasters I have faced usually result from a demonstration or activity that did not work as I had planned. Perhaps the data from an in-class experiment did not replicate patterns found in the literature. Or perhaps I just didn’t communicate my passion to students in a way that contributed to their own excitement for a topic. I have learned to have a Plan A and a Plan B. I also have learned that students benefit from watching us fail and later succeed by trying something different. That is, they are struggling to learn concepts and skills. When they see we can struggle, too, as we develop mastery, it actually enhances their own efficacy. By failing or coming upon an embarrassing situation, we can move into a space where learning from failure is okay. Quite honestly, I am no longer embarrassed by teaching mistakes or mishaps: A moment is a moment for learning.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

My students often are surprised to learn that I am southern. I lost my accent when I went to college, and it usually returns only when I am really tired or when I am talking to a family member in North Carolina. They also are surprised that I have a life outside of the college that includes a wonderful spouse, a regular lifting routine, a love for good food, and a fondness for international travel. They would not be surprised that I have an unhealthy obsession with Dunkin Donuts coffee (with unsweetened hazelnut and cream), any movie with Jennifer Lopez (she’s good for in-class examples on Sternberg’s different types of love), and a bizarre attachment to the APA Manual (6^th edition, 2^nd printing, please).

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

The Atlantis Gene…unfortunately, my pace is very slow because of work.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Right now, Plicker is my new teaching technology must-have. It is an online classroom response system that requires minimal setup and resources. I can create questions that allow me to assess my students’ learning in real-time, which then allows me to know where I need to begin, how quickly I can set the pace, and where problem areas may be. Students think it is cool…at least for the moment.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Now that I am serving in an administrator role, my hallway chatter is much different from what it was when I was strictly teaching. The administrator lens is 50,000-feet across the institution, and you realize there are many issues and events that you cannot talk about with colleagues. That is a big change from the old hallway chatter where we talked about everything. More likely than not, however, my colleagues and I talk about the latest best restaurant, a great bottle of wine, a must-visit vacation destination, or something that is not tied to the college.

Sadie Leder-Elder: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 14:48:31 GMT

School name: High Point University

Type of school: Private Liberal Arts University (with approximately 4000 undergraduates)

School locale: High Point, NC (medium-sized city with a small town feel)

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology, Close Relationships (online and in-person), Personality Psychology, Research Methods, Social Influence, Social Psychology (including a Service-Learning section), Survey Research, and a First Year Seminar called Love and Hate in Cyberspace

Average class size: 30 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I have received a number of helpful suggestions throughout my teaching career, and similar to many of the other educators featured in this blog the best advice was, “Be yourself.” If I were giving advice to an up-and-coming teacher, I would build from that to say, “Don’t be afraid to be creative!” To me, teaching is a form of art, and you cannot be afraid to express yourself. I often try novel (and sometimes odd) ways of helping my students make a connection to the material. Although it can be intimidating or even embarrassing to put yourself out there by creating something innovative, it’s often those activities and assignments that are the most well-received and effective.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Perhaps the most influential book in shaping my teaching career is McKeachie’s Teaching Tips. It’s an oldie, but a goodie, and it came to me at a time when I was a fledging teaching assistant, eager to better myself as an educator. Since that time, I’ve become a voracious consumer of teaching-related books and articles. Although there are too many resources to name, I am inspired by and credit a number of my current teaching strategies to my ECP colleagues. For instance, I learned a great deal collaborating on both So You Landed a Job – What’s Next? Advice for Early Career Psychologists from Early Career Psychologists and Introductory Psychology Teaching Primer: A Guide for New Teachers of Psych 101, Second Edition. If you haven’t read them, I encourage you to check them out!

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My research background is in the psychological study of close relationships, so most of my favorite lectures involve sharing my knowledge about romantic relationships with my students. Where appropriate, I work relationship material into almost all of my courses. And thankfully, given my students preoccupation with their own relationships, this helps to make the material relatable. Building from that, I’d say my favorite class to teach is Close Relationships, as it bridges my two loves, teaching and relationship science. I think my passion is contagious, as by the end of the semester class tends to feel like a conversation between myself and my students. I actually love teaching this topic so much that for the past five years, I’ve shared a number of my class examples with a national audience as a writer for the Science of Relationships website. This forum allows me to “teach” close relationship material outside of the classroom by providing empirically-sound relationship advice in the form of pop-culture narratives. As educators, I think we all hope to make a difference in our students’ lives. With this material, perhaps more than others, I can actually see that happening through the demonstration of healthy relationship choices. Here’s hoping that in some small way, I’ve helped to fend off divorce and facilitate their lifelong relationship success.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I have my students online date! In my Love and Hate in Cyberspace class, when covering attraction and online dating, I have my students generate online dating profiles for various dating websites and together we navigate them just like a dater would. In this activity, students are asked to identify examples of successful profiles and compare them to unsuccessful (or outright bad) profiles. They must then support their claims with course material. Students often draw from lessons on evolutionary theories of attraction (including gender differences and the role of physical appearance in partner selection), particularly when using a website like Match.com, where both pictures and bios are available. I then ask students to repeat the assignment on a website like eHarmony.com, where daters are provided with “matched” partners. In this case, students have fewer potential partners to evaluate and are not provided with a picture. Interestingly, this leads to a discussion about how physical attractiveness acts as a gate-keeping mechanism and the importance of other partner selection strategies, including the role of similarity. Finally, we conclude with a discussion comparing partner selection online vs. in-person. Initially, my students approach this activity with a mix of intrigue and trepidation. But after we complete it, they are not only wiser about this growing relationship phenomenon, but excited to share their experiences with others. My only caution to other professors who may want to try this activity would be to have a strict set of guidelines. I take numerous precautions to ensure my students anonymity during the process. I also work to show respect for their current relationships, as well as for the people on the websites who are legitimately seeking a connection.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I have a number of “go to” strategies in my teaching toolbox. The best strategy often depends on the class and the objective of a given lesson, but these are some of my tried and true techniques:

Get to know your students – I invite my students (often with extra credit) to office hours for a five-minute chat. I ask them about silly things just to break the ice and create a more informal connection. It tends to make for a more talkative classroom, where students ask additional questions and participate in discussions of course material.
Storytelling – If I can keep myself from getting too tangential, I’ve found that stories from my own life are extremely effective in helping students make connections to course material. I’m surprised how often my students use examples from my life to explain their understanding of a concept.
Reflection – I started using weekly reflections when teaching a Service-Learning section of Social Psychology. It worked very well for getting my students to go beyond simply memorizing material from the textbook. Now I use them in a number of classes. Students are asked to “think out loud” and I encourage (and reward) any novel thoughts they share about the topic we are learning.
Incorporation of service – I teach a lot of Introduction to Psychology sections, and in an effort to make the class come to life, I have incorporated a Helping Behavior Activity when covering the Social Psychology chapter. I set aside a class period and students select the particular pro-social activity. In the past, students have written Thank You cards to US troops and veterans, created fleece blankets for Project Linus, sent care-packages to victims of Hurricane Sandy, donated holiday gifts through the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree Program, constructed coloring books for the Children’s Miracle Network, and collected school supplies for a local Title I elementary school. All in all, it is a very rewarding experience and one that pays dividends in student learning (of the course material and as an added bonus their self-reported volunteerism and social responsibility).

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Personal, Encouraging, and Rigorous

(Curiosity got the best of me, and I bravely took a look at my RateMyProfessor feedback. Thankfully, students seems to agree with this description of my teaching style!)

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

This was a tough question, given my propensity to be verbose, but here’s what I’ve decided on:

Inspire students by helping them connect to material

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I’ve had all of the typical teaching disasters: calling students by the wrong name, being unable to work the technology (including lights) in the high-tech classrooms, spelling errors on the board, and incorrectly scoring an item on a test. But the disaster that stands out the most occurred during the first year of my current job. I was still in the “dress for success” stage of my career, which involved inappropriately high heels for teaching. I was walking to class, not paying attention, and tripped while crossing the road (wildly and very embarrassingly in front of numerous student spectators). I picked myself up (mortified) and went directly to the bathroom to clean the wound as best I could before heading to class. After about twenty minutes of lecturing I stopped to ask students if they had any questions. Three or four hands shot up immediately. They all wanted to know about the road rash on my leg, which by this point had started bleeding. I was genuinely touched by my students’ concern, but I don’t think they learned any material that class. Although I try hard to minimize mistakes, I’ve come to believe that they aren’t nearly as bad as I think they are (spotlight effect) and that they humanize us to our students. However, when disaster does strike, I try to resolve it by reiterating my commitment to getting it (whatever that may be) right the next time and thanking my students for their understanding.

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is deceiving. From one view (the one I’ve chosen to share), it is very professional. From the other, it’s cluttered with papers of varying importance. I also have a workspace at home that most of the time looks like an episode of Hoarders. I have a number of projects going, each with its own stack of background articles, questionnaires, printed results, and some with manuscripts and heart-breaking reviewers’ feedback. I keep thinking that over the breaks I will finally complete a few. Here’s hoping that this summer is the summer it finally happens. On an optimistic note, a very small stack was removed when I was able to turn in this blog!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing, but I have had a pretty eclectic life. So for this question, I’ve got a lot of random experiences to choose from. Most of my students know that in addition to my psychology degrees I have a Bachelor’s of Science in biology, which is not typical of a psychology professor. What I don’t think they know is that I was captain of the varsity cheerleaders in high school, was on the fencing team at UNC-Chapel Hill, and was in the Miss North Carolina pageant. I told you my life has been full of random adventures. Perhaps what I encounter most frequently is my students’ surprise (or confusion) by my married name being an anagram of my maiden name. Yep, I’m Dr. Sadie Leder Elder, and since I’ve changed my name in the past four years (some students and colleagues call me Dr. Leder, while others call me Dr. Elder), it makes for a great deal of chaos at the university.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Please feel free to judge me, but I read textbooks for fun. I am a nerd! I also squeeze in a little light reading in the form of US Weekly and People magazine. I do use a lot of pop culture in my teaching, but I don’t stay current for that reason. I just love it!

What tech tool could you not live without?

I cannot live without my laptop. I know that my iPad and iPhone would likely be capable of tackling any task that arose while on trip, vacation, or even my honeymoon, but I’d prefer not to risk it. When it comes to my laptop, my motto is, “Don’t EVER leave home without it!”

Angela Legg: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 19:08:42 GMT

School name: Pace University

Type of school: Private, doctoral-granting university – Our Ph.D. in Mental Health Counseling is one of the first doctoral programs at Pace! We were also named the #1 most underrated college/university in the US by Business Insider (October, 2015). For people who haven’t heard of Pace University, I tell them that it’s where Bradley Cooper graduated and where Inside the Actor’s Studio is filmed. No, I haven’t met Bradley Cooper or James Lipton…

School locale: Smallish town outside of New York City – A lot of people don’t realize how rural New York becomes once you get outside of the city! Pace University has a vibrant city campus in Manhattan but we also have a more traditional college setting in Westchester county (I teach on the Westchester campus). Our Westchester campus is in Pleasantville, NY…how much more charming can you get?! We just opened new dormitories this year and it’s been exciting to see the campus life bloom! I love walking around the university to see the students enjoying their rejuvenated campus.

Classes you teach: Social Psychology and Experimental Psychology (year-long research experience course) at the undergrad level, Social Psychology at the Master’s level, and Seminar in Treat Management at the Ph.D. level. We offer a lot of interdisciplinary courses as well so my first year at Pace I taught an interdisciplinary Learning Community course called “On the Good Life.” I co-taught the course with a Philosophy professor. We spent the semester considering what the good life means and how can we achieve it. We read ancient philosophy, Hannah Arendt, and psychologists such as Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King, and Martin Seligman. The students developed creative works on the good life and I was so impressed by the quality of their projects. One student painted a picture that incorporated the readings from the course and his idea of what the good life means. Another student interviewed random people in Manhattan about their perception of the good life. Yet another student developed an entire website with resources on happiness, well-being, and achieving the good life. I love courses that allow students to use their strengths to develop meaningful works that live on beyond one semester.

Average class size: 9-28 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Janie Wilson was one of the first teaching mentors I had. One time, I was telling her about what some of the “kids” in her class were doing and she corrected me by saying, “young adults.” I don’t know if she meant it to be advice then, but it was one of the most influential experiences in terms of my development as an educator. It not only taught me to view my students as active participants with their own unique perspectives and experiences but it taught me a broader lesson about how our own perspectives as teachers can help or hinder the learning process.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Not a book or an article…but the PSYCTEACHER listserv is amazing. [Editor's note: You can access the PSYCTEACHER listserve by joining STP.] I love reading everyone’s thoughts and advice. I also love soaking in advice from people at the STP conferences.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I teach a year-long Experimental Psychology course in which students propose and conduct their own research projects. It is my favorite course to teach because the process ultimately is so rewarding for students. My students comment that the course is unlike anything they’ve ever experienced in college. I spend a good deal of the first semester building their trust, shoring up their knowledge about research methods and statistics, and mitigating their anxiety about writing and the research process. The course transitions into a very creative process as the students develop their experiment ideas. It’s a small class so every student gets a lot of mentorship and guidance. Everyone celebrates when the IRB approves their projects and they really celebrate once they collect all of their data. I’m tough on them at times but they always know it comes from a place of caring. We end the class with a mini-psychology research conference where they share their research posters.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

Hands down my favorite activity is my “Create a Scale” activity. In groups, students have to create a scale to measure sense of humor. Once they create their scale, they validate it with their classmates. We make it a contest to see who can obtain the best internal consistency and criterion validity. The activity keeps my students laughing but I also find that it is extremely effective at helping them remember the difference between the various reliabilities and validities.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I’m still early in my career so I love testing new ideas and techniques. I’m learning that “letting go” in the classroom is often more valuable than overly preparing or trying to micromanage the flow of a class lecture.

What’s your workspace like?

I’m not talented when it comes to interior design so my office is a little random. I have two pictures from Alice in Wonderland hanging above my desk that remind me to always be “curiouser and curiouser.” On my bookshelf, I have a green orangutan stuffed animal from when I interned as a behavioral researcher at Zoo Atlanta, a picture of Beyonce that my grad school labmate gave me when I started my new job, and some random Star Wars tchotchkes. By my computer monitor, there are numerous stress balls that I’ve collected at different psychology conferences. What good is a workspace if it doesn’t make you giggle a bit?

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Caring. Conscientious. Cheerleader.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

When in doubt, have passion and great examples.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I almost failed out of college! I went through a rough time as an undergrad. The experience I had as a “bad student” helps me understand some of my struggling students. I believe there are no “bad students,” just ones who haven’t found their way yet. If they messed up early in their undergrad careers, they may have to work harder than others, but it doesn’t mean that their story is over. My personal experience reminds me to be empathetic…you never know when a student just needs someone to reach out to him/her. I had some professors who mentored me in this way (i.e., they were empathetic but pushed me to work harder than ever before) and I try to pay that type of mentorship forward.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

At any given moment I have a stack of books and magazines that I’m making my way through. Right now I’m reading The Road to Character by David Brooks, Quiet by Susan Cain, and The Wisest One in the Room by Thomas Gilovich and Lee Ross. I also started rereading the Harry Potter books.

What tech tool could you not live without?

The calendar/to do list on my cell phone – For a long time, I resisted using my phone to schedule my life! But once I transitioned away from writing everything down in various notebooks and planners, I realized how streamlined I could make things by putting everything into my phone’s calendar.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Four of my friends from grad school and I have a running group text message. At any given time of the day, we’re exchanging advice, telling stories about our days, sending bitmojis (thanks to Jordan Troisi for sharing that app with me!), supporting each other through our struggles, and just generally engaging in ridiculous amounts of affirmation! Lots of people talk about how text messaging can disrupt their days…not with this group text! I’m constantly finding new motivation from this amazing group of women. We all live far apart (Kristin and Sara in the Bay Area, Arezou in Long Beach, CA, Katie in Tennessee, and me in New York) but our daily group texts keep me feeling connected and inspired.

Julia Omarzu: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 11 Feb 2016 00:08:49 GMT

School name: Loras College

Type of school: Small liberal arts college

School locale: Dubuque, Iowa – small city

Classes you teach: Introductory Psychology, Research Methods, Social Psychology, Psychology & the Arts, Motivation

Average class size: 25

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

To always be sure I tell students what I want or expect from them, rather than assuming they should just know. Over the years, I’ve expanded this to the more global: Avoid making assumptions about students in general. This includes assumptions about their expectations, previous experience, or intent behind their behaviors. When I approach a situation in the classroom without those kinds of assumptions but with openness and curiosity, my students and I communicate much better with each other.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I tend to learn more from talking to or watching other teachers than from reading. Teaching Introductory Psychology: Survival Tips from the Experts, edited by Sternberg, was very helpful when I first started. Right now I’m transitioning to a flipped classroom and for help with that I have learned a lot from the blog, Casting out Nines, by Robert Talbert.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Research Methods. When I was a student, this is the course that convinced me to become a psychologist. Within the first few days of that class, I fell in love with the idea that there were techniques that could allow me to find answers to my questions about the world. It felt so empowering. After many years of teaching, I still enjoy introducing students to research and encouraging them to see it in that way.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

One of my favorite assignments was designed while team teaching with a history professor. Students individually chose nonprofit organizations related to causes that had personal meaning to them. For the history component, they wrote papers analyzing the social context and historical background of the larger issue associated with the organization’s mission. For the social psychological component, they each created and delivered presentations using persuasive techniques designed to convince the class to donate to or volunteer for their causes. We did this assignment for several years. Students enjoyed it, and I learned something new every time.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

My favorite active learning strategy is case study analysis. In more advanced courses I use cases that students may think about over a few class days. In courses like Introductory Psychology I rely on brief application cases designed to help students show they understand a few specific concepts.

What’s your workspace like?

My office is in a very old building that has been renovated many times for different uses, so it’s full of creaky floors, noisy pipes, and inconsistently-sized rooms. In other words, it has character. I have a rather large office that allows me both a desk area and a kind of sitting area. I like being able to shift from a more serious workspace to a more informal social space. I also learn about what visitors expect from a meeting, depending on whether they immediately select the chair next to my desk or one in the more conversational area.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Challenging, thoughtful, compassionate.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Show leadership in the classroom, personally and intellectually.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

I have a lazy habit of sitting on desks and tables when I am talking to a class. One specific embarrassing moment was when I sat on a desk that was unstable and slipped off onto the floor. That alone would be embarrassing enough, but I also let out a loud squeal of surprise that I’d never heard myself make before (or since). Dead silence in the classroom for a beat. Then I made a joke about not realizing I could make a noise like that. Huge laughter. We went back to work. Now I’m much more careful about where I sit. (I also got very high teaching evaluations from that class. Go figure.)

The worst serious teaching disaster I’ve had was several years ago when I was teaching students in a special internship program our college developed. The students spent one semester away from our residential small town campus, living in Chicago. They were placed in internships, did community service, and took two college courses. I traveled to Chicago (about a three hour drive) one day a week to teach one of the courses, a general education course in psychology. It was a small group of students, and they were completely uninterested in doing academic work. I had a whole exciting course planned that would use different locations throughout the city for experiential learning. But they were exhausted from their service and internships and the excitement of living in the city. Every week they hijacked class time to process their experiences and vent their frustrations. I had to rethink the entire course on the fly. I never could tell if they were getting anything at all out of my class. It was not a successful teaching experience. I learned several things, though. 1) You can’t always give students what they want, but it’s important to pay attention to strong student reactions. Even if your original expectations are fair and reasonable, there’s usually something going on that you should know about. 2) Let go of assignments or assessment techniques that aren’t working, even mid-semester. Forcing things doesn’t usually make them better. 3) If something isn’t working, involve students in the process. Now when things don’t seem to be going well in a class, I immediately create a short anonymous survey, asking for feedback about the original course plan and giving at least one idea for a change. I have found that even a small change which is relatively meaningless to me is still often enough to create a more positive attitude in class.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

That I was a business major as an undergraduate and originally planned to be a CPA.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs mystery novels

What tech tool could you not live without?

My wireless presentation remote. Best money I ever spent for my classroom.

Beth Morling: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 01:15:42 GMT

School name: University of Delaware (I’m in a teaching-focused position)

Type of school: R1 University. We offer the Ph.D. in social, clinical, cognitive psychology and in behavioral neuroscience.

School locale: Medium-sized university town

Classes you teach: Research Methods. Cultural Psychology. The Social Self (400 level). Teaching of Psychology (Graduate).

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

First, set aside “sacred time” for writing in your schedule. Lots of people say that, because it works. Good college teachers are scholars, and scholars write.

Second, Stephen Chew is my evidence-based teaching mentor. I like to say, All I really need to know, I learned from Steve Chew. Through him, I learned about the “rule of three” (students need at least three exposures in order to master a new concept) about the power of misconceptions, about concept inventories, about metacognition. He can be your hero, too: Here’s his video series for teachers.

For their small teaching gifts, I’d like to thank my Twitter friends who push wonderful content and tips at me every day. There’s Sue Franz and her Technology for Academics blog, which taught me, for one, about akindi. Thanks, too, to Jessica Hartnett and her “not awful and boring” blog, and for introducing the makeameme website. I went a little crazy with that last semester. For example:

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

For course design, Fink’s Creating Significant Learning Experiences is probably the most important. Fink suggests that we design courses with the end in mind. What do you want students to be able to do when the course is over? (that’s your learning goal) What does it look like when they can do that? (that’s your final assessment). How do you get them there? (those are your teaching and learning activities). I mention this approach in every presentation I give, and my graduate course in the teaching of psychology is designed around his self-directed guide.

My daily teaching style has been inspired by examples from The Learning Gap, by Hal Stevenson and James Stigler, a book I’ve assigned in cultural psychology classes. This book reports their investigation of primary school teachers, students, and parents in Japan, China, and the U.S. It’s about gradeschools, but I’ve found it applicable to teaching college classes. They describe how Asian teachers achieve coherence, give feedback to students, and develop learner-centered classrooms. For a taste of what it covers, read this short piece from the NYT.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love it all! Research methods is one of my favorites because students have the steepest growth curve in that class. They come in to the class thinking that every study has to generalize to the population of the world. But they leave being able to identify, graph, and critically evaluate almost any psychology study they encounter in the popular press. I love teaching cultural psychology because some of the studies we read simply blow them away (It doesn’t get much better than Heine et al., 2001). And I love teaching Social Self, because students are so excited to read the literature on self-justification, self-control, and self-esteem. Students are particularly engaged when they notice the huge gap between the promise of high self-esteem and the empirical reality of it. In contrast to what they’ve heard, people with low self-esteem have good relationships; high self-esteem isn’t a social panacea, and saying “I love myself” makes low-self-esteem folks feel worse. What’s not to love about all this wonderful content?

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

Psychology teachers have the best content in the world, but our main goal is to educate scientifically minded, quantitative reasoners. Therefore, I have the most fun working with students in class to understand empirical evidence. My favorite activities involve describing a result to them and asking them to create a table or graph that depicts it. Alternatively, I’ll show them a “scary” graph or table of results, and we’ll figure out what it means. Students feel so empowered by this process!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?)

In upper-level classes, I give students their final exam questions in advance. These are difficult, essay questions in which students are asked to combine, evaluate, or apply the empirical research they’ve read all semester. In Social Self, they prepare 8-10 questions and I choose 4 for the final. Students end up reviewing and consolidating almost everything they’ve read, and we have great conversations in office hours as they develop their answers. I’m willing to share example questions with folks who send me an email.

What’s your workspace like?

My favorite part is the huge window. And inspired by a contributor to this blog, I transitioned to a stand-up desk. I love it because I get uncomfortable sitting down for too long. But my office is not that well organized or decorated. In fact, when I see the offices of the other How I Teach contributors, I feel I need to step up my game! Somebody, please come decorate my office. Thank you.

Three words that start with E and that best describe your teaching style.

Empirical, enthusiastic, engaged.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

“Write the perfect test, then teach to it.”

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I can’t believe I’m telling this story, but for a few years, I would abbreviate the word “thought” on the whiteboard when we would sketch out arguments or graphs. (I can’t bring myself to put down how I spelled it; you can look it up.) Every time I did it, I’d hear some students giggle, but I thought it was because the abbreviation was kind of cute. FINALLY, students in my class informed me that the word has a crude slang meaning! I was SO embarrassed. The next class period, I solemnly promised the class that I would never have used a crude, misogynistic term in jest. Thank goodness I have good rapport with students! It has often prevented small missteps like these from escalating.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I totally resonated with something Neil Lutsky wrote on this blog’s inaugural post: “do students realize how much skin I have in every class?” I leave every class thinking, “Oooh—I gotta fix that.” “I better start next class by saying …” or “I wish I had time to ….”

Also, I’m not sure they’d be surprised, given my enthusiasm in the classroom, but I was a cheerleader and on the drill team in high school (Kearney High School in Nebraska!).

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I love fiction and I’m a bit of an Anglophile. I learned about Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) books when the author died last year, and I’m reading them one after the other. They are all so different from each other and from the stuff I read at work. I’ve also read every book by Joanna Trollope. The characters in her books are so well-behaved!

What tech tool could you not live without?

Yes. J

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I like to say that I have a “3-3-3” load: Three classes each semester and three boys at home. I actually limit hallway chatter to get work done. I live a pretty wonderful but pretty dull life, and if forced into small talk, I’m one of those people who can only discuss “stuff I heard on NPR.” I’m such a cliché!

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Garth and Eric talk with Beth about her initial avoidance of Research Methods towards eventually writing a book about it!

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e020-beth-morling-textbook-author-nitop-insider-mental-tattoos

Jared Keeley: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 17:17:11 GMT

School name: Mississippi State University

Type of school: Mississippi State University is a doctoral Very High Research Activity Land Grant institution, according to the Carnegie classification.

School locale: Starkville, MS, a rural town of about 20,000 people. The student population literally doubles the size of the town. We have around 400 undergraduate majors in psychology, and over 20 graduate students in PhD programs in Clinical Psychology and Cognitive Science.

Classes you teach: I have taught both undergraduate (General Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Psychological Statistics, The Teaching of Psychological Statistics) and graduate (Psychopathology, Personality Assessment, Behavior Therapy, Clinical Practicum) courses.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice I ever received about teaching was to be true to my own personality. When learning to teach, it is easy to attempt to emulate your favorite teachers and recreate the experiences you enjoyed most as a student. However, techniques that work for one teacher do not work for everyone. There is an interaction with your own personality, such that you need to find what works well for you. Some teachers are loud and boisterous comedians; others are quiet, reflective intellectuals. Finding a mechanism that best conveys your passion for the discipline and your strengths is the road to being a truly excellent teacher. We all have something that drew us to this profession. Identifying and communicating that passion is the best thing any teacher can do.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

While many would not consider this a book on teaching, per se, Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered has had the most profound effect upon my teaching. I consider myself first and foremost a scientist; as such, I believe the scientific method has value for informing any of my professional activities, especially teaching. I strongly value a scholarly approach to my work, including evaluating my teaching by systematically operationalizing my goals, measuring outcomes, and evaluating data to inform my decisions. A key step is going to the literature to identify evidence-based techniques or assessments. As part of the field, I feel that I should participate in generating that literature, especially if what I have found in my own classroom could be beneficial for someone else. Thus, the scholarship of teaching and learning drives most aspects of what I do in the classroom.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course is the one that many students seem to most dread: Psychological Statistics. The reason I adore this course is it is one of the rare times when we get to have an answer, versus generating another question or facing the ubiquitous conclusion “it depends.” Statistics is not about number crunching (although I believe uninspired instruction can make it so). Instead, it is learning a new way of thinking about the world. It is a perspective on how to answer a question and how to interpret the information around us. People intuitively use statistical concepts on a daily basis, but without making an understanding of those concepts explicit, we are prone to many interpretational and decision-making errors. My goal for the course is to help students be savvy consumers of information. I want them to be able to know when a number is misrepresenting a concept, or when they need more information to make a complete conclusion.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?)

Because of my goal for my Psychological Statistics course, my approach to the course focuses on application and interpretation from start (measurement of the construct and the properties of scales of measurement) to finish (decision making in the context of uncertainty and error). I utilize a low-tech approach to foster active learning: good ole’ fashioned worksheets. A class period involves a reciprocal interaction of didactic presentation paired with work on a problem, such that I introduce an idea and students work on pieces of it, cumulatively building until we have completed the analysis. The worksheet in class scaffolds students’ initial exposure to the material so that they can try it on their own for homework. It also doubles as their note taking, forcing students to engage with the most important concepts of the lesson. Because there is a worksheet every day, it serves as a convenient way to take attendance as well. The worksheets provide a valuable, low-stakes form of feedback, as I can see where students are struggling and what concepts may need to be revisited.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

One of my favorite activities in my Psychological Statistics class occurs when we work on the scales of measurement. I ask students to define the level of measurement (nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio) for a variety of seemingly straightforward variables, like color. We then discuss their answers and I present alternative conceptualizations of the variable that could fit. To continue with the example of color, most students readily state that it is a nominal variable (“Red is different from blue is different from yellow, and they are just different”). However, I then ask them about shades of color, and how they could blend into each other in a continuous gradation. I bring up the notion that color is light reflecting off of surfaces, and different colors correspond to different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. When conceptualized as a wavelength, color becomes a ratio variable, as the zero is meaningful (i.e., the absence of a wavelength). The activity forces students to recognize the active role they play in defining the nature of a variable, based upon their expectations and use of the variable, and how their measurement of the variable determines its properties. Another example is the rating of a Likert-type scale. We usually end up having a vigorous discussion about whether we can consider such ratings an ordinal or interval in scale, highlighting the fundamental difficulty of comparing responses between participants (Are they using the same starting points or internal scales as others?). We then generalize this idea to its implications for psychological research and what we know about common findings.

What’s your workspace like?

I regularly get comments from my colleagues about the arrangement of my office. The institutional norm is to have a desk in the middle of the room with student and teacher sitting across from each other. I very purposefully moved my desk against the wall, so there is nothing between the student and I, and I have to turn away from other things (like my continually updating email) so my attention is not divided. I believe strongly in the importance of being accessible to my students, and something as simple as the arrangement of furniture can play a key role in that message. When these same colleagues ask about it, they are shocked to hear that students notice and appreciate the difference. They worry that the arrangement might invite a weakening of professional boundaries; however, I have found that appropriate boundaries are not set by the physical environment, but by my demeanor and the expectations I hold (both explicit and implicit). The benefits, on the other hand, include students feeling more of a connection with me and feeling that I am truly interested in their success, which increases their motivation to do well in the course.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Actively inquiring passion

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Guide students to think independently through active questioning

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

One semester, at the request of my department head, I pilot tested an online homework system for my statistics class. A departmental committee, of which I was a part, wanted to look for ways to improve our statistics-research methods sequence. We investigated several options, and made an informed decision to select a program that looked like it would incorporate excellent pedagogical principles, such as promoting active learning and adapting to student learning needs. However, it was an abysmal failure. It continually crashed and I had no power to correct the system or help with technical issues. The built-in pedagogy became a crutch that students leaned upon to get a good grade on homework but left them unprepared for tests because they could not do it on their own. Student ratings at mid-semester were so bad that we agreed to abandon the system altogether.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

First, my students are always surprised about my age. Apparently I have a young face. Next, students are surprised that I am inherently an introvert. I get very excited about the things I teach, and they translate my enthusiasm into extroversion. If left to my own devices, I will happily blend into the background and watch others, rather than be the center of attention.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

At the moment, I am reading Wicked after having the privilege of seeing the show on Broadway. However, if you examined my Kindle, you would find a plethora of fantasy novels. My most recent favorite has been Brandon Sanderson’s series The Stormlight Archive. It highlights fantasy’s defining feature better than any other series I have read: The readers are thrust into a world where the rules are entirely different from our own, and we must stumble along with the characters while trying to discern how it all works.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Most people who know me recognize that I am something of a technophobe, although that is not quite the right word. I am reluctant to adopt new technologies simply because they are new. I want to see what it will do that I cannot already do some other way. That said, I have become dependent upon my Surface Pro 3. I travel a fair amount, and it is far easier to lug around than any laptop. The touchscreen technology makes it far more intuitive to interact with, and it can do anything that an ordinary laptop can do.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

A group of faculty in my department go out to dinner every Friday night. Living in a small town, we have to make our own fun, and this dinner is the primary way we do so. It is an excellent chance to decompress about all the stresses of the week, to complain about our sorrows and rejoice in our successes. We talk about a little bit of everything, ranging from interesting things our students said or did to what is happening in our favorite TV shows.

Lyndsey Lanagan-Leitzel: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 23 Dec 2015 14:32:26 GMT

School name: Eastern Connecticut State University

Type of school: We are “Connecticut’s only public liberal arts university”. We primarily serve undergraduate students (especially first-generation students) but have a handful of masters programs as well.

School locale: Small town – Willimantic, CT, former “Thread City USA” due to the American Thread Company and other textile businesses, which left the area several decades ago.

Classes you teach: Cognitive Psychology, General Psychology, Behavioral Science Statistics, Research Methods I, Research Methods II, Sensation and Perception, and a freshman colloquium course on Psychology in South Park

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Some of my colleagues argue that you should never go into class too prepared, in order to be ready for interesting sidetracks that the class may want to take. I cannot completely follow this advice – I have to feel as though I am prepared enough to handle not only the content, but also potential questions that might arise. I put a lot of time into preparing not only what content I will cover, but how I will cover it, and I use my prior experiences to hone that content and the delivery to improve each semester.

I do try wherever possible to encourage students to ask questions and I freely admit when I do not know the answer. Some classes (and some students) are more willing to engage and ask questions, and I encourage this without letting a sidetrack take us too far from my goals for that class period. Students do not realize how important they are to the class – their enthusiasm and energy actually improve my teaching and the experience of the other students.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I attempt to use what I know about cognitive psychology to improve the learning experience – incorporating videos and activities to “break up” class to help them stay attentive, and making explicit connections to their own lives and experiences to promote memory associations. I also plan very carefully across all my classes so that I don’t have multiple major assignments coming in at the same time so that I can return graded work as soon as possible.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

As a graduate student at Penn State, I took a course on How to Teach Psychology. The reading material in that course included McKeachie’s Teaching Tips and Perlman, McCann, and McFadden’s two-volume Lessons Learned: Practical Advice for the Teaching of Psychology. These materials ensured that my first teaching experiences as a graduate student were successful, and many of the skills that I learned in that class I have carried with me to this day. Some of my favorite strategies have remained the same in the ten years since: using low-stakes weekly writing assignments and in-class activities that require thinking in-depth about the topic and discussion with nearby peers. I have also adapted my teaching due to interactions with other teachers.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My absolute favorite class to teach by far is my freshman colloquium course, Psychology in South Park. In it, first-semester freshmen psychology majors view episodes of the animated television show South Park that have been selected by me to portray a handful of relevant psychological topics. The course as I teach it currently is cross-listed with an introductory psychology course, and the episode viewed each week contains a portrayal relevant to the topics being covered in introductory psychology at that time. (For example, the episode Follow That Egg! shows an example of a terrible experiment, to go along with the “research methods” content, and the episode Grey Dawn shows cognitive impairment in elderly drivers, to go along with the “aging” content.) Students watch the episodes as a class and research the topic(s) they identified in the episode using PsycINFO. After discussion with their peers as well as some guidance from me, they individually write analyses of the accuracy of the show, focusing on all the major psychological concepts present. Last year, I created a psychological critical thinking program that taught students incrementally how to critically evaluate the episodes, and was able to show that they did improve on critical analysis and written communication as the semester progressed. I am replicating the study this semester. Students love the course because the content is fun, even if they have to write a lot more than a typical course. Besides this, they are learning skills of research and analysis that will benefit them as they progress through the psychology major.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

In my Cognitive Psychology course, I always conduct an in-class activity on false memories. Using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, 15-word lists of words are read to the students. They are asked to try to remember as many of the words within a list as they can. This length (15 words) surpasses human short-term memory capacity, but the words are all related to each other, which boosts memory. The problem is that the most “obvious” word that should be in the list is not. (For example, in a list with rye, butter, and toast, the obvious word “bread” is missing.) Using three separate lists, I can generally get at least half of the class to “remember” the word that wasn’t on the list at least once across the three trials.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?)

I almost always require students to complete online quizzes (using our learning management system, Blackboard Learn) over the reading prior to covering the content in class. They are told that the purpose is to ensure they are reading prior to class. The quizzes are short (10 or 20 questions depending on the class) and mostly multiple choice. They are permitted two attempts and their higher score is kept. They are encouraged to complete the quiz once, then review the reading to determine why they missed the questions they did prior to completing the second attempt. These quizzes boost student knowledge in the critical topic areas and also provide a boost to their grade that is a function of the effort they put in.

I also require weekly journals, also submitted through Blackboard, which require students to make an explicit connection between some topic learned in class or through the reading that week to a current or recent event in their life. Making these associations may help students better learn and remember the topic. (My department also has an unofficial rule that all of our courses will require substantial writing in order to develop written communication skills. I find these brief writing assignments are much easier to grade than longer research papers and frankly over the course of a semester, students are typically writing just as much as if they had written a longer term paper.)

The biggest practice that has helped me tremendously as a teacher is that I now only use PowerPoint for picture and video materials (and I do try to use as many relevant pictures and videos as I can). Several years ago, I made the transition from using word-laden PowerPoints to using the old-fashioned chalkboard (or these days, whiteboard). Since making the transition, students are more attentive and more inquisitive rather than merely copying down words. I make sure that I begin every class with a written outline on the board and write down any words that I want to make sure they spell right or that I want to emphasize, so I know they’re getting the “bones” of the lecture just fine. By not trying to frantically write down all the words on a slide, they are able to simply listen, and over the course of the semester, most learn to pick out the most important information.

To supplement instruction, I provide a list of Suggested Review Questions that students can use to guide their note-taking as well as their studying for the exam. All exam questions are drawn from the material that appears in the answers to the Suggested Review Questions, although I rarely use the same wording. Focusing studying on using these questions promotes active memory retrieval and thus may help with retention of the material.

What’s your workspace like?

In the office, I try to keep the materials on my desk in neatly-stacked piles. My desk is shaped like an L with a computer at the junction, and I’ve rotated the desk so that I see the door and can immediately greet students who come in. The part of the desk facing the door has my materials for the next day of classes and the stuff I’m working on at that moment; the part of the desk against the wall contains printed materials for upcoming class periods, old and future lecture notes, and materials needed for my many roles on university committees. It often has my lunch or snack too. Tacked onto the corkboard on the wall above my desk, I keep the page from the syllabus of each course I teach outlining the required reading, assignments, and topics for each day of the semester. This ensures that I can always quickly determine what is coming up by just looking up.

I attempt to use every spare moment of the day to squeeze in work. I sometimes work from home, using my home desktop computer, and I also often grade exams sitting on my couch. I also prepare a lot of my lectures, at least on paper, in the cafeteria of a local school while my son is at his weekly Cub Scouts den meeting. If I’m alert, I try to work because there is always something I could or should be doing.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Current, relevant, evidence-based (the hyphen makes it one word!)

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Help students see the connection to their lives.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

Several years ago, I was teaching two sections of my Psychology in South Park class – one for psychology majors and one for non-majors. In the section of non-majors, two male students behaved in inappropriate ways and challenged my authority as the instructor on several occasions. It started on the very first day, when one of the students interrupted my comment that “The course won’t be all about watching South Park; you’re going to have to do some work too” with “no, we don’t!” This caught me off-guard that somebody would be so brazen on their first day of class as a freshman. The second male argued with me (loudly) in front of the class about a point penalty on a paper, insisting that what he did wasn’t wrong. Later in the semester, he rudely interrupted a presentation on academic integrity, insisted that using the same paper for more than one class was alright to do. There were many other incidents that semester as well. I have never in all my years teaching experienced such an utter lack of respect; fortunately, it hasn’t happened since.

I also unintentionally induced a seizure in an epileptic student when I showed videos of the phenomenon change blindness in my Cognitive Psychology course. I now always provide a warning prior to showing the videos in class!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I actually have pretty severe social anxiety and hate being the center of attention. This probably sounds bizarre coming from somebody whose career is being the center of attention. I perform well in front of a crowd while teaching or giving a presentation because I know what I want to say and I tell myself that people are listening because I know things that they want to learn. I practice exactly what I’m going to say and how I’m going to say it, and this practice allows me to manage the anxiety. Informal social situations where I don’t know people well and there’s no “script” provoke a lot of anxiety in me and really tire me out. I get especially anxious if I am in a crowd and people are too close to me, so poster sessions at conferences are my worst nightmare.

In addition to working hard at the university, I serve the community by being a founding member and officer of the PTO at my son’s school and I both sing soprano and ring handbells in my church choir.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I don’t get a lot of time to read for pleasure, but if I can spare the time I “binge read” for entire days. I particularly enjoy books made for children and teens, such as the series by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Harry Potter. Most recently, I re-read Watership Down. I find that reading the books as an adult gives me a different view and appreciation of them than when I was a child. I get more out of them, and especially love to think about the historical context of the books and the events within.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Although probably not your idea of a “tech tool”, I can’t live without Google and YouTube. I depend on them to find interesting real-world relevant issues and videos for my classes. I find Google Scholar to be much easier to use than PsycINFO when searching for full-text research articles. I don’t have any fancy tech tools except an original Kindle Fire – finances are too tight for expensive fancy gadgets.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We talk about contract negotiations (which are going on now – see https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/10/09/connecticut-state-u-professors-see-administration-proposal-attack-tenure) or other things related to school culture and events, especially funny things that happen in class. My favorite topics though are cool videos, news articles, or research studies we’ve seen, especially things that are related to psychology. We also talk about our children; across the department, there are 11 of them under the age of 10!

Kim Case: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 17:53:41 GMT

School: University of Houston-Clear Lake

Type of college/university: Master’s comprehensive: about 9,000 students; about half of the students are undergraduate, half are pursuing Master’s degrees, 2 Ed.D. programs; Hispanic Serving Institution; many first generation students

Locale: Regional state university in suburbs of Houston near NASA

Classes I teach: Careers and Writing in Psychology; Psychology of Women; Social Issues Methods and Analysis; Social Issues Seminar; Graduate Internship, Psychology of Gender, Race, and Sexuality

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Give up control. My friend and colleague Dr. Lillian McEnery told me to try new things in the classroom, even if it scares me. One thing I have come to accept is that there is no perfect course or assignment or activity. You just have to trust yourself and your students that if you try something and it flops, you have the skills and community spirit to pick back up and try something else. This freed me to do much more in the classroom to increase student engagement, get me away from the “sage on the stage” model, and create a brave space for learning.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice (Adams, Bell, Griffin, 1997), Teaching to Transgress (hooks, 1994); Teaching Critical Thinking (bell hooks, 2010); Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (Tatum, 1997); Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Friere, 1970)

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

In my courses, students learning about group privilege and intersections of identity for the first time is both a pedagogical challenge and huge reward for me as a facilitator of growth. These topics are most commonly 100% new to my students. Therefore, there is an extremely high payoff when they begin to understand these new concepts and apply them to their lives. At this point in my career, I am turning my efforts to creating resources for other faculty that need support in their teaching about privilege and intersectional theory.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

My very favorite assignment is my Intersections of Identity Education Project. Students choose an aspect of intersectional theory such as the intersections of race, gender, and social class to examine women of color in poverty versus middle class. They research the chosen intersection and create a product to be used for public education about intersectional theory. For example, one male student created and provided workshops on masculinity, homophobia, and human trafficking to juvenile detention officers. Another contacted a non-profit immigrant advocacy group in New York City and developed brochures for distribution to migrant domestic workers to inform them of their legal rights. His resulting brochures had already reached over 1,000 workers by the end of the semester. Projects also included a documentary emphasizing how Asian women and men are portrayed in popular films, a board game designed to teach players about oppression, privilege, and intersectionality, and videos on ways forms of privilege intersect.

See website for pedagogical resources and more examples: https://sites.google.com/site/drkimcase/intersections-project

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

For assessment, I lean most heavily on reflective papers that incorporate critical thinking while making connections across course materials. I also tend to use reading quizzes to keep students on track so they do not fall behind on reading. My exams are usually a mix of multiple choice, short answer and essay. For graduate classes, all exams are take home and might require 20 hours to complete.

What’s your workspace like?

Two widescreen monitors, Doctor Who and Wonder Woman action figures, mini-fridge close by for Snapple, clean and uncluttered, candy jar for visitors, wide array of colorful pens and markers within reach, 4 X 6 foot wipe off board for planning, listing, and imagining.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

interactive, inclusive, reflective

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Toward engagement, critical analysis, and social justice action.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

Teaching my first course in as a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, the city was struggling after a White police officer shot and killed another unarmed Black man, Timothy Thomas (2001). Still under city-wide curfew and civil unrest all around, our next syllabus topic was white privilege. During that class, a white woman passionately yelled out “they’re all animals” in reference to Black Cincinnatians expressing their outrage about police violence and racism. I was more than completely unprepared for how to handle such a volatile statement in a racially diverse class of 70 students. My memory is hazy, but I think I tried to say something about seeking to understand the perspective of others even when it is difficult and uncomfortable. In my mind, this has always been my biggest pedagogical fail.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I am a member of an exhibition dance team, Collective Sound Cloggers. We clog at festivals, events, Disney World, schools, etc. Our dances are set to a mix of rock, country, pop, folk, and traditional clogging music. For more see our website: http://collectivesoundcloggers.org/

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

The Crow Road by Iain Banks- great mystery novel about a Scottish family and coming of age

What tech tool could you not live without?

My Android phone. Perhaps sadly, I allow work email to spill over into time when I should be away from work. Also, I use my phone a lot to post teaching items (e.g., videos, articles, blogs) on the Facebook page I created about teaching privilege studies and intersectional theory.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

In our break room, we have a large table we jokingly refer to as the “Table of Knowledge.” During lunch, faculty gather and discuss a wide range of issues such as the latest political candidate’s anti-immigrant comments, student plagiarism, deconstruct media messages about the Houston anti-discrimination law, ideas for supporting students with disabilities, or university policy changes and the potential impact on student learning. Some days, we just talk about what happened on The Walking Dead or other favorite shows.

Jennifer Dyer-Seymour: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 21:57:55 GMT

School: California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB).

Type of college/university: We are a small, liberal arts university within the behemoth of the Cal State system.

Locale: We are located just outside of Monterey in Seaside, California. Seaside is on the central coast of California and it is arguably one of the most beautiful places on earth. I am so lucky to be here.

Classes you teach: I have been at CSUMB for 11 years and I have taught all across the curriculum. However, my training is in developmental psychology and I have been able to focus on courses in that area as of late. My favorite course to teach lately is socioemotional development.

What's the best advice about teaching you've ever received?

I'm not sure I've received much advice about teaching. I hope I'm part of the last generation of PhD students who received little to no training about teaching in their doctoral program. I have always loved teaching and after hiding that interest in graduate school I have been able to let it shine at CSUMB. The challenge is that we don't have enough time to really talk about teaching. So I read a lot of books about teaching and I try to go to the teaching parts of conferences at WPA, SRCD, and APS whenever I go to those conferences. Almost everything I read shapes my work as a psychology teacher. From the how-to teaching guides to the novels I read for fun, there is always a gem to grab that helps me think deeply about my teaching.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

There are so many great topics that I love to teach in my classes, from attachment to language development to "correlation does not equal causation." To me, what makes a great topic is whether I can make a smooth connection between the topic and something going on in the real world. Right now I am particularly focused on attachment and love. It seems that so many people are struggling with insecure attachments and lack of love in their lives so it's an easy topic in which to get students interested. It also gives me an excuse to have students read Love at Goon Park by Deborah Blum about Harry Harlow's monkeys, attachment, and love. And I also want students to read Love 2.0 by Barbara Frederickson.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.
My favorite in-class activities are ones that combine active learning and technology. One thing I like to do is discuss studies that students haven't read about yet and have them predict the results. I'll ask them to draw their predictions. This was so interesting the first few times I did it because I purposely was vague about the type of visual display students should use. In psychology we tend to focus on bar graphs but the students were not constrained by thinking they should use bar graphs only. Some used line graphs, pies, and even drawings of people and objects. Then I asked students to take pictures of their displays with their phones and upload to our class Evernote notebook. Then I could show some of the pictures on the pull-down screen. We then discussed whether others would interpret what the author intended and what revisions one would make to improve the display's ability to communicate the data.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?
The teaching and learning techniques that work best for me are what I think of as "baby steps" throughout the term. I know everyone is busy and I myself juggle a lot of things. I try to teach the students that it's better to make slow and steady progress on something then to never start something because there's no time. So I have students to take short quizzes every week or every two weeks and I like to them to write a little each week. I use Evernote and ask that students make at least one note a week in their notebook that relates to the class material. I also love to have students speak in class. Oral communication is tough to practice and master but so critical in our world. I ask students to be part of class discussions during class, to sometimes present at the front of the room, and to do a short oral presentation at the end of the term.

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is quite luxurious. Our psychology department just moved into a new building and I happened to be assigned too large of an office. I'm the chair of the department so that was part of the decision as well. It does help that I have a conference style table for meeting with the various groups I am part of on campus as well as my research students, a computer station for doing my writing and preparatory work for class, and a "lounge" area for those personal conversations I might have with students that seem to be facilitated by comfy chairs!

Three words that best describe your teaching style

Experimental; communication-intensive (students writing and speaking a lot); and flexible.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Care about students and they will learn.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I am sure I have had many teaching disasters over the years and the lovely adaptive aspects of memory have erased them from my mind. I'm pretty good at making lemonade from lemons so I am sure that I have convinced myself that it was actually a good thing that such and such did not work out because then we got to do something else in the class room that I hadn't thought about before.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Something my students would be surprised to learn about me is that I got a C in my introductory psychology class. It was a big, early-morning lecture at UCLA. I would usually make it to class, fall asleep some way into it, and then take off. It's good for students to know that their seemingly smart professors didn't and don't always succeed at everything academic. It's helpful to perform poorly sometimes. It shows us where we need to put our efforts.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I love to read and I usually have half a dozen old-fashioned books and kindle books in progress at any given time. Right now I like Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown. She is a researcher-storyteller and I aspire to be that. She is amazing at it and her messages are so important for everyone. We are flawed human beings and that's a good thing.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My tech tool that I could not live without would probably be cloud storage and especially Google Docs. Google Docs has solved the problem of never knowing which version was the most recent. And I love that many people can work on the same document at once, it saves everyone's work, and you can see other people typing!

What’s your hallway chatter like?

The hallway chatter is either about kids and how challenging it is to be a working parent OR about how psychology can get more respect as a science on campus.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Jennifer talk with Eric about work-life balance and the value of improv training for teachers.

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e039-jennifer-dyer-seymour-powerful-role-model-advocate-for-communication-skills-and-work-life-balance

Drew Appleby: I'm a Member of STP, and This is How I Taught

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 13:24:33 GMT

School names

Marian College (now Marian University) and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

Types of schools/locale

I taught in Indianapolis for my entire 40-year career. I spent my first 27 years at Marian College (a small, private, residential, Catholic, liberal arts college with 60 psychology majors) where I chaired the Psychology Department for 21 years. I was then hired as the Director of Undergraduate Studies at IUPUI (a large, public, commuter, metropolitan, research university with 600 psychology majors) where I remained until I retired in 2011. IUPUI created my new position and hired me to bolster their undergraduate experience and heighten the sense of community within their department that I had established and nurtured at Marian. I spent the next 13 years doing everything in my power to accomplish these two lofty goals, and I was gratified at my retirement party when my chair said, “Drew clearly met the goals he was hired to achieve. Our undergraduate students are better prepared for graduation and life after college, they better understand how their psychology major can help them to achieve their goals, and they are more connected to the department through the various activities he developed. His impact on our students and department will be lasting.”

I was taught to be the “sage on the stage” in graduate school, and I continued this role very successfully for the next 27 years. I worked hard to develop my speaking skills, but I grew increasingly less fulfilled with my classroom “performances.” I began to desire a different relationship with my students—one in which I could trade my sage role for that of a “guide on the side.” Although it took me several years and a great deal of work to adjust to this radial change of pedagogy, I can honestly say that I made a complete transformation from a lecturer to a facilitator of active learning.

Classes you taught

Excelling in College, Study Skills, Freshman Learning Community, Student-Athlete Learning Community, Orientation to a Major in Psychology, General Psychology, Honors General Psychology, Psychology as a Social Science, Honors General Psychology as a Social Science, Advanced General Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Human Growth and Development, Honors Issues Seminar in Human Development, Human Learning and Cognition, Human Information Processing, History and Systems of Psychology, Professional Practice in Academic Advising, Professional Practice in Teaching, Capstone Seminar in Psychology, Internship in Psychology, and Readings and Research in Psychology

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I heard Charles Brewer give a presentation titled Ten Things I Would Like to Tell Beginning Teachers when I attended my first psychology teaching conference in 1984. His advice had a profound effect upon my teaching, and I would like to share some of Dr. Brewer’s tips (CB) along with an expansion of each one based on my four-decade career as a college professor (DA).

CB: Be clear about what your educational objectives are, and be sure your students are clear about them as well. DA: Be sure you able to assess the degree to which your students have actually accomplished your educational objectives when they have completed your courses.

CB: Know the facts thoroughly, but go beyond the facts. Emphasize concepts and principles which have wider applicability than isolated facts. DA: Be sure your students not only remember what you teach them, but also comprehend, apply, analyze, and evaluate what they have learned so they can use these critical thinking skills to create knowledge of their own in the future.

CB: Be willing to say "I don't know," but try to decrease the frequency with which it is necessary to do so. DA: All but the least able students will know you are bluffing if you make up an answer to a question they ask or try to talk your way around it. Show respect for your students by telling them their questions are those whose answers you would like to learn yourself, and show respect for your colleagues by telling your students that you will learn from your colleagues by asking them for the answers and then bringing those answers back to the classroom.

CB: Communicate with clarity and conciseness. It is a simple task to make things complex, but a complex task to make things simple. DA: Follow definitions of hard-to-understand concepts with real-life examples. These examples will not only enable your students to better understand the concepts, but also realize that the subject matter you are teaching is relevant to their lives.

CB: If you expect your students to be interested in and excited about what you want them to do, it is essential for you to be genuinely interested in and excited about what you are doing. DA: Be interested in, excited about, and true to your discipline. If your discipline has a code of ethics or set of principles and/or methods that pertain to teaching, follow them without fail.

CB: Be impeccably fair with each and every one of your students. Be friendly with all of your students, but familiar with none of them. DA:Create clear and thorough course syllabi that will enable your students to know exactly what you will expect them to do, to become aware of the knowledge and skills they can attain in your class that will help them to succeed in graduate school and in their careers, and to understand that you will not play favorites.

CB: Strive to maintain appropriately rigorous academic standards. A common problem of beginning teachers is their almost pathological need to be liked by their students. Being respected is more important; few respected teachers' classes are flooded with mediocre students who get A's without doing any serious academic work. DA: A counter-intuitive phenomenon I experienced during my 40-year teaching career was the strong, positive correlation that existed between the amount of effort I required my students to expend in my classes and the scores I received on their end-of-semester evaluation forms. Students do not mind working hard if they believe their hard work will product valuable outcomes.

CB: Maintain close ties with colleagues of all ages; you will learn a lot from them. You will learn valuable lessons about Zeitgeist and perspective from older colleagues and the younger ones will teach you how to stay intellectually alive and to have a healthy skepticism about traditional ways of doing things. DA: If your discipline’s professional organization has a teaching division, join it and participate actively in it. If your discipline has a journal devoted to teaching, subscribe to it and read it.

CB: The most important influence a teacher can have on students is to help them learn how to learn independently. Self‑education is the only kind of education of any lasting consequence. DA: Alfred North Whitehead once said, “Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.” The current knowledge in many academic disciplines goes out-of-date very quickly. Therefore, it is crucial to help students understand that the knowledge we teach them (i.e., the overt curriculum) is far less important than the skills we require them to develop in order to acquire this knowledge (i.e., the covert curriculum).

CB: Be willing to work incredibly hard for intangible rewards, which often don't come until years after your students graduate. In important ways, teachers affect eternity; they never know where their influence stops. You must learn to be patient, with your students and yourself. DA: Maintain ties with your former students. I have continued to mentor and support my former students since I retired by providing them with career-related advice; writing them letters of recommendation; and helping them with personal statements, resumes, and CVs. These relationships have provided me one of the most important “purposes” of my retirement by allowing me to continue being part of something bigger than myself, which is helping my students continue to succeed (e.g., I keep a list of my students who have reported to me that they have earned a graduate degree, which now has 313+ entries). The only thing I expect from my protégés in return is that they pay it forward by providing the same kind of mentoring to others in the future that I provided to them in the past.

What shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

My work as a psychology teacher was shaped by one book chapter, one conference, one book, and one set of guidelines. I spent my first two years in college as a biology major, following in my father’s academic footsteps to become a dental educator by completing all the required courses for dental school. Unfortunately, I neither enjoyed nor performed well in these courses and finally came to the unfortunate—but very realistic—conclusion that I would not be a successful dental student. Luckily, I enrolled in an introductory psychology class the following semester during which I experienced a truly life-changing epiphany when I read my textbook’s chapter on human learning and memory. As I read it, I quickly became aware that the way I had been studying during my first two years of college was all wrong, and that if I applied the methods I was learning in my textbook to help me study (i.e., transfer information from my sensory memory to my working memory and from my working memory to my long-term memory), my grades would improve. I was right. My newly developed metamemory helped me understand, appreciate, and utilize the memory-improvement techniques from the chapter such as distributed practice, depth of processing, the self-reference effect, and mental imagery. I was astounded by how my test performance increased, and I promptly fell in love with—and changed my major to—psychology.

The conference that shaped my work as a psychology teacher was APA’s National Conference on Enhancing the Quality of Undergraduate Education in Psychology that took place at St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 1991. According to its director, Tom McGovern, the goal of this conference was “to synthesize the scholarship and practice of the teaching and learning of psychology in order to produce a practical handbook for faculty who work with undergraduates in our discipline.” I was one of the 60 psychologists invited to participate during this five-day event, and the opportunity to work with the super stars of psychological pedagogy like Bill McKeachie, Diane Halpern, and Ludy Benjamin on such a crucially important project was truly a life-changing experience.

The book that shaped my work as a psychology teacher was the Handbook for Enhancing Undergraduate Education in Psychology edited by Tom McGovern that was the result of the St. Mary’s Conference. This book literally became my educational bible. It was the first place I went whenever I needed information on topics such as active learning, advising, assessment, community building, curriculum, diversity, and professional development. If I could not find the information I needed in the book, I solicited it from one of my 59 co-authors. I became a living testimony to the efficacy of Tom McGovern’s goal.

The set of guidelines that shaped my work as a psychology teacher was the original version of APA’s Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major that was published in 2006. This document was created by my colleagues and I who served on the APA Board of Educational Affairs task force that developed goals and outcomes for undergraduate psychology programs that could be broadly applied across diverse educational contexts. It served as a strong force for assessment by focusing on the measureable student learning outcomes (i.e., knowledge, skills, and characteristics) that psychology majors should possess when they complete their degree. The processes of helping to craft this amazing document—and then using it at IUPUI to restructure curriculum and enable students to understand the reasoning and value behind the courses they were required to take—awakened me fully to the rationale behind the structure, function, and consequences of the course of study known as the psychology major. In essence, the Guidelines helped me to integrate my roles of teacher, advisor, and mentor during the latter part of my teaching career.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach was B103 Introduction to a Major in Psychology, which was a course I created to produce savvy psychology majors who can provide clear, coherent, confident, and educated answers career-planning questions such as the following.

1. What occupations can I enter if I major in psychology?

2. Which of these occupations can I enter with a bachelor’s degree and which will require me to earn a graduate degree?

3. What specific sets of knowledge, skills, and characteristics (KSCs) must I possess to enter and succeed in these occupations?

4. How can I use both the curricular and extracurricular resources and activities of my undergraduate education to develop these KSCs?

Although I was officially designated as their teacher, I was really my students’ mentor during this class, and I was not hesitant to tell them that. In fact, I used the following section of my syllabus to explain how I would play out this role.

The Role I Will Play in This Class

I will serve more as mentor than as a teacher in this class. Although I know a considerable amount about the careers that psychology majors can enter, I cannot possibly teach each one of you about the career to which you aspire. What I can do is to provide you with a strategy to research your possible careers and to become aware of and utilize the resources that will provide you with the information you will need during this research process. My favorite definition of a mentor is as follows: A mentor is a more experienced person who is willing and able to provide guidance about how to accomplish important goals to a less-experienced person. That is exactly what I will do in this class. The series of questions you will answer as you write your “book” will guide you while you investigate yourself, your major, and your path toward your career. In essence, I will provide you with the opportunity to do what you have always known you should have been doing all along, which is to give careful thought about how you will use your undergraduate education to prepare yourself for your life after you graduate. Apparently this strategy worked quite well because 777 IUPUI psychology majors reported that I was their mentor on their senior exit survey, and 222 of them indicated that I was their most influential mentor by selecting the following sentence to describe my impact: “This professor influenced the whole course of my life, and his effect on me has been invaluable.”

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

My favorite assignment was the “book” I required my students to write in my B103 class. This was my favorite assignment because it allowed me to teach, advise, and mentor all at the same time. I provided them with eight basic questions that become the titles of their chapters, each of which contained a set of sub-questions that required them to ponder, investigate, and write about themselves, their major, their career choices, and their strategies to attain their careers. The textbooks for the class were my book (The Savvy Psychology Major) and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. These two books—and a variety of on-line and on-campus resources—contained the information students needed to answer the eight questions in a professional manner within the context of their own unique career aspirations. My TAs and I provided my students with copious amounts of feedback on both the APA style and content of each chapter, and I required them to revise their chapters on the basis of this feedback. At the end of the semester, they collated all of these chapters into a book and submitted it for my final evaluation and grade.

As you might expect, my students were initially stunned, horrified, and outraged at the prospect of having to write a book, especially in a class that earns them only one credit hour. However, as the semester progressed, they began to understand the value of this arduous task as demonstrated by the following comment taken verbatim from one of my end-of-semester student evaluation forms.

"I discovered quite a bit about myself by writing this book. B103 finally forced me to do some serious self-reflection and to honestly evaluate my true interests and goals. I am now confident that I am in a major that is appropriate for me and that I am getting very close to successfully deciding what type of graduate program I will pursue. B103 scared me, stressed me out, and made me a better, more complete person all at the same time. I have realized over the last few months that the reason I was floundering around with no direction was because I was hoping everything would just magically fall into place. Through some serious soul searching, caused mainly by the stress of having to make certain decisions in order to successfully write my chapters, I learned I have never had to truly fight for anything in my life before and now the time has come for me to make a plan and aggressively go after and fight for the things I want for my future. I have also realized I am capable of achieving anything I want if I plan ahead and try hard enough."

What teaching and learning technique worked best for you?

My most effective teaching strategy to improve student learning was to require my students to come to each of my classes knowledgeable about the subject matter that was to be covered in that class. In my B103 class, that meant I required my students to complete a reading assignment prior to each class and to take a short quiz on that material that began at the exact time when the class began. This caused my students to come to class, to come to class on time, and to come to class ready to engage in active learning rather than skipping class, arriving late to class, and acting like spectators—rather than active participants—in my class. My teaching assistants graded the quizzes in class, recorded the scores, and returned the quizzes to my students. I then went over each question, provided the correct answer, and encouraged discussion to clarify any questions my students had about the material covered in the quiz.

Four words that best described your teaching style.

The four most common words my students used to describe my teaching style on their end-of-semester evaluations were PASSIONATE, CHALLENGING, CARING, and ORGANIZED.

What was your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Education is learning how to learn.

Tell us about a teaching embarrassment you’ve had.

My most embarrassing teaching moment occurred early in my career when I almost gave the same lecture twice in a row to one of my classes. It was a lecture on Piaget that I was giving in all three sections of my Introductory Psychology class and both sections of my Human Growth and Development class over a two-week period. Giving the same lecture so many times must have disoriented by memory, but certainly not my students’ memory. After about five minutes I noticed that no one was taking notes and everyone was looking at me in a very strange way. When I stopped to ask them why they were acting this way, one of them very diplomatically informed me that I was repeating exactly what I had said during the beginning of my last lecture. Given that the title of one of my previous lectures on human memory had been “How We Remember and Why We Forget,” I decided to turn it into a teachable moment by asking my students to use what I had taught them about forgetting to explain my error. If my current memory serves me correctly, we had a productive discussion and a very hearty laugh about my embarrassing error.

What is something your students were surprised to learn about you?

My students were surprised that higher education is the Appleby family business. One of the most gratifying aspects of my career was that it provided me with the rare and wonderful opportunity to collaborate professionally with my father and my daughter, both of whom held the rank of full professor and served as chairpersons of their departments. I co-authored my very first publication with my father. It was an article published in 1977 in the Iowa Dental Journal titled “A History of Teaching by Television.” Twenty-eight years later, the third generation of college educators in the Appleby family (my daughter Karen, who is a sport psychologist) had her first paper (titled “Kisses of Death in the Graduate School Application Process”) accepted for publication in Teaching of Psychology, and I was her co-author.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I have started to read for pleasure again, and I have rediscovered two of my favorite authors, Anna Quindlen and Calvin Trillin. If you have time to read, I strongly recommend Trillin’s About Alice and Anna’s Blessings, One True Thing, and A Short Guide to a Happy Life. You will learn many valuable life lessons in these books, including the one most important to me: Do everything in your power to show the ones you love how much you love them because you never know what life is going to throw at you, and you do not want to regret the things you did not do, but know you should have done. I helped my students to become savvy psychology majors. These authors can help all of us become more savvy human beings.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I could not live without my desktop computer. Although I derive pleasure from my other electronic devices, my desktop is my work horse because it provides me access to email, Google, Word, and PowerPoint.

Lisa Cravens-Brown: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 18:06:52 GMT

School: The Ohio State University

Type of college/university: 4-year, land-grant, large university

School locale: City – Columbus is the capital city of Ohio (about 822,000 people)

Classes you teach
Human Sexuality, Adolescent Sexuality, Abnormal Psychology, Research Methods, Statistics/Data Analysis, Delinquency, Psychology of Gender, occasionally Health Psychology – most of my classes have 80-120 people enrolled, so these are generally LARGE classes

What's the best advice about teaching you've ever received?
Hmmm…I didn’t really get a lot of teaching mentorship as I developed. I mostly tried to emulate the most influential instructors I had. One important thing I learned from watching them was to be passionate about the content of the course and teaching. A good teacher’s passion for the subject can overcome any reticence a student has about taking the course.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?
I simply love every edition of the Teaching of Psychology journal. I learn so much about what others are doing around the world in their classrooms & I get so many ideas that I want to try in my own.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. Oh, goodness, I love all my courses. I love to teach data analysis because it is a subject that most students dread taking and I like the challenge of getting them to see that it can be a really enjoyable, interesting class. I also really like seeing students in that course think they can’t do it at first, but then find out that they can & have these great success experiences.

The human sexuality course is definitely the most fun and “easy” course for me to teach. Though it is a very personal and difficult topic for many people to talk about, my method of coping with difficult emotions is to use humor, so that class is full of fun and laughter. It is also an elective course, so students are taking it because they want to and not because they have to.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?)
I’m really working on “hybridizing” most of my courses. I would like to move away from lecturing “at” them for every class meeting and having a real combination of discussion, activities, and lecture. In most of my advanced classes, I have them take their quiz/test on the reading material before we ever discuss it & then I give them 5 or so minutes at the beginning of class to re-acquaint themselves with the reading, so that we can have a good discussion, rather than only 3 or 4 people out of the 80-100 present participating. Starting this term, OSU has site-licensed a classroom response software package that’s making it possible for everyone to participate in discussions and polls, which I think is helping with the discussion aspect.

What's your workspace like?
Ha! My desk is always a mess. I clean it every single term as soon as I finish sending the last of my grades to the registrar – it is a ritual of mine. Every single term, I say that the next term will be the one where I keep my desk clean all the time, but that has yet to happen!

My office is decorated to the hilt – I spend the majority of my awake hours in that space, so I want it to be a reflection of me and the things that are important to me. I have a lot of OSU Buckeye paraphernalia and pictures around the office, many pictures of my family, posters from theatrical productions of which I’ve been a part, and a lot of plants in the window (including orchids and African violets which are often blooming). The top shelf of my desk is decorated with Thank You cards from students – there must be 200 up there now. I keep meaning to go through them and make more room up there, but every time I take one down and read it, I remember the student who wrote it & I’m unwilling to part with it. Maybe I need a bigger shelf!

Three words that best describe your teaching style.
Enthusiastic, Engaged , Entertaining

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Hook them with what I love about psychology.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you've had.
I haven’t really had any major disasters, but I tend to have a lot of technical hitches – I am very dramatic in my presentation, so I’ll give this big hype on how fantastic this next video clip will be & then we all have to wait around for 5 minutes because I can’t get my link to work, or the computer has timed out, or some other snafu. I also teach my honors data analysis class in computer lab with a Smart Board and I have started telling my students at the beginning of the term that the room and I have a love-hate relationship because I can only get that thing to work for me about 50% of the time.

Also, I have a strong fear of turning around to write on the board in classes because I am paranoid that my pants will have split open without my knowing, or I will have chalk all over my derrière and I will be the only one who doesn’t know about it. None of this has ever happened yet, but it is still on my mind every time I write on the board – thank goodness for Power Point saving me from doing that very often!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?
I’m actually a bit socially anxious and I am not quite as strongly extroverted as I appear. I get really nervous going into new social situations and I also need a lot of quiet recharge time to be as energetic as I am in classes and with students.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?
I’m just finishing The Bloodletter’s Daughter by Linda Lafferty and I’ve decided once I finish that, I’m going to re-read the Harry Potter series. It’s been a few years and I miss that magical world.

What tech tool could you not live without?
For teaching – powerpoint, my remote clicker/laser pointer, YouTube

Personally – I am attached to my smart phone in a very enmeshed fashion – I absolutely love it & really like that I can Google anything I want no matter where I am

What's your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?
It depends on the season – my next door office neighbor is also a big football fan, so we talk football in autumn – but she is also really interested in women’s studies and gender/sexuality issues, so we talk about politics, feminism, and other things in that arena year-round.

Ana Kehrberg: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 02:20:48 GMT

School name: Muskingum University

Type of school: Small liberal arts school

School locale: Rural southeast Ohio

Classes you teach: My courses include Introduction to Psychology, Physiological Psychology, Learning and Memory, Psychopharmacology, Topics in Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Advanced Experimental Psychology

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice came from an experienced professor who told me it was okay to let students fail themselves. In other words, I am not responsible for fixing all of their problems, or ensuring that all earn A’s. Now when students ask for extensions for papers or projects, I will usually grant them (minus a small penalty per late day), knowing that the final product is not often much different from the grade they would have received if they had completed the assignment on time. Thus, I do not have to determine the merit of each student’s excuse, while still being fair to other students.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

As is true for many other educators, McKeachie’s Teaching Tips was the first book I read about teaching. As a teaching assistant before reading his book, I had simply relied on my own knowledge and undergraduate experiences. The book helped me think about how to best teach a wide variety of students, especially those whose educational needs and desires differ from my own.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love introducing students to the brain. Neuroscience intimidates many Intro Psych students, as well as those "forced" to take a biological psychology course as one of our core requirements for the major. Therefore, I enjoy watching them recognize how understanding the brain applies to their future careers in counseling, social work, teaching, etc. In the upper-level classes, students choose a topic of interest to them that I will not have time to cover in lecture. They research the biological explanations for this behavior or disorder and then give a 10 minute PowerPoint presentation to the class. Popular topics have included music's effect on the brain, sign language, synesthesia, and near-death experiences.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

In my Intro sections, I make neuroanatomy less intimidating by having the students work in small groups to create brains using modeling clay. I ask them to label important brain structures and fissures. This is a quick 10 minute exercise that really excites the students. The competition can be fierce to be voted as the best brain by their peers and myself. I provide a small prize for the winning group.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?)

Student presentations. I stumbled onto this type of assignment because grading papers was taking me too long, so I needed a different assignment that allowed students to focus on a topic of interest, without requiring so much of my grading time (which I save for grading essay questions on tests instead). I have incorporated these presentations into all of my 200- and 300-level courses, in slightly different ways for each course. However, these are usually 5-10 minute PowerPoint presentations on a topic chosen by the student, typically from a list of possible topics I provided. The most important part of these presentations is for the student to connect their topic to the concepts we have covered in the course. Therefore, at the end, they are required to include a slide listing all of the course vocabulary words discussed in their presentation.

I usually schedule these presentations at the end of each chapter, or before each test. This ensures that not all of the presentations are at the end of the semester, but also that they serve as a review of the recently learned information, before the students are tested on that material. In between each of the student presentations, I try to stress important vocabulary words and connections to the information that will be on the upcoming test.

What’s your workspace like?

My office is relatively large, but windowless and cluttered. Pictured here is part of my lab space where I can run rat experiments, or write in a quiet space.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, encouraging, and interdisciplinary

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Make neuroscience approachable, fascinating, and relevant to students.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

For my very first teaching experience in graduate school, I wore a denim skirt that buttoned up the front. I stood on a chair to write at the top of the chalkboard before class started, and three of the buttons popped open. Thankfully another three or four stayed buttoned, but I quickly sat down on that chair and pulled it under the front table. I now wonder how many of those students noticed my wardrobe malfunction and how many just wondered what I was doing under the table as I re-snapped those buttons.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I never wanted to teach. I was painfully quiet in my own undergraduate classes and avoided every possible opportunity to even tutor other students during those years. I was drawn to research because I thought it best fit my introverted personality. Then in graduate school I became involved in outreach activities to the local elementary schools. I loved watching those children see, hold, and understand the brain for the first time. Their enthusiasm was contagious and I realized that I could share my own love of neuroscience and research with many more people by teaching at a liberal arts school. Many students now think I'm very outgoing based on my teaching persona.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

It feels as if most of my pleasure reading is written by Dr. Seuss, Richard Scarry, and Sandra Boynton, as I read with my 3 year-old son. But my own liberal arts education solidified my love of mystery novels. I was “forced” to take a Detective Fiction course in the English department as part of my undergraduate general education requirements, but the class ended up being one of my favorites. Currently, I am reading The Monkey’s Raincoat by Robert Crais.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I have students turn in most of their assignments through BlackBoard. It would be hard for me to go back to organizing hard copies of all the paperwork turned in each semester.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

There are six of us in the department and we all genuinely like one another, so our discussions run the gamut of possible topics. We discuss everything from students’ research projects to pop culture, and everything in between. At least once a year we bring our families together at one faculty member’s house for fun and food. We also attend the Midwestern Psychological Association conference and together enjoy all the perks available in a big city.

Rajiv Jhangiani: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 12:36:00 GMT

Where I teach: Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Type of college/university Mid-size public undergraduate university
School locale Urban campus in a suburb of Vancouver, BC, Canada

Classes I teach: Introductory Psychology, Research Methods, Statistics, Social Psychology, Personality Psychology, Cognition, Conservation Psychology, and the Psychology of Genocide

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?
To be yourself in the classroom and let your personality shine through your teaching. To tell stories if you are a storyteller, to use humour if it comes naturally, and to self-disclose if it feels appropriate. Also, to take a scholarly approach to teaching.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

There are many such books (e.g., What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain), but instead I am going to go with a blog post by David Wiley titled “What is Open Pedagogy?”

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.
I love talking about the Stanford Prison study (no, it is not an experiment). But not in the way that you would think. I first teach it as Zimbardo would. And then I begin to ask a series of probing, Socratic questions that lead the students to deconstruct the study until it patently clear that the emperor has no clothes and that there is actually plenty of evidence that supports a dispositional interpretation.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.
An in-class exercise that I primarily use to demonstrate the prisoner’s dilemma and group decision-making. The class is split into two groups, each of which is informed that they are the joint owners of a gas station. The owners of each gas station (which are located across the street from one another) must decide on the price of their gas without knowing the price across the street. This decision is made 14 times in order to simulate 14 days of competition. The exercise is inevitably engaging, hilarious, and illustrative.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?
I incorporate low-stakes mastery quizzing, peer assessments, and in-class exams with two stages - an individual attempt, followed by a group discussion and a second individual attempt.

What’s your workspace like?
I like to keep things fairly neat, with paperwork organized and filed, and books sorted by category on bookshelves (potential “behavioral residue” of conscientiousness, to use Gosling’s terminology). I also love to surround my space with art, old maps, vases, sculptures, and other artifacts (behavioral residue of openness?). And photographs of my boys, of course!

Three words that best describe your teaching style
Interactive, humorous, and experimental

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?
Fostering skill development via rapport, relevance, and rigor

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.
One semester early in my teaching career I found myself teaching full time (four courses) at one institution while teaching two additional courses at another institution as an adjunct (you can probably guess that these were the days before our children were born). I recall one day in particular when I emerged from a meeting and entered my classroom, unable to recall with any certainty what topic we were meant to be discussing that day! Of course I ended up asking the class (after explaining the source of my discombobulation, which they found hilarious). We ended up referring to my case over the semester whenever we talked about the limits of human cognition.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?
For about seven years I was a member of a professional dance company and performed in productions ranging from musical theatre to large arena shows, as well as television and (Bollywood) film. Interestingly, I have found that many of the skills I developed during this time transfer rather well into the classroom.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (set in my hometown of Bombay, India) and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

What tech tool could you not live without?
Confession: I use a fair bit of tech – Prezi, Skype, online peer assessment platforms, online office hour booking systems, Dropbox, Google docs, Wordpress, etc. But the tool that I find the most useful is undoubtedly Twitter. I have found that there is no better way to keep abreast of new developments, make connections, and disseminate psychological science widely. You can find me online @thatpsychprof.

What’s your hallway chatter like?
We talk a lot about teaching (challenges and strategies) and the scholarship of teaching and learning, but lately have been discussing open educational practices (e.g., open textbooks, open pedagogy, etc.) rather a lot. That last bit is probably my fault. When we are not talking shop we talk about what we are reading (we have a book club), our kids (many of us have young children), and when we will next get together outside of work (we are a pretty social bunch).

Kristie Morris: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach.

(Past member) — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 18:33:45 GMT

School name: Rockland Community College

Type of school: Community College

School locale: Small town in a somewhat rural area

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Psychology of Childhood, Psychology of Adolescence, Human Sexuality

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Don’t be friends with your students; instead, be friendly with them. I use some personal stories in order to make course material easier to learn and remember; however, maintaining a proper distance from students make grading and judgment calls much easier!

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love to teach about gender, gender identity, how children acquire their gender expectations and gender roles, and how adolescents’ ideas about gender are reinforced in the media. These topics come up in my Developmental Psychology, Psychology of Childhood, or Psychology of Adolescence courses. I find that these topics usually garner a great deal of discussion and questions because students often have misunderstandings about what gender is, how gender differs from sex, and how both nature and nurture are HUGE influences on gender. One of the best parts of this lecture topic is the inclusion of the Bechdel Test. Alison Bechdel, a prominent American cartoonist, famously refuses to partake of any media that does not have at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. I ask my students if their favorite TV programs or movies pass this test. Students realize this is much harder than it sounds! We then have a fun discussion of how the media can teach children how women can be portrayed in an unhealthy way based on the results of this test.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I love to teach Diana Baumrind’s parenting styles. These parenting styles are applicable to most students’ lives in some way or fashion, and student usually have plenty of stories to tell about discipline, favoritism, or exceptions to parenting outcomes. My students are usually fascinated by the cultural exceptions to these styles, and they always want to know if their parents were “normal.” Then we get to our related activity, and this one is so much fun!

Several years ago, Tommy Jordan, a father of a teenaged girl, saw a post on her Facebook wall in which she complained about her household chores and her parents’ rules (with quite a bit of profanity). Jordan responded by posting a video on YouTube, and in this video, he point-by-point explained how she was incorrect in her complaints, and then he SHOT his daughter’s computer with his handgun six or seven times. After viewing the video, I ask my students to get into small groups and decide which parenting style he used. They love this activity and really become passionate about Jordan’s response.

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is generally neat and clear of debris on the first day of the semester, but once school gets going, it gets cluttered. I tend to sort everything into piles. My office is decorated with my niece’s art, Doctor Who action figures and magnets, posters, and cat photos.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

I’m always clear, fair, and enthusiastic.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

My students know that I’ve lived all over the U.S., and I love to travel. However, I’ve never really been out of the country.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I am reading Aziz Ansari’s and Eric Klinenberg’s Modern Romance. It’s a humorous take on what many people do to find love and romance today – online dating, dating apps, etc. There’s a lot of good research in the book and Ansari puts his unique comedic spin on the subject.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My favorite tech tools are Remind and Google Voice. I need to be able to stay in communication with my students, and they are resistant to using our school e-mail. Remind allows me to text my students without involving phone numbers. It is really easy to send the entire class or even all of my classes a text all at the same time. The Google Voice app allows my students to call my cell phone without giving them my “real” phone number. Google Voice provides me with another phone number that I give to my students, and if they call it, my phone will ring, and they can also leave messages. If I use the app, I can call them back without my students seeing my actual phone number on their phone screens.

Aaron Richmond: I'm a member of STP and This is How I Teach

Mon, 03 Aug 2015 17:35:18 GMT

School name: Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver)

Type of college/university: MSU Denver is a large state university focused on teaching at the undergraduate level. We follow, what you may call, the teacher-scholar model.

School locale: Metropolitan city in the Rocky Mountains.

Classes you teach: Educational Psychology, Research Methods, Senior Thesis, Multivariate Statistics, and Cognitive Development. (All at the undergraduate level. )

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?
I have had some great mentors in the past (Yes, that’s you Doug Woody, Mark Krank, Mitch Handelsman to name a few) who have given me outstanding advice. First, play to your strengths. That is, if you are an outstanding storyteller—tell good stories. If you are great at devising learning activities—use them a lot and effectively. If your heart is in the research—find ways to demonstrate this to students. Second, everything that you expect of your students, they should expect of you. For instance, in all of my syllabi I have a list of student expectations (as many of you do) but correspondingly, I have a list of expectations that students should have for me (see below). In essence talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

It is always Information Processing Theory (IPT) no matter the course. Because I teach to students who will become teachers themselves, I find IPT to be easily applied to students directly. Students can not only experience working memory, or levels of processing, or attention deficits through active learning techniques, but I also love to teach them learning strategies that they may use in my class and in other courses. After this lesson, I always feel elated because it is like a gift that keeps on giving.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I have so many favorite activities, but one that always is successful is on fine and gross motor skill development. As mentioned previously, most of my students will become elementary teachers; therefore it is important that they know what their students will experience when developing these skills. And because these skills often develop early with no memory of the experiences, my students have difficulty identifying and understanding certain fine and gross motor skills (e.g., learning to write). To get students to remember (cognitively, physically, and emotionally) what it was like to learn these skills, I ask for student volunteers to remove the shoe and sock of their least dominant-foot (i.e., if they are right handed, then their left foot). Then students are asked to first write their name at the top of the paper, then to draw a self-portrait with a marker or crayon (see pictures above). Next, I collect all of the drawings and share them with the class. I then show the class several drawings of 4-year-olds who were asked to complete the same task, except with their hands, not their feet. Students then discuss how similar and dissimilar the drawings are, what they felt while they were drawing (they often report feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed). My students notice how this may relate to children going through fine and gross motor development. Finally, as a class we debrief and share our experiences. Students often tell me how amazing it was to experience what the trials and tribulations of learning to write will be like for their students.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I like so many. When it comes to pedagogy and teaching techniques, I take the kitchen-sink approach and vary my instructional strategies. I often use the flipped lesson design, or case studies and elementary classroom observations, or cooperative learning techniques (e.g., jigsaw), or classroom assessment techniques (e.g., the one-minute paper). Currently, one of my favorite techniques is one Bethany Fleck and I created called Active Reading Questions (ARQs). Essentially, we have students answer lower and higher level questions about an assigned reading and at the end of the ARQ students have an opportunity to tell us what they are still struggling with. They complete the ARQ before class and we open each class with what the students have told us what they are struggling with. In essence, this is the starting point for the lesson. We find that ARQs allow students to understand course content at a deeper level because they come into class with a basic understanding of the material.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Active, Passionate, Skilled!

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Always be prepared, student-centered, compassionate/sensitive, scholarly, and adaptive.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

First, I can’t believe I’m about to tell this story, Second, WARNING VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED. Third, The day I received the most wonderful news that I had won STP’s Jane S. Halonen Teaching in Excellence Award (yes, revel in the irony after reading), my educational psychology students were giving mock 4^th grade social studies lessons based on Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligence. Each group was assigned a “type of intelligence” to teach the lesson using their assigned intelligence (e.g., linguistic, naturalistic, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, etc.). While observing the musical intelligence group give their lesson, the lead group member (mind you that 99% of my students are female and this was the one male student in the class) of the visual-spatial intelligence lesson came up to me and asked, “We have PowerPoint presentation that we would like to use. Can you load it onto your computer? Here is my flash-drive.” INSERT DRAMATIC PAUSE. I obliged and put his flash drive into my computer while task-switching by watching the musical intelligence lesson. All of a sudden I heard mumblings and snickering in the back of the class. Then clear as day I heard a woman say, “Oh my!” then another woman say, “Well that looks uncomfortable” then another woman say, “I didn’t know that was possible”. I turned around to face the front of the class and to my horror projected onto the screen were 20 1ft X 1ft pictures of, let’s say adults with all of their bits and parts exposed engaged in activities that you do when all of your bits and parts are exposed! I instantly ripped the flash-drive from my computer, told the student that his group will just need to tell us about their lesson, then apologized to the class. The male student then said to the class, “I’m sorry I found this flash-drive on campus. I didn’t know that was on there.” In my mind I said, Sure you did buddy! but I just looked at him and said, “Please stop talking.” With the weight of what just happened in the pit of my stomach I continued the class for the remaining 60 minutes. It may have been the longest most uncomfortable 60 minutes of my life! Following the end of class, I immediately went to my chair and told him all about what happened. After he recovered from laughing so hard that he snorted tea out of his nose, we devised a plan on how to mitigate the issue and make sure no students were still distressed. To this day, my students still talk about that experience. MORAL OF THE STORY: Never let a student hand you a flash-drive to put into your computer. Instead, ALWAYS have students email you their presentation!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Because I am a developmental educational psychologist I use a lot of personal examples in how I socially, cognitively, emotionally, and physically developed. Sometimes I use pseudonyms sometimes I don’t. When talking about social development I often talk about my identity development. I went through a lot of different ones. For instance, I used to be a professional rodeo athlete, was an environmental activist, had long hair, was a small business owner, and worked construction. These aspects of my life always throw off students. Sometimes students don’t believe me until I show pictures. J

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Probably my favorite author is Sherman Alexie. I am currently reading his books The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. However, like my friend Eric Landrum, I have a hard time reading for pleasure. I tend to watch movies and TV shows. Currently, I am on a binge of Game of Thrones. People, “Winter is Coming!”

What tech tool could you not live without?

Oh…there are so many. Mainly, I like to use Twitter (@AaronSRichmond) to send interesting current info to my students. Or I use Celly (https://cel.ly/) in my course. My students are becoming more and more resistant to email (OH THE IRONY!), so I use Celly to text my students without knowing their cell numbers or my students not knowing my cell number. It is brilliant! Thanks @Sue_Frantz!

What’s your hallway chatter like?

Here at MSU Denver we have a very large department that is quite collegial. Although we all have disparate schedules, we have a tendency to do more than just a little bit of water cooler chatter. It typically centers on how best to help students learn (seriously), lamenting about how there is never enough time in the day, or how one another explored the beautiful state of Colorado over the weekend. However, each month or so, I arrange a departmental social hour off campus and many of us get together to enjoy each other’s company and some adult beverages.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Garth talk with Aaron about his journey to academicsand scaffolding, the syllabus, translational science, and "opportunities" for students.

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e031-aaron-richmond-authentic-scholar-inspiration-and-master-teacher-role-model

Beth Johnson: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 18:10:06 GMT

School name: Alfred University

Type of school: Small private 4-year school, and I’m in the liberal arts college within the university

School locale: Very small town in a very rural area in Western NY

Classes you teach: Introductory Psychology, Social Psychology, Psychology of Gender, Human Sexuality, Principles of Learning and Behavior Modification, and Advanced Research Design and Statistics

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

“Begin as you mean to go on.” And then, its unspoken stipulation: Be sure to actually check that what you think you’re accomplishing is what’s actually happening, and don’t keep doing something that’s not working! I’ve learned the importance of making psychology concrete and useful to know outside of the classroom and after the semester has ended.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?I’ve gotten a lot of mileage from How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why It Happens, by Benedict Carey. I use so much of the material, both as subject matter in my classes, but also in the design of my classes themselves, that I finally just assigned the book for the students as a required text. The other books I’ve appreciated are How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, by Susan Ambrose, et al., and Don’t Shoot the Dog, by Karen Pryor. My day-to-day teaching and course design are becoming more dependent on behavior modification strategies as I go along.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Any time someone asks me what my favorite ____ is, I struggle to answer because I have favorites sub-classified on different dimensions for almost everything. That’s not a very specific answer though. If you force me to nail it down, I will say that Introductory Psychology is my favorite, because it is a high energy, “best of” compilation that is always fresh and exciting because it’s the first time many of the students are exposed to the field.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I’m increasingly emphasizing metacognition and self-directed learning in my courses, because I have decided that learning how thinking works and how to learn will be more widely applicable to the majority of my students’ futures than just the topical content of any of my psychology courses. Only a small percentage of my students will continue with psychology past graduation, but all of them will need to know how to regulate and motivate themselves and understand what they know and how to effectively learn anything they want to know. We always talk about how psychology is an eminently useful field for people who are not psychologists, and in addition to having an understanding of psychology principles, we hope to produce critical thinkers and literate consumers. However, the idea of a “Users’ Manual” for the brain seems more and more attractive to me, and a nice approach to a liberal arts education.

One assignment I’ve developed in my Learning and Behavior Modification course to help develop these qualities is concept mapping how learning works. It’s a multi-part process: I started by breaking up the class into groups and giving them each a matching set of about 20 large color pictures. The pictures were of all kinds of things. The groups were required to sort the pictures into categories, with no fewer than 2 pictures in any category, and no fewer than 2 categories total. Once the pictures were sorted, they had to put them back together and sort them a new way. Then, again. They had to turn in a sheet with a list of the different dimensions on which they sorted the stack, and how many categories there were for each sorting. The fewest any group submitted was 10 sortings, and most had many more!

We then spent time talking as a class about the process and their answers, and I tied the exercise into a review of elaboration as a tool to improve the encoding of new information in memory. The students were amazed by how many different ways one can think about the same thing. The next phase of the assignment was to have each student begin creating a concept map of the “learning to learn” material we’d covered in the unit, following a short in-class tutorial on concept mapping. They began by creating a glossary of terms related to the concept. Then they had to sort their glossary a few times, to find the best dimensions on which to arrange the terms. The next step was to draft a concept map of their arranged glossary, which they had to show me for participation credit. The last step was out of class, required students to revise and re-do their concept maps, for which I supplied big pieces of paper, and I encouraged them to use creativity in color, symbol, placement, and connections to aid their memory and understanding of the concept. The students turned in their final concept maps, many with shining eyes and proud gestures, and I was blown away by the high quality of the work. Some of the best of the bunch AND the crummier ones were handed to me by students who grumbled that they’d never thought so hard about a particular unit, and they would never forget this damn map. That made me smile. I look forward to using this exercise again!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I try to use a lot of tools and techniques in every class, to mix things up and keep the class active. I use online, mastery based quizzing outside of class in some classes, and scheduled and pop quizzes in other classes. I use short video clips, games with competition and cooperative elements (and often some terribly cheesy prizes for winners), I assign a lot of reading, we do a lot of writing in and out of class, and I very much enjoy discussion and debates in class. I love using live demonstrations and simulations when possible, especially if it involves the whole class rather than a few volunteers. I often break students into pairs or groups for activities, especially in the large classes. Maybe it’s just easier to say that the teaching technique that works best for me is variety!

What’s your workspace like?

My office varies in levels of paper-based bedlam over the semester, and the most critical pieces of equipment in it are the coffee machine, the computer, and the recliner. I made my computer a standing work station a couple of years ago (which I enthusiastically recommend), and so I have many different work modes available in the room. I also have a big cage (out of frame) for when my pet rats are at work with me, either for a guest appearance in class or just to be companionable.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, engaging, and applied

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Using scholarly teaching, make psychology valuable for everyone

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I’ve long been emphasizing the importance of connecting the class material in any course to news and “outside world” situations (notice I didn’t go with “real world” there), and nowhere is that easier than in Social Psychology. In that course, I use what I’ve named Analytic Thinking Reviews (ATRs) to get students to write about how the material from each unit can be explicitly applied to a particular event or situation. The exercise has evolved over the last couple of years, but the first time I implemented it, I ran into a snag that absolutely blindsided me. That year (spring semester of 2013), for the unit on social cognition, I asked the question, “How do schemas and expectations influence our interpretation of events? Use these concepts to explain divided opinions over whether George Zimmerman’s killing of Trayvon Martin was racially motivated murder or justifiable self-defense. (Discuss both sides of the issue from a social psychological perspective, rather than relating your personal opinion.)” The students bent over their papers dutifully, but a couple of minutes passed before I realized I wasn’t hearing the scratching of pens at the same level as previous weeks. As I looked around the room, one student slowly raised her hand and asked, “Um, who are these people?” I stifled my reflexive, “Really?!?” and instead asked the class to raise their hands if they were familiar with this news story. Three people (out of 30-ish) raised their hands. I was then faced with the impossibility of relating the details of the event in a way that A) wouldn’t answer the question for them, and B) was anywhere near “objective,” seeing as many of those details are still in question. In subsequent semesters, I’ve changed the course component to begin with them getting the ATR at the beginning of each unit as a framing question, and I admonish the students to take time over the week to look up anything or anyone they’re not familiar with before it’s time to write their answers at the end of the unit.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I use myself as an example for many things in class, so there aren’t many things my students haven’t heard about. Maybe they’d be surprised that, despite my cheerful comfort in the classroom, in the couple of weeks before every semester, I have “back to school” nightmares, where I dream that the first day of class starts in two hours and I haven’t made the syllabus, or I go to class for the first time and realize it’s the SECOND day of class, or I get told that I am suddenly assigned to teach a class I’ve never taught before and it starts in 5 minutes. The nightmares stop as soon as the semester actually begins, but it happens every semester, like clockwork. Sweaty, hyperventilating clockwork.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

My summer reading is usually a mix of popular press psychology books (like Steven Pinker’s Sense of Style or Jeremy Dean’s Making Habits, Breaking Habits), which I mine for tidbits to bring to class, and a forgettable string of popcorn fiction involving adventure, romance, mystery, and suspense. During the school year, I stick with the popcorn; I read things that require my brain to participate enough during the work day.

What tech tool could you not live without?

At the risk of being unoriginal, my smart phone. It completes me.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Around the corridors and office doorways, it ranges. My favorites are the conversations where I ask my colleagues for foreseeable pitfalls or clever improvements for this great new idea I just had for class, and the subsequent conversations where I crow about how well it went, or lament its crashing and burning. But we talk about everything, and often for longer than we had to spare for office chatter.

Brianne Friberg: I'm a member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 06 Jul 2015 13:34:55 GMT

School name: Liberty University
Type of college/university: Large private, non-profit university
School locale: foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains (Lynchburg, VA

Classes you teach:

Introduction to Research*, Exceptional Child*, Developmental Psychology Honors, General Psychology Honors, Adolescent Development, and (coming soon) Advanced Research Methods/Statistics.

What's the best advice about teaching you've ever received?

Be yourself. My first year teaching, a colleague and I discussed various lectures that had been “homeruns” for us. We each tried to implement the approach of the other, and, needless to say, they fell flat. We still laugh about how terribly they went. It was in that moment that I realized that we each need to play to our strengths. I am able to best deliver content and co-construct knowledge with students when I am excited about both the material and my approach to that day’s class. I want all activities and methods of delivery to enhance learning, not detract from it.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I can’t think of any one book (maybe Whistling Vivaldi?), but I can think of several resources that I repeatedly use. I am constantly searching for relevant content and new strategies for enhancing student engagement and learning in the classroom (especially those that are empirically-based). As such, I follow several blogs and Twitter accounts that relate to the courses I teach. Two of my favorite blogs related to research are Jessica Hartnett’s “Not Awful and Boring Examples for Teaching Statistics and Research Methods” and Beth Morling’s “Everyday Research Methods”. These blogs offer ideas for student discussion related to recent news stories, infographics, memes, etc. From the Twitter world, I am always trying to find a way to work in a methods/statistics meme from “Research Mark Wahlberg” (@ResearchMark). These resources are appreciated by the students, who see them as relevant and up-to-date.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

It is hard to decide which course is my favorite to teach. I love teaching Research Methods because I see the growth and transformation in students from the beginning to the end of the semester. However, I consistently leave my Exceptional Child class feeling invigorated by the day’s events. The course is a diverse group of majors (Education, Psychology, ASL, Nursing, and more), so each student brings a unique perspective to the course. Many intend on working with this population of children and families, so they are eager to learn and have a variety of questions (especially when research counters their experience or favorite Facebook posts). During this course, I work to have them apply theory to various clips from the news or popular television shows depicting various developmental disorders. I also try to show them stories that push them to see beyond their preconceived notions of what is or is not possible for individuals with disabilities. In addition, I have several activities that help them experience concepts discussed that day. Many of the papers are written reflections on current “real world” debates that encourage students to reflect on their own opinion and the peer-reviewed research on the topic (e.g., “The Mommy Wars – Does Daycare Impact Attachment” or “ADHD: To Medicate or Not?”). The course is a nice balance of content and application. Moreover, it is a field where we are constantly learning more through research. Each semester I try to incorporate new findings related to various disorders (e.g., etiology, intervention, and/or the impact on the families). I often have students email me after securing positions in the education or early intervention field letting me know how they utilized information from this course in their training or current work. It is one of the greatest parts of my job!

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

Option 1: By far, my favorite class activity is what I call “The Smartees Challenge.” When covering complex designs, I bring in bags (and bags) of Smartees. Each team is given 20 packs of Smartees. I have the teams create a 2x2 design (e.g., hair color by instruction speed) and collect data on how long it takes their “participants” to eat a pack of Smartees. For example, the “researchers” will quickly ask 5 blonds and 5 brunettes to eat a pack of Smartees. Then, they slowly ask 5 blonds and 5 brunettes to eat a pack of Smartees. The students then compute marginal means for the main effects (hair color and instruction speed) and plot the interaction. We then discuss main effects versus interactions. These are funny (and meaningless), as we might find that instruction speed only mattered for brunettes; however, the students leave with a better understanding of complex design, since they had to actually compute, plot, and interpret their data. This activity also provides an opportunity for them to discuss confounds and operational definitions. The students will comment on inconsistencies in how each group operationalized hair color (e.g., dyed versus natural) and eating time (e.g., do they count unwrapping the package?). They will frequently note possible confounding factors, such as participant gender, preference for Smartees, or consistency of the person giving the instructions. Further, since multiple teams plot their data on the board, we are able to discuss the importance of replication. For me, this lecture is a win (most semesters). In fact, when students are collecting data, my Twitter will often light up with former students commenting on how much they loved and learned from this lecture.

Option 2: In my Exceptional Child course, when we cover the socioemotional outcomes associated with intellectual disorders, I give the students one of two 15-question quizzes. The first page has the same questions that are simple (e.g., 4+ 4 = _); however one quiz has easy questions on the subsequent pages, while the other has really hard questions. I tell them that the quiz is timed and they should put their heads down when they are done. We then grade them in class, and I have students who earned 100% raise their hands. Finally, a student reads question 8 from the easy quiz and a student reads question 8 from the difficult quiz. The activity spawns a great discussion about the role of frustration (e.g., many students with the hard quiz feeling “dumb” or giving up and guessing to finish) and perceptions of others (e.g., the students with the easy quiz often report making judgments about their classmates’ reading ability). The activity helps the students reflect on additional outcomes that might be impacted by an intellectual disability. They also problem-solve possible intervention approaches in the classroom or other settings that might minimize negative outcomes.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

The best techniques for me involve actively engaging students with content. I have them practice the various concepts in a variety of contexts. These activities often require reflections or questions that are counted as a quiz grade. For example, in research methods, my students are convinced that writing survey questions is “easy.” So, I have them write five survey questions about a campus issue and then collect data. They come back and compare notes with classmates and answer a set of guided questions related to the activity. The students quickly realize the strengths and limitations of their questionnaires. Often they ask leading or double-barreled questions. In addition, they realize that terms were unclear or answer choices did not cover all possible options. Then, we discuss how they might improve their surveys using concepts covered in the chapter (e.g., response sets). The students enjoy getting out of the classroom, and it helps me identify gaps in their knowledge.

What's your workspace like?

I often refer to my workspace as a deluxe “officle.” It is a nicely sized cubicle, and I have a huge window that overlooks campus. Most of the time it is neat and clutter free; however, I joke that the number of systematically organized piles on my desk is indicative of how busy I am at the moment. I have pictures everywhere of my family and major events. On my door I post conference, Polar Plunge, and university event pictures. Some students joke that one of their college “bucket list” items is to be in one of the pictures on my door.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Passionate, Interactive, Relevant

(True confession: To answer this question, I had students submit anonymous answers to this question and conducted a cursory content analysis across their responses, recent course evals, and rate my professor posts. It was fun to see their input.)

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Approach each class with intentionality (and fun).

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? (1) I went Bungee jumping in graduate school. (2) I used to have a SWEET southern accent before moving to Wisconsin. Now, I sound like a born-and-raised Midwesterner.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Kid President’s Guide to Being Awesome by Brad Montague and Robby Novak

What tech tool could you not live without?

The easy answer is my phone. However, on my phone, Twitter (@briannefriberg) has become one of my favorite apps. Honestly, there was a time when I resisted Twitter; however, I have found that it is a great tool for staying current on news items and issues that matter to students. I create hashtags for each of my classes (e.g., #255rocks for Introduction to Research) and encourage students to tag items that relate to course content. It is fun to see students find an example of “correlation does not imply causation” and tag the course in it. For me, Twitter has become a means for extending the classroom in a way that intersects with students’ current use of social media.

What's your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

For the most part, we discuss life and funny things that happened in the classroom. Several of us are big sports fans, so we will discuss how our sports teams are doing, too.

John Minahan: I'm a Member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 03:04:04 GMT

School name: Lincoln School

Type of school: We’re Pre-K through 12; I teach in the upper school. Lincoln is the only all-girls’ Quaker school in the country, and one of only a handful in the world. Our mission is all about enabling women to become leaders who practice such values as equality, simplicity, and non-violence.

School locale: Providence, Rhode Island.

Classes you teach: Intro to Psychology, AP English.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Regarding the teaching of Psychology (specifically when covering sleep and dreams): don’t let students talk about their dreams. I’m not quite that strict, since this is often the topic that gets kids to sign up for class to begin with, but I’ve learned the hard way that you really do have to keep it under control. Regarding teaching in general: not advice I got but advice I witnessed. I once saw Leonard Bernstein giving a master class in conducting. It was immediately clear—from his smile, his voice, his energy, his direct engagement with the workshop participants—that he was holding nothing back. Here was a guy who thought of himself as a composer and conductor, and yet when he was teaching he was 100% there in the moment and present to his students.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

To Know as We Are Known by Parker Palmer is my all-time favorite, for its model of the truth-centered classroom. More recently, How We Learn by Benedict Carey; fascinating and immediately applicable to test design, lesson plans, and writing prompts.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love classes that focus around the “Don’t believe everything you think” axiom. These tend to be topics in cognition (especially automatic negative thoughts and blocks to problem solving), memory (especially its reconstructive aspects) and, perhaps most enjoyably, sensation and perception. Something as simple as the Muller-Lyer illusion can bring forth all sorts of realizations about the need for critical thinking and self-awareness, and also offer a chance to put psychology into the context of culture, which we can always do more of. I also enjoy using demonstrations of, say, the waterfall effect or why the moon seems bigger on the horizon. The giggle factor in these classes is usually pretty high, which makes learning fun and memorable. The ooh-ah factor is also high: students being blown away by something real and immediate, which they still talk about months later. We might even find ourselves developing a more nuanced and compassionate understanding of human fallibility. My favorite student comment to emerge from these classes: “I feel like I’ve been lied to my whole life—by my own brain!”

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

Anything that gets kids up and moving after lunch, like shouting out the structures of the limbic system while bopping around to “The Chicken Dance.” This kind of thing is a great prelude to more reflective or intellectually intensive work. Another assignment is as simple as it is effective: go out this weekend and look for examples of what we’ve been studying in class. Any number of students will come in on Monday morning who can’t wait to talk about what they found. Not only has their learning helped them understand the world a little better; they also discover that their teachers aren’t just making stuff up. I think they find this second discovery more revelatory than the first.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Group work every day; I find jigsaw groups especially effective. Also frequent low-stakes tests, including tests before learning the material. The questions tend to present real-world scenarios, so that taking the test is itself a means of advancing the learning process. Each test or quiz also contains bonus review questions that connect new learning to old.

What’s your workspace like?

I begin the school year with bare classroom walls. Each day a different student brings in a quote that she’s written on a brightly colored index card, which she reads and then puts up on the wall. Plus, each time the class does a writing assignment, I look for “Moments of Greatness”—a terrific insight, an elegantly made point, some graceful prose—which I type out on a piece of paper and read to the class. These also get posted on the wall. By the end of the year, all the walls are covered with “Moments of Greatness” sheets and inspiring quotes on cards of all colors, a physical reminder of the community we’ve created.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Make-'em-laugh, make-'em-cry, make-'em-think (okay, so I cheated . . .)

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Be mindful of Tao te Ching chapter 17.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I was a literature professor back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. One day, we were having a great discussion of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I wanted to ask the class, “At this point, how does Huck feel?” But I got the first letters of “Huck” and “feel” mixed up. Fortunately, these were college students and thus way too mature to find this amusing (they only laughed for twenty minutes).

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I didn't set out to become a teacher. When I was a young man, I was a professional musician. When I was a little boy I wanted to be an astronaut. Preferably the first person on Mars. Neil Armstrong had beaten me to the moon, alas, but I had a speech all prepared that would have put his “One small step” thing to shame. I wish I could remember it now. Or maybe not.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Backpacking With the Saints by Belden Lane, an exploration of wilderness walking and inner experience. And Natchez Burning by Greg Iles, an epic murder mystery about the legacy of the civil rights era and the secrets between fathers and sons.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Um . . . fire, I guess.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Most of my colleagues got to Lincoln School by a scenic route: some had other careers first, some have terminal degrees, some are fresh from a really interesting undergraduate program. But everyone has a great story to tell and everyone is really dedicated to the school. So, while there’s the usual grumbling about the grumbling that students do, there’s a whole lot more talk about how one kid or another has finally experienced that major breakthrough she’s been working toward. It’s inspiring to see how well my colleagues know their subjects and how much they care about their students.

Missy Beers: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 19:40:23 GMT

School name: The Ohio State University

Type of college/university: Large, four-year, public research university

School locale: Columbus, Ohio (moderate sized city)

Classes you teach: Teaching of Psychology (graduate seminar/practicum), Social Psychology, Data Analysis/Quantitative methods.

I am also the Program Director for Introduction to Psychology (supervise 30 GTAs) and the Coordinator for Social Psychology. I supervise 12-20 undergraduate course assistants each term in Independent Study in the Teaching of Psychology

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I don’t know if this is advice or feedback, but the one statement that has had the most impact on my teaching was from a student, almost 15 years ago. On the end-of-term survey one student wrote, “Just because we heard it once doesn’t mean we learned it!” This really hit home and made me think about how I structured my classes, which at the time were really mainly lecture-based. Since then I have increasingly focused on how students can apply and use the information covered in a course, not just listen to me talk about it or memorize it for a test.

Another piece of advice that has always stayed with me (and one I now give frequently, too) is to give students an outline. This advice was from Bob Arkin, faculty coordinator for the social psychology course here at OSU. An outline shows students the underlying structure of the material—how topics hang together, how they are nested, how they relate to one another. Plus, making an outline of your lecture helps you be more mindful of the organization and structure of your class.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

In 2005, I read an article by Buskist, Benson, and Sikorski (2005) titled The Call to Teach. I was just transitioning back to academia from industry and the idea of teaching as a “calling” really resonated with me. As far as books, Doug Bernstein and Sandy Goss-Lucas’ Teaching Psychology: A Step-by-Step Guide (now in a second edition!) is a wonderful practical volume filled with all kinds of good advice that I wish I had known when I first started teaching. I still pull Don Forsyth’s Professor’s Guide to Teaching off my shelf from time to time too—great book.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I absolutely love teaching statistics and data analysis. I spent about 15 years as a data analyst and research consultant, and I honestly can’t think of a more practically relevant topic, no matter what students will go on to do after graduation. The world needs people who understand data!

In the summer I teach a 12-week course on the Teaching of Psychology for graduate students. I lead a general seminar, then the GTAs split into separate practica led by senior TAs who have experience teaching a particular course. It’s a blend of general pedagogy and hands-on, practical course development to help new instructors be prepared and confident for their teaching assignments in the fall.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

One of my favorite in-class activities is one I developed for social psychology based on personal experience at a company retreat. In one session employees were split by division and given a table piled with various supplies. We had to use the supplies to build a specific structure. Given what we had to work with, this seemed like an impossible task. Still, we were determined that the Research team needed to win (or rather, destroy the other teams). Let’s just say it became very competitive very quickly and involved some “covert operations.” At the end of the task, the organizer pointed out that we should have just pooled our resources and collaborated; what we needed to complete the task had been intentionally divided among the separate units. What a perfect example of intergroup bias—as a social psychologist I couldn’t believe that I fell for it!

After that experience I created a class activity that has never yet failed to produce similar results. At the start of class, I bring a stack of newspapers and some rolls of masking tape to class, and I tell the students we are going to do a group activity. I divide the class into 3-4 person “teams” and give each group a newspaper and tape. On the board I write this goal: Build the tallest, sturdiest tower possible using only the materials provided in the time given. The tower must be free-standing (not taped to ceiling or floor), but there are no other rules. Students get about 7 minutes to build a tower, and typically the “competition” really heats up. In all the years I’ve used this activity no one has ever collaborated or even shared supplies! As soon as they are assigned to a group, the competition kicks in. At the end when I ask, “why did you compete?” there is always a stunned silence as the realization sets in that they could have collaborated… it just never occurred to them.

Sometimes I manipulate the resources available to “enhance” the bias—one team might get extra paper, or another team might get an almost-empty roll of tape that runs out before they finish, giving us more to talk about when we debrief the activity. This sets up many issues covered in intergroup relations/stereotyping and prejudice -- the minimal group paradigm, realistic group conflict, ingroup favoritism, outgroup derogation, and more. It’s memorable, effective, and fun.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?

I strongly prefer anything that involves practical application of course material. For example, I love to assign a paper that asks students to “Be a Target of Persuasion” and reflect on the appeals used by someone trying to sell them something. I always assign a project in my stats course that asks students to apply their knowledge of statistical techniques to a question of interest to them. A student once analyzed whether his iPod really shuffled songs at random, and another collected data at her job to test whether the way she asked customers to join a loyalty program made a difference in whether they signed up. The final exam in my stats course this semester includes a take-home task. I’ll provide a large dataset (one of many available online; check out the Pew Research Center for example) and ask students to use the data to explore several specific questions as well as to develop some original hypotheses to test. I love the authenticity of that assignment and I wish we had done that in my stats class back in the day!

What’s your workspace like?

My office is tucked at the back of the Introduction to Psychology office, a large office space for the graduate instructors teaching Introduction to Psychology. I work closely with the graduate student coordinators for Intro Psych and Social Psych and I love talking with them about their ideas for the course. Nothing makes me happier than when someone stops by to chat about teaching. (The photo shows graduate teachers Jenn Belding, Kristie Harris, and Maggie Mehling.)

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Engage, apply, assess

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Connect what students learn with what they do.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

Well, it wasn’t exactly teaching, but… once when I was giving a presentation to a large group of people I got a little carried away and walked towards the screen to gesture at a graph….and walked right off the back of the dais! Since then I prefer not to teach or present on a stage if at all possible.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

In grad school I did not enjoy teaching (I was terrible!) and I did not want to pursue a career in academia. After graduate school I worked in government, public relations, communications research, and later at a research consulting firm. As much as I enjoyed an applied setting, it didn’t take long for me to realize how little the general public knows about psychology. I actually found myself doing a lot of teaching—explaining psychology, statistics, and research methods to colleagues and clients. This motivated me to come back to college teaching as an adjunct, simply because I realized how important it is for people to understand what psychology is all about and how it’s relevant no matter what one’s occupation or field of study. Coming back to teach college students after gaining some real-world experience, I had a completely different attitude and perspective. I wanted students to understand the ideas and concepts in the courses I taught, but I also wanted students to see how they could use and apply the content in meaningful ways no matter what their majors or planned careers might be.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I love to read and am usually reading two or three books at a time. I tend to be pretty eclectic, but I particularly love biographies and non-fiction. I couldn’t put down Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan and The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande. Right now I’m reading Anjelica Huston’s autobiography Watch Me, and I cannot wait for Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman to come out.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I really love my presenter because I have a hard time staying put behind a podium (see most embarrassing moment above). I am also a huge fan of Twitter--I thank Beth Morling @bmorling for her recommendation to sign up! (follow Missy at @mjbeers1)

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I love to talk about assessment and so it’s easy to strike up a conversation with me about that anytime, anywhere! Be warned!

I have an (almost) teenage son I adore more than anything, and I always enjoy talking with other parents about our kids. On holidays and days off school I love when kids drop by the office. You very well might see me holding one of my colleagues’ adorable babies when I get the chance.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Missy discuss productive (and positive - like everything else Missy does!) assessment practices at her beloved The Ohio State University! https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e015-melissa-beers-all-ohio-all-ohio-state-all-in-for-teacher-training

Nicholas Pearson: I'm a Member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Tue, 26 May 2015 13:54:30 GMT

School name: The Pennsylvania State University

Type of college/university: 40,000+ state university (R1)

School locale: small college town in the middle of Pennsylvania

Classes I teach:

Research Methods in Psychology, Introduction to Social Psychology, Psychology of Gender, Elementary Statistics in Psychology

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

My mother was a special education teacher for 20 years. She taught me that under the right guidance any student can find success.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I’m not sure that I can point to a single “thing” that has influenced me. I believe that it has been the influence of many great educators in my life. From elementary school through my graduate education I have been very fortunate to be surrounded by dedicated and energetic teachers.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My primary interest is in issues of social justice, so I am very invested in topics related to prejudice and stereotyping. Many of my students have never been asked to consider what it means to live life without the privileges they take for granted. When I can sense that their eyes are opening to the prevalence of bias in the world, then I know I’ve accomplished something worthwhile.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I have a lecture I give on the social psychology of our judicial system. During the lecture I wander around the front of the room (as I usually do) and then when we talk about the accuracy of eyewitness testimony I ask them how many times I touched a table at the front of the room. It’s a nice way to illustrate how eyewitnesses can misremember and be perfectly confident in their memories. (I never actually touch the table J.)

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Most of my classes are rather large (90, up to 320 students) so I do rely on multiple choice exams for pragmatic reasons. I also incorporate “In-Class Assignments” to stimulate participation and generate discussion among the students during class time. My research methods class is a writing course, so my students complete a series of written assignments including a formal research proposal paper that is designed to prepare them for the rigors of graduate school.

What’s your workspace like?

Picture a paper recycling center after a tornado comes through.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Lively. Unpredictable. Engaging (I hope).

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Make theories relatable, knowledge empowering, and learning interesting.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

It’s a familiar story. An entire lecture built around a series of short videos… on the day that the classroom internet connection is broken. I turned it into a discussion of Dollard’s frustration-aggression hypothesis so it wasn’t a complete loss.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I spent five years working as a stone mason in New Mexico and Oregon before going on to graduate school. Beating rocks with a hammer all day long makes one appreciate the intellectual pursuits in life.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

James, A. (2012). Assholes: A theory. New York: Doubleday. I do work in academia after all.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I’m going to be a bit of a wise-guy and say chalk. I rely heavily on PowerPoint presentations but in almost every class I end up drawing something on the chalk board to help clarify a point or answer a question from a student.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We have a very supportive cohort of instructors and professors here so much of the talk is related to student issues. You also might hear, “how was your weekend,” “did you catch the game last night,” or “it’s how many weeks until the end of the semester?!”

Bob DuBois: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Tue, 05 May 2015 17:30:00 GMT

School name: Waukesha County Technical College (WCTC)

Type of college/university: community/technical college

School locale: Pewaukee and Waukesha, Wisconsin (growing suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology; Psychology of Human Relations; Abnormal Psychology; Developmental Psychology, Think Critically and Creatively; and Introduction to Ethics

Expertise: Students benefit from my diverse graduate education, including master’s degrees in I/O psychology and counseling psychology and a PhD in educational psychology.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Focus on the learning activities. Like many teachers (as opposed to learning facilitators), I once believed that the learning activities were predominantly what the students did on their own outside of class (e.g., read the book, listen to lectures, take notes, study). While effective learners do choose to engage and direct many of their own learning activities, most students need careful coaching to grow into self-directed learners. When I first started teaching, I focused too much on the learning materials (e.g., the textbook, lectures) and the learning assessments (e.g., the exams, papers) and too little on creating engaging learning activities that direct and inspire students to actually think about, discuss, and apply the course content. Learning has to be facilitated and nurtured. Diverse, engaging learning activities help to make the content matter and stick.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Dr. Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, is one of many books that have forever impacted the way I facilitate learning. A key to transforming students to learners is encouraging them to embrace the role of effort and strategies, not luck or talent, to educational and career success.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I start every course by sharing psychological research on memory, learning and motivation that informs educational and career success. This research is presented across two class sessions, Crush Bad Study Habits (to share learning strategies) and Don’t Eat the Marshmallow (to share motivational strategies). I aim to directly address the fear, misconceptions, and bad habits that some students bring with them to class. These sessions help students critically examine the way they learn and the way they think about learning. Companion learning activities help students develop a concrete plan for learning success that incorporates these strategies. Follow-up mid-course and end-of-course journals give students an opportunity to reflect on the implementation of their plans. Recently, the content of these two sessions has been shared across the campus in two popular 30-minute workshops.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

Collaborative reflections that are embedded in blogs, journals, and discussions are a key component of my courses. It’s important that learners think critically about, discuss, and apply key psychological concepts and principles. For example, learners share direct quotes from the readings and other learning materials that really got them thinking and pose open-ended questions to involve others in analysis and reflection both in-class and online. It’s amazing how many helpful and interesting learning activities (e.g., media, self-assessments, observations, demonstrations, interviews, animations, and more) can be effectively embedded in collaborative reflections and other assignments.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?)

When it’s all about learning, it’s nearly all about the learning activities. Over time, my courses have moved away from the traditional “couple of exams and a paper” structure. I design my courses to emphasize several low stakes in-class and out-of-class assignments, including mastery quizzes, private and public journals, online and in-class discussions, interviews, observations, reflections, presentations, and more. Some of these activities are also aligned with learning resources I share via social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook, and with guest presentations. These activities require learners to retrieve, think about, discuss, and apply course concepts. Whenever possible, assessments are designed to emphasize learning, not grading, by employing mastery and collaborative features.

What’s your workspace like?

My most productive workspace is my home office, where I am surrounded by plenty of rich resources and can play music and work with Mac products. My workshop at WCTC offers plenty of natural light and opportunities to collaborate with faculty across a variety of general educational disciplines.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Students become learners.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Make it relevant, personal, thoughtful, social, and fun.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

Asking who has the phone that keeps vibrating and realizing it’s your own phone reminds me that we all forget to silence our technology at times.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I am introverted. Early high school experiences in forensics helped me gain confidence as a public speaker, but I enjoy and am most productive during my private time.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I like to combine pleasure with work. The 2014 book, Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain, by Dr. Timothy Verstynen and Dr. Bradley Voytek, is perfect. I also enjoy reading the tweets of colleagues around the world.

What tech tool could you not live without?

OmniFocus. When people wonder how I manage to get so much done, I have to give much of the credit to effective planning and time management, which is made possible by this powerful personal productivity application.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

That’s easy! Zombies. Thank goodness there will soon be both The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead. I’m eager this fall to teach a Walking Dead edition of Introduction to Psychology, where key psychological concepts and principles will be illustrated from events and issues raised in the TV series.

Melissa Rogers: I'm a Member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 19:03:38 GMT

School name: Whitworth University

Type of college/university: private liberal arts university affiliated with the Presbyterian church

School locale: Spokane, WA – a midsize city in the inland northwest

Classes I teach: Introduction to Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Belief in Weird Things, Psychological Statistics, Research Methods in Psychology, Forensic Psychology, Senior Thesis

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

It takes a lot of work to prepare an effective lecture that appears effortless.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

My interest in psychology is how to take what we know about memory and apply it to education. So I read various empirical journal articles that apply teaching or studying techniques into the classroom. These readings shape how I develop my assignments and deliver my lectures.

However, it was actually my undergraduate advisor, Bret Roark at Oklahoma Baptist University, who shaped my interest in teaching and my overall approach to the classroom. He is an amazing teacher and as a student I thought he was a natural teacher who must have always been that good. However, he once shared a new teacher mistake he made as he started teaching, and I realized even the “natural” teachers develop over time and must spend many hours preparing classes and developing their skill.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I enjoy each class I teach, but I particularly enjoy teaching students how to apply what they learn about memory into how they study.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

To teach the concept of mental set I modified the methods from an experiment examining whether seeing previous examples makes it difficult to produce creative work into a class activity. Students play the role of a toy developer and must produce a creative monster toy made from a paper bag and other arts and crafts materials. Some of the students see pictures of previous monster bag toys and others do not. The students vote on the most creative monster, and typically we find those students who did not see previous examples produced more creative monsters. I have learned you can’t go wrong with arts and crafts.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Right now I have students teach a 15 minute lecture or write a paper explaining that topic. I examine how they perform on the unit and final exam questions covering those topics, and I am finding that students who teach the lecture answer more questions correctly than those who write the paper.

What’s your workspace like?

It is currently decorated with paper bag monster toys. It is a good conversation starter.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Engaging, structured, applied

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

I expect students and myself to work hard.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I gave a unit exam intended for my cognitive psychology class to my intro to psych students. It created about 3 minutes of intense anxiety for the students until we realized what happened.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

How messy my office drawers are.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Disappointment with God by Yancy and The Kitchen House by Grissom

What tech tool could you not live without?

My iPhone.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

My department is amazing and we really enjoy talking with each other. We spend a lot of time talking about food.

Sandy Venneman: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Sun, 05 Apr 2015 19:10:01 GMT

School Name: University of Houston-Victoria

Type of University: Small Liberal Arts School

School Locale: Multiple locations. We have three sites, two in the suburbs of Houston and our main campus in Victoria, Texas, which is a small town.

Classes I Teach: Biological Psychology, Learning, Animal Behavior, Social Biology, and Sport Psychology consistently, and Methods, Statistics, Human Sexuality, I/O, History & Systems, and Psychopharmacology occasionally. This is a small school, so we have to be diverse to allow variety in student electives.

What's the best advice about teaching you ever received? Dr. Cross at St. Louis University noted to stay focused on the goal of any instruction or assignment. Also, my mentor Mr. Perkins who supervised my student teaching when I earned my Secondary Teaching Certificate in chemistry and biology, told me not to be afraid to admit that I don’t know the answer to a student question. The students respect honesty and realize that no one knows everything. “I don’t know, what an interesting idea” is one of my very common answers to student questions.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I read the journal Teaching of Psychology, but most of my inspiration comes from my own teachers, the good and the bad. I model myself on the instructors I admired and respected.

What’s your favorite lecture topic or course to teach? I actually have two favorite areas to teach: brain physiology and learning. These two combined pretty much sum up psychology. The biological basis of behavior (physiology) and the input of the environment (learning), reflect nature AND nurture.

In terms of a favorite topic, my favorite is probably operant conditioning... I teach this in a very hands-on approach using a diagramming procedure that the students use for each paradigm. Once they catch on, they become pretty good at determining if they have made a mistake in their assessment of a situation and they then self-correct. I have students call me years later and tell me that I am helping raise their kids via the information they learned in class. Many students have previously been bored out of their minds with the topic of operant conditioning, and enjoy a different approach.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment: One favorite exercise is related to diagramming operant conditioning. We split into groups to diagram reasons why someone would exhibit a “stupid behavior.” Then I put on the board "I stay in an abusive relationship." There are lots of murmurs, "I wouldn't, I would leave, etc." The students then come up with at least three reasons per group why someone would stay in an abusive relationship. When we put our results on the board they find out they have to write very small because we completely cover the board with many more than three example contingencies per group. When we finish, someone will note that the behavior isn't "stupid" at all. This is an excellent exercise to reinforce that all behavior must be viewed from the point of view of the person/animal involved and not our own. In addition it helps encourage a more gentle judgment of the behavior of others.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I try to mix things up using lecture (gasp!--I think it works, and that is why it has been around so long), lots of demonstrations, examples the student can relate to from their own lives, and then student practice. I change my techniques to fit the material. Similarly, depending upon the material, I use pop quizzes to keep students up to date on reading, practice in-class or at home to encourage integration and primarily exams for assessment.

I generally give four exams and a cumulative final in my classes. If the students are happy with their grade having taken the four regular exams I let them skip the final. I always thought it was pointless to take finals after I had already demonstrated that I knew the material. Some say finals measure retention, but in my view, that would only be true if we did a “pop” final that was a surprise. Otherwise, students who cram for exams will just cram for the final, too. If my students want to demonstrate at the end of the semester that they have learned material they previously missed, the option of the final is available. Dropping an exam also relieves me from being judge and jury regarding student excuses for missed exams. If they miss one I ask no questions and automatically count it as excused but they then need to take the final. This is probably the most common piece of advice I give junior faculty.

What’s your workspace like?: My workspace is as varied as my classes. I work from home for my on-line classes, and I share office space on campus. Currently I can see my bottle-fed calf Sweet Pea, a couple of horses, and a hay field out my window as I type this in my home office.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style? The three words that consistently come up in my teaching evaluations: Fair, fun, and hard. Hard is a good thing since they actually learn!

What is your teaching philosophy in eight words? Share my passion and treat all students fairly.

Describe a personal teaching disaster (or embarrassment): There are so many to chose from! Once I walked into the lecture hall and was confused that the students were not in every other seat, every other row, for our exam. I said “Come on guys, you know the drill.” Once I got every one seated correctly another instructor walked up behind me and said “How did you get them to do that?” Whoops, I was in the wrong room! Much laughter followed, I took a bow, and scurried away. Really, I am not clueless. There were a lot of familiar faces in this class that overlapped with my own.

What is something that students would be surprised to learn about you? That I actually use what I teach. I travel the country and abroad to give clinics on how to train horses using the material from my learning class. Several of my horses have been national champions. I also train other animals the same way. For example my cows come when called and exhibit some rather "un cow-like" behaviors like giving me hugs and kisses. Some past students have seen photos of me in barn clothes working cattle and they ask if it is actually me since I clean up pretty well for class.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Neuroscience and the Law, (guess I really am an über-nerd!). And of course, equine periodicals like Equus.

What is a technology tool you could not live without? Blackboard, since I teach multiple classes using it.

What's your hallway chatter like? Issues related to our university’s multiple locations and transitioning from an upper-level institution to include freshmen and sophomores.

Amy Silvestri Hunter: I'm a Member of STP, and This is How I Teach.

(Past member) — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 18:22:42 GMT

School name: Seton Hall University

Type of college/university: medium-sized university granting primarily bachelor’s and master’s degrees

School locale: technically we are located in the Village of South Orange, but we’re in the NYC metro area

Classes I teach: Orientation to the Psychology Major, Biological Psychology, Research Methods, Neuropsychology of Religious Experience, Psychopharmacology (graduate)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Don’t be afraid to say that you don’t know the answer to a student question, but look up the answer and get back to them. Particularly now that students can look up the answer to a question in real time during class, fumbling your way through an answer when you don’t really know it will almost certainly backfire. Be a role model for your students with an attitude of intellectual curiosity and be sure to follow up with them. I can’t count the number of students who said they were surprised that I looked up information and mentioned it at our next class meeting!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

There are many, but two that stand out are McKeachie’s Teaching Tips and Effective College and University Teaching, edited by Buskist and Benassi.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I have two favorite courses: Biological Psychology and Research Methods. Both of these courses have a well-deserved reputation for being challenging, and although the content of each course is different I see my role as fundamentally similar: it’s my job to demonstrate how the material is relevant to my students’ professional and personal lives.

In Biological Psychology, I point out that whether or not they end up working directly with clients, an understanding of the relationship between biology and behavior will undoubtedly be useful. Topics such as the nature of the placebo effect, stress and stress-related illnesses, and the mechanism of action of psychotropic medications are almost certain to be directly relevant to them at some point in their lives, and knowledge of the biological components of these topics is essential for a fuller understanding of them.

In Methods, I emphasize that we are constantly presented with all types of advice, much of which is contradictory: the “best” diet, the “best” way to raise children, the “best” way to deal with stress. An understanding of how to appropriately design a study to answer a research question and the types of conclusions that can be drawn from a particular type of design can help us to determine the validity of this advice and, in turn, can help to enhance our own lives as well as the lives of those around us.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

My techniques vary based on the course material. Some courses lend themselves to a discussion-based format, others may work well with a “flipped” technique, and still others may be best served in a more traditional lecture format. Regardless of the course structure, I always strive to be transparent and consistent to the greatest extent possible. I develop rubrics and give them to students, explicitly describe class procedures in the syllabus and follow them during the semester, and do my best to be explicit and consistent in grading.

What’s your workspace like?

At the start of each semester, my office is pretty organized; there may be piles of papers, but they are mostly arranged in a coherent fashion. As the semester goes on, though, the number of piles increases and the level of organization decreases. Typically by the last few weeks of the semester my office is barely controlled chaos.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, challenging, transparent.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Teaching is a privilege. Treat it as such.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I’m not shy about bringing up my life outside the office, so I don’t think there’s much that would surprise them. Students who talk to me outside of class – or even those who pay attention to the types of examples I use during class – soon figure out that my primary hobbies are running, cooking, and eating (although not necessarily in that order). Students may be surprised at the extent to which I do these things with my colleagues, though.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I’m between books right now, but next on my list is Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To by Beilock. As a relatively new department chair, I also want to re-read Straight Man by Russo.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Because we genuinely get along with each other, our hallway chatter is an equal mix of the professional and the personal: one minute we may be talking about our research, construction projects on campus or some new academic initiative, the next a new restaurant or weekend plans.

Jessi Hill: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 14:47:22 GMT

School name: Utah Valley University
Type of college/university: Regional Teaching Institution
School locale: Metropolitan area
Classes you teach: General Psychology and Cognitive Psychology mostly

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice I’ve ever received about teaching was from Doug Bernstein as he talked to my graduate cohort during our teaching experience. We were talking about teaching general psychology, and he told us to incorporate the fun things. Trying to cram too much content into one period is overwhelming. He suggested spending the class period on three or four fun (and important) topics, which would do a lot more for student learning and interest.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

McKeachie's Teaching Tips (various editions) has been the book that has contributed most to my development as a teacher. It is a wonderful review of the most important concepts related to teaching and is filled with resources should a reader desire to investigate a topic in more depth.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I think that the day I look forward to most is the day in sensation and perception in which we discuss top-down and bottom-up processing. It gives me a chance to use some powerful demos to show how our expectations can dramatically influence perception.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

Here’s the demo I use for top-down and bottom-up processing: http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking/stairway-to-heaven-backwards.html. Go ahead--try it! Listen to the song backwards and see if you can figure out the message before you read the lyrics. Then listen to it again with the lyrics showing!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Discussion following a demonstration or activity is what works best for me. I always make sure to choose something that demonstrates the concept in a real-world setting. I strongly prefer things that make the students get up and “do” something.

What’s your workspace like?

Every Friday, my office is spotless. The rest of the week the cleanliness of my office is directly related to how productive I am. The more work I am doing, the more behavioral evidence of productivity appears on my desk. In addition to small piles of books, papers, and journals, I have a standing desk, a space heater, and a natural light emitter.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, questioning, exploratory
What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Leave them wanting (and thinking) more!

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

One day, I was teaching research methods. We were discussing hypotheses. I was trying to make some point while using the words “TESTABLE” and “EMPIRICAL.” What came out was “TESTICLE.” Yeah… never lived that one down.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

When I was much younger, I used to sword fight in living chess matches.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I’m currently reading Dune by Frank Herbert.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I think I could not live without my phone. It lets me keep track of all my appointments and reminders.

What’s your hallway chatter like?

I think it depends on to whom I am speaking. With most folks, I talk shop. With others, we talk about personal things. With my favorites, we can all pile into my office and take a 10-minute break playing a game like Swish or Scattergories. (I use those games as an activity in my classes, so they are always sitting around).

Eric Landrum: I'm a Member of STP, and This is How I Teach.

(Past member) — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 23:33:22 GMT

School name & locale: I teach at Boise State University, in Boise, ID; I am a full professor and I’ve been here since 1992. It’s a beautiful place in southwest Idaho, and Boise is the capitol of Idaho.

Type of college/university: Boise State is comprehensive 4-year university, offering bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, and doctorates. In the Department of Psychology, we only offer the bachelor’s degree, and currently we are the third largest major on campus, with 1,106 majors.

Classes I teach: The semester I am writing this (Spring 2015) I am teaching our Introduction to the Psychology Major course (online) with 180 students and a section of our Research Methods course (face-to-face) with 40 students. I also teach General Psychology, Statistical Methods, Psychological Measurement, and the Capstone Perspectives course from time to time.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I just don’t think I can pinpoint a singular piece of advice as the best ever. I’ve now been teaching for 25 years (the first three at the University of Wisconsin, Platteville, and the remainder at Boise State), and the accumulation of classroom teaching experiences, attending workshops at the Center for Teaching and Learning, attending teaching sessions at regional and national conferences, talking with colleagues about teaching, studying (and contributing to) the literature on the scholarship of teaching and learning – all of these experiences (and more) have contributed to the “best advice” I have ever received.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

If I have to name one source regarding shaping my work as a psychology teacher, it would be the journal Teaching of Psychology. It’s been amazingly helpful over the years, and I’ve been privileged to contribute to it on occasion. A second choice for me would be McKeachie’s Teaching Tips.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Well, if I were to pick a specific lecture topic, it would be my ESP lecture in the Sensation & Perception unit when I teach general psychology. At a NITOP conference in the early 1990s, I saw David Myers from Hope College do a series of ESP demonstrations that could be used in the classroom to help promote critical thinking and generating alternative explanations. The newspaper “trick” was so memorable that many students, years after the course was over, would see me somewhere in the community and ask me “how did you do the newspaper trick?” Just last year I had the chance to have dinner with Dave at the Stanford One Psychology conference, and I was able to thank him, in person, for being such a generous colleague.

Regarding my favorite course to teach, it would have to be Research Methods. I think that scientific reasoning combined with quantitative methodology provides a rich skill set to students that can help them lead reasoned personal lives and successful professional lives. We practice research skills by conducting original survey research. My ultimate goals are to help students build confidence in what they know and what they can do as well as continue to hone skills that will lead to success in college and beyond.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I’d say my favorite in-class activity is the use of clickers. I used clickers in my classes for the first time Fall 2008, and I’ll never teach a course again without the use of clickers or some other electronic audience response system. It changed the way I teach forever. You can instantly know what the real understanding of your students is at any moment on any topic, and if only 14% of students can successfully differentiate an independent variable from a dependent variable based on a clicker question, I get immediate feedback, and students get that feedback as well. You don’t race through “the material,” but you slow down and teach, explain, use analogies, etc., until the bottleneck is resolved. It may not be the clicker device, per se, which makes the difference but the pedagogical change in my own teaching which ultimately makes the difference.

Editor's Note: Eric said that his best teaching days are those when his students are actively engaged with one another. He also said he loves the name folders.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Here’s a bit of a twist – what teaching and learning techniques do not work best for me – in general, multiple choice tests. To be honest, I use multiple choice items with my clicker questions, but the purpose is for readiness assurance. I do not give multiple choice tests nor quizzes. My primary focus regarding undergraduate education in psychology is on skill development. I do not know of a single occupation in the United States where a college graduate can be gainfully employed taking multiple-choice tests for a living; thus, I’d prefer my students not practice that skill as much as they do. I’d prefer to focus my efforts on practicing more marketable skills like critical thinking, communication, problem solving, and others. Multiple-choice testing isn’t evil, but I believe an over-reliance on that technique is to the detriment of our students.

What’s your workspace like?

I work on the principle of “pile reduction theory,” meaning that I have each project piled up in either the home or school office, and I work to reduce the number of piles. Rightly or wrongly, I use my email inbox as a do-to list, so as pile reduction theory applies, the fewer emails in my inbox, the more “caught-up” that I feel (which may or may not be the appropriate perception). But feeling “caught up” does feel pretty good!

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Fair, rigorous, skills-centered

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Help students see the practical applications of psychology.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

It was Fall 1991 and I was teaching a History and Systems course at the University of Wisconsin, Platteville. It was the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, classes were still in session, and students did not want to be having class the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. The classroom had individual chair desks and a smooth tile floor – these details will matter shortly. One student in particular did not want to be there, and she made her voice heard. Then she made her voice heard again that she did not want to be there. Then again. Finally, I said that if she wanted to leave (without any repercussions), she could leave. But she stayed and continued to pester me from the front row. Eventually, I just lost my cool. I went over to her desk, grabbed it (not her), and pulled the desk (and her) across the in front of the classroom, out the door, and into the hallway. Then I went back and grabbed her backpack and handed it to her out in the hallway. Some students loved it and some students were taken aback. It was a terrible teaching mistake – after Thanksgiving break I apologized to the student publicly in class (on the good advice of my department chair) and she completely shut down for the rest of the semester—and understandably so. I lost the opportunity to be her teacher that day because I lost my cool. It was a rookie mistake, and one that I have not repeated.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I think my students would be surprised to learn that I actually have a life outside of psychology and the University. I love my family dearly and dote on them whenever possible. I’m actually a decent landscape photographer, and in another lifetime did substantial darkroom work. I also like woodworking, mostly small projects like turned pens and bandsaw boxes, and I’m about to build my first piece of real furniture – a small table for the entry in the home that Lisa and I enjoy so much. I’m not a cook by any means, but I’m pretty good on my Traeger grill.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I’ve got a bunch of books going, but the main one is Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (2014). I have to admit that I just don’t read fiction; it’s just not pleasurable for me. Reading for work is actually fun, because I don’t spend enough time reading for work.

What tech tool could you not live without?

There are so many! But I would have to say my cell phone, because it has become such a multi-purpose tool and it serves as my electronic tether to so many additional tech tools.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Our hallway chatter is pretty typical, either about meeting that just ended or a policy change or something happening on campus. I’m fortunate to have a cordial relationship with all of my colleagues, and I am lucky to have so many great friends in psychology scattered all over the nation. It’s a good life!

April McGrath: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 19:47:39 GMT

School name: Mount Royal University

Type of college/university: Undergraduate university in Calgary, AB, Canada

Classes you teach: Stats I and II, Research Methods I, Social Psychology, Environmental Psychology

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I don’t think I can narrow it down to one thing. I was fortunate to take a graduate seminar in teaching while completing my PhD and everything I learned in that class helped prepare me for teaching.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

During that seminar I read What the Best College Teachers Do, which provided a great introduction to teaching. More recently I’ve enjoyed reading How College Works (Chambliss & Takacs, 2014). It is a great reminder that students value relationships with instructors and that conversations with students about their writing are extremely important.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching statistics because it is a challenge every time. It requires convincing students about the importance of statistics and that stats can be enjoyable (or at least bearable). Some students fear the calculations but they soon realize talking and writing about the statistical concepts clearly is a much greater challenge and I like helping them work through that.

What’s your workspace like?

I have a large desk, which you might think would be helpful, but mostly it allows me to organize things in piles. There is also a large window in my office that I appreciate. There was a view of six trees from it until this past September. We had a snowstorm in Calgary that month that damaged trees throughout the city, including a large number of trees on our campus. Now there is only one tree standing outside the window. (There is a copy of Teaching of Psychology on my desk and I swear that it was not planted for the photo.)

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, approachable, challenging

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

To learn, students must engage.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

At some point I got into the habit of labeling assignment files ass#.doc. This wasn’t a problem until one day in class when we were discussing random assignment. After asking some questions a student answered with “random assignment”, which is the term I was hoping for. I wanted to emphasize the answer by writing it on the board, but instead of writing random assignment I wrote random ass! (exclamation mark included). Laughter ensued and I quickly realized what I had done. Lesson learned – be more careful with my abbreviations.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I bike to campus and continue to do so during the winter here in Calgary.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Mosquito Coast, which is the upcoming book for my book club.

What tech tool could you not live without?

A word processor. (I don’t even have a cell phone.)

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We will often talk about how classes are going (the answers depend in part on what point of the term it is) and also larger issues at our institution and about post-secondary education. We also find time to chat about our lives outside of work.

Dana Dunn: I'm a Member of STP, and This is How I Teach

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:25:24 GMT

School name: Moravian College

Type of college/university: Liberal Arts College

School locale: Small City

Classes I teach: Social psychology, Psychology of Adjustment, Research Methods, Statistics, History & Systems, Positive Psychology, various Special Topics Courses/Seminars, Introductory Psychology

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Two slightly incompatible suggestions: Stay two weeks ahead of the class where preparation is concerned and depart from preparation when the unexpected or spontaneous happens during class. Oh, and I try not to lecture too much, encouraging discussion instead.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Bill McKeachie’s classic Teaching Tips, of course; also James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Richard Russo’s Straight Man, and the original Compleat Academic edited by Mark Zanna and John Darley.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

When I teach social psychology, I love to teach about judgmental biases for two reasons. First, students are always surprised to learn about our all-too-human foibles and second, I have the chance to share my own inferential pratfalls with them. Psychologists—me, anyway, are not immune. Life outside the classroom is complex and few of us recognize our own errors in the moment. It’s only later, when the passion is past and the chance to reflect is present that we can (hopefully) recognize them.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I’ve been doing a quick and easy self-serving bias exercise since I began teaching. I have students jot down a list of their personal strengths and then, a few minutes later, their perceived weaknesses. I then have them quickly tally up the number of strengths and weaknesses in their respective lists—the former usually outnumber the latter. I then ask for examples of strengths and weaknesses and write them on the board. It usually becomes apparent that the “weaknesses” aren’t really so “bad “(who doesn’t procrastinate about something?) and that many of them are the sort of “self problems” people share on job interviews (“Well, I sometimes work too hard and expect too much of myself”). The limits of these supposed weaknesses allow us to return to the notion of the self-serving bias and to view it as protective form of social and self cognition.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I recently began weekly exams in my Adjustment class and I really like how their regularity encourages students to keep up on the material. In upper-level classes, I like to give in-class essay exams at midterm and then give all essay take-home tests for the final.

What’s your workspace like?

My college office often looks like the aftermath of a train wreck—students laugh about it—so many project piles here and there, stacks of books and files. In my darker moments when I view the chaos that is my office, I remember my graduate mentor’s wise observation: Never trust anyone with a clean desk and a clutter-free workspace, as it means they really aren’t doing much. My study at home, which is in slightly better shape, has two desks—one for planning things and editing, and the other for writing. Both my campus and my home office have too many books but I suppose there are worse things than having too many books.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Socratic, humorous, anecdote-based.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Be engaging, emphasize writing and observation, end well.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

Most of my embarrassing moments deal with technology—the video or statistical software I loaded and used effortlessly in my office fails to work when I am live in front of the class. This fall, for example, I was showing some YouTube videos of social psychology experiments and none of them--none--would load properly. Soon the students were offering advice--the kind that has a vague whiff of “I can’t believe you can’t do something so easy!” to it--there were some eye-rolls assessing my competence, which were no doubt deserved. But I keep at it.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Although my classroom persona may say otherwise, I am actually a rather shy person.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I try to read widely. I am currently reading a novel called The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai. I love to read about architectural history and Japanese gardens. I read a lot of cookbooks and use them, too. Our campus-wide faculty reading group will be discussing the book How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching this spring.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I love my Macs, but I still rely on yellow legal pads and a good pen.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We talk about the hassles and uplifts associated with teaching, and share what activities work and which ones don’t. We try to avoid complaining about what students don’t know or, worse, hearkening back to some “golden age” when students were “perfect” (I would not want to see myself when I was a first-year college student—yipes!).

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Dana talk with Garth and Eric in 2019 about his current ableism research, the P3 conference, and his admirable writing discipline! https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e073-dana-dunn-prolific-and-influential-writer-generative-scholar-leader-of-leaders

Jordan Troisi: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

Sat, 03 Jan 2015 02:49:16 GMT

YCH

School name

Sewanee: The University of the South

Type of college/university (e.g., R1, community college, small liberal arts school, high school)

Liberal arts school. And one with many unique traditions as well (see the photos with me in my “teaching gown” in this post).

School locale (e.g., small town, rural area, city, country/region)

Rural area, on a mountain plateau in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee

Classes you teach

Principles of Psychology (our Introductory course for intended majors), Social Psychology, Positive Psychology, Research Methods and Data Analysis, The Self-Concept and Self-Esteem. (And many more in the years to come.)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

I have two pieces of advice that I think are worth sharing, both of which I received when I was just beginning to teach my own courses while in graduate school.

The first is that there is no one “best way to teach” or one “best teacher” out there in the world. This conclusion was a bit of an amalgamation of a bunch of different pieces of advice I’d received at the time. I’d had a variety of great teachers and mentors as an undergraduate and graduate student. Some where the loud, in your face, rev students up with excitement type; some where the inquisitive, cerebral, and brilliant type; some where the caring, thoughtful, and remarkably understanding type. But these teachers were all effective to me, each for their own reasons, and each because they took who they were and they applied it to their jobs as teachers. Different methods work for different instructors. We in psychology know that the “fit” between the person and the environment is very important for understanding psychological processes. Why should the task of teaching be any different? As someone who was just beginning to teach, with all the anxieties and frustrations that come along with starting something new, this advice helped calm me. It made me realize that I should not be concerned if I did not have all the answers about how to teach and how I wanted to teach. It also made me realize that I had to figure out who I wanted to be, who I was in the classroom, and how those things could merge with one another.

The other piece of advice that I’d like to share was also one that has protected my ideas about teaching and dealing with students ever since I started teaching. The advice is that “professors don’t give grades; students earn grades.” At the face of it, this seems like a really true and simple idea, but I often find new and experienced professors alike concerned that they are “giving” students bad grades. I would assume (and hope!) most of us do not sit at our computers and arbitrarily assign bad grades to students. No, not at all. We probably have fair tools for assessing student learning and explicit criteria for what it takes to perform well and to perform poorly, and when students meet the criteria for high grades, they get them. This idea that students earn the grades they get also takes into account a number of factors that professors may be blind to when it comes to students’ lives. When I have honest conversations with students about a poor performance on some graded work, they often say things like “I just didn’t study as hard as I should have,” “the first exam was tougher than I thought it would be,” or “I had other things going on and this assignment didn’t get as much of my attention as it should have.” (Is this reminding anyone of discussions related to external attributions yet?) The takeaway point I get from conversations like this is that poor grades are often a result of students EARNING those poor grades. They can, and hopefully will, do better, but they’ll have to earn those better grades too.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

There are many books and articles that have shaped my work as a teacher. Certainly, the excellent contributions in journals like Teaching of Psychology have been a great source of ideas about many of the nuts and bolts of teaching.

But two books in particular stand out as having an impact on my long-view of teaching and have been invaluable resources for me. The first is Ken Bain’s “What the Best College Teachers Do.” Bain does an excellent job profiling and interviewing excellent college teachers in a variety of subject areas. They teach in different ways, but they all have one thing in common: they make a substantial, long-term impact on the way students think, act, and feel. It’s a great read. My recommendation: read it at the beginning of a summer right before you are preparing a new course. And keep at the forefront of your mind the ways that new course will not just be a new course on a particular topic, but one which will profoundly influence the ways students will see the world. (OK, maybe I set some pretty lofty goals.)

The second book I want to mention is Parker Palmer’s “The Courage to Teach.” Simply put, this book is inspirational for people who wish to make teaching their life. It was the first book I came across that helped me put into words what I felt about teaching: that teaching and the learning life was something I cared about very deeply, and it was OK to experience significant emotions about teaching. Early in the book, Palmer notes that as teachers we all have good days and bad, but that he wanted to write “for teachers who refuse to harden their hearts because they love learners, learning, and the teaching life (1998, p. 1). I was hooked then and there.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Each of the courses I teach has a special place in my heart for one reason or another. But if I had to pick, I'd say the one I enjoy teaching the most is Positive Psychology. It's a bit out of the ordinary for me, because I have a very heavy research/experimentation focus to the scholarship I do. But to be able to work with students in a critical examination of their sense of self, their emotional experience, and their day-to-day existence is a real treat for me, and the students enjoy it as well. Many students pursued psychology as a field in search of answers to questions about happiness and optimal functioning (myself included), yet most psychology courses fail to provide any clues about how to achieve these things. We are also at a point in time where students have lives that are jam packed with obligations, and they are often struggling with the idea of whether or not they have achieved “enough” to move on to the next stage of life successfully. (And professors often feel the same way, which is why I usually participate in all of the homework assignments in the class along with my students). Positive Psychology gives us a chance to say to ourselves, “wait a minute, valuable, pleasurable, and fortunate things are happening every day; let's take notice.” I don't think people do that enough: students, professors, or otherwise.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

It’s hard to pick just one favorite, but one I’ve been enjoying quite a bit lately has been a behavioral shaping activity that I use in my Principles of Psychology course (and I’m fairly sure I stole this from someone in STP. So thank you!). After talking about topics and learning and behaviorism for awhile, students are often skeptical of just how significant rewards and punishments can be. So I ask for a student volunteer to be the “learner” and step out into the hallway for a minute while the rest of the class and I decide what type of task we want the “learner” to demonstrate. They usually pick something like “write her name on a particular chalkboard.” Once we agree on what the desired behavior is, we have the “learner” come back into the room and cheer for behaviors which get closer to the desired goal or boo for behaviors which are farther from the desired goal. All the students are quite amazed at how significantly this influences behavior and how closely the “learner” often gets to a very specific behavior. Some students also rightly recognize that this is like the game of “getting warmer-getting colder” that they played when they were kids. Then I tell them it seems that they have been dabbling in behavioral principles for quite some time already.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?)

I teach at a small liberal arts school, so I count myself as fortunate to have small class sizes which do not inhibit the learning techniques I can have students engage in. I use a wide variety, including exams, discussion, application-type papers, extrapolation-type papers, and so on. I have not been as concerned about which of these are or are not effective; I’ve been more concerned with how each one may get at a different type of learning and skill. Exams are great for checking knowledge; papers are great for measuring student’s ability to thoughtfully respond to a topic and communicate effectively; discussions are great for developing and advancing ideas and debating. In my classroom, each of these has a role in shaping what I hope to be citizens who are thoughtful, knowledgeable, and interested in topics related to psychology and the life of the mind.

What’s your workspace like?

I have been very fortunate to move into a rather large office space, which has afforded me the opportunity to shape it in whatever ways that I find most conducive to how I like to do my “work.” I spend a lot of time in my office, so having it be the space that I wanted it to be was very important to me. But the “work” that I do there is quite varied. I have a large desk with organized stacks of papers and folders which all have a dedicated purpose. I have a wall full of shelves which has books, journals, readings for ongoing classes, and stacks of research articles organized by topic or ongoing manuscript task (as you may have guessed by now, I use the traditional “academic stacking system,” but always in an organized fashion). Mixed in with these readings and work-related items is a significant amount of personal memorabilia (e.g., photos, cards, gifts, Frisbees). I like having this stuff around, and I think it also helps students realize that professors are actually real-life people as well. Oh, and I have an area where I make tea and lots of chairs in my office. Our students our very engaged with their professors, and I often have visitors in my office. This is particularly true during my “tea student hour,” which I hold weekly on one afternoon a semester.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Engaging, funny, thought-provoking

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Do what you love every day. (Teach.)

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I haven’t had something I would call a disaster, but there is one moment I can recall where I learned something in the classroom that would forever change the way I go about teaching. For the second class period for the first class I ever taught, I had structured a lecture in a way that had me just listing off facts and findings from the field of psychology. I was using PowerPoint as a backdrop, and I found myself just going through one slide, then another, then another, where I was just telling students information. After about 5-10 minutes of this, I came to a realization: I thought to myself “this is pretty boring for me.” Then I came to a second realization: “if this is pretty boring for me, someone who is invested in and cares about this field of work, imagine how boring this must be for students!” From that moment on, when structuring class time, I’ve made sure not only to think about what I will be teaching, but also what and how students will be learning. (And I never lecture for anymore than 5 minutes or so without having some direct student involvement.)

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Many years ago I came across the psychological concept of self-complexity: the idea that one's sense of self can be composed of many different aspects, and that having more aspects of the self is generally helpful in fighting stress. I thought that was a valuable way of thinking about the self, and an apt description of how I generally am. As such, students may be surprised at the various aspects I've incorporated into myself over the years (although, in truth, I don't mind admitting most things about myself, and many of them may not be "surprises" to my students).

But here are a few potential surprises. I am a fitness enthusiast, and this has led me to run one marathon, take countless hikes of very long duration, and play Ultimate Frisbee all across the US, as well as in Canada and Ireland. About once or twice a year, I grow out my beard to a significant length, shave it into a mustache for one reason or another, then shave my face entirely. (My students then realize what 16-year-old-Dr.-Troisi must have looked like.) As a product of a rich liberal arts tradition, I was the editor of a national literary journal while in college, and I still write a poem from time to time. And even though I work very hard as a teacher and researcher, I still enjoy the occasional break for a console video game.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Although I have been very busy with work-related tasks lately, I have been very slowly moving through “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl and Salman Rushdie’s memoir “Joseph Anton.”

What tech tool could you not live without?

This is about as low-tech of a tech tool as you can get, but my number one thing would be email. It’s how I communicate with everyone. It’s how I keep track of things I need to do. It allows me to know which tasks are on my plate and which tasks are on someone else’s plate. It allows me to touch base with all of my students all at once and lets them have a “paper trail” for things like assignments. Without email, my life as a professor would be very, very different.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Most of the time the hallway chatter is about something related to our department or our university. At this point of this writing we are in the process of hiring 2 faculty members, so lots of our chatter has been logistical discussions of who is making sure the candidate does not get lost in the shuffle of interview activities. Otherwise, many of our conversations are about students, class activities and tasks, and our courses. I work with a group of individuals who cares about teaching very much, so we are always thinking and talking about it.

P SYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Jordan talk with Garth and Eric in 2019 about his "origin story," Albion college, and the STP annual conference on teaching!

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e053-jordan-troisi-insightful-appreciative-service-oriented-and-authentic

David Jull-Patterson: I'm a Member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 24 Dec 2014 04:24:16 GMT

School name: University of California San Francisco (as well as Alliant International University in San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley)

Type of college/university: UCSF is a public university, and it’s the only campus in the 10-campus UC system dedicated exclusively to the health sciences. UC Berkeley is also a public university, while Alliant is a not-for-profit private university.

School locale: Definitely an urban setting

Classes I teach: I spend about 60% of my time as a clinical health psychologist in private practice and about 40% of my time teaching. Mine is not the standard university faculty profile, but I know that I'm not the only psychologist who cares about teaching and has put together a bit of a patchwork of both volunteer and paid teaching activities.

At UCSF I hold a volunteer faculty position as clinical professor, but it’s a role that I have expanded quite a bit given my excitement about the work. In a course called Foundations of Patient Care, I am the assistant course director for faculty development and I teach a section of the course in addition to sections in a Brain, Mind, and Behavior module and a Social and Behavioral Sciences module. This all occurs at the UCSF School of Medicine. I also teach a section of Interprofessional Development Education for the combined Schools of Dentistry, Nursing, Medicine, Pharmacy, and Physical Therapy. At Alliant International University, I'm an adjunct professor and have taught courses on ethics, intercultural awareness development, and death & dying, and I’m scheduled to teach a course on psychology & palliative care in the 2015-2016 academic year. Finally, I teach in the UC Berkeley Extended Education program, providing workshops on palliative care and on ethics (the latter is a workshop that is mandated for licensed mental health professionals in California to take every two years).

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice was actually about learning. My uncle was a university professor, and one day when I was in high school I was very proud to say I got straight A’s for the first (and only) time. His response: “Well, that tells me you weren’t challenged enough.” Once I got over having my feathers ruffled by that, I realized that he was right. To this day, I tell my students, “This course is a great place to do your best and find out what are your next steps. I encourage you to come right up to your learning edge… and then dance.”

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Educating Physicians: A Call for Reform of Medical School and Residency by Cooke, Irby, and O'Brien. I have been teaching in a medical school since my clinical psychology postdoc fellowship; this book really opened my eyes to how the role of the medical educator is one that nurtures the lifelong learning stance of the physician and, by extension, the quality of care patients and their families receive. My unique training as a psychologist allows me to bring the concepts of psychology into a related health care field and teach some important psychological concepts in a non-psychology setting. Plus, author Molly Cooke was my co-facilitator for a decade, so I learned a great deal just through our regular teaching interactions.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course is the Foundations of Patient Care course I teach at UCSF. This is a two-year sequence in the essential core curriculum for the medical students. The students are divided into small groups of 7-8 people, each with a co-facilitator team of a physician and a non-physician mental health professional, and I’ve taught a succession of these small groups since I started my postdoc fellowship in 1995. Affectionately (and privately), I subtitle the course, “How to Remain a Human Being While Learning to Become a Physician.” Although it focuses on what most people think of as “bedside manner,” students taking this course are also given exposure to the fields of cultural competence, interprofessional education, grief and bereavement, health care disparities, sexuality, professional development, heuristics, human development, health policy, and ethics. My role is to help the students, as fledgling physicians, learn how they can provide high-quality medical care while they also optimize their patients' experiences in the health care setting. I thrive in the longitudinal nature of the course, and the co-facilitator pairings have been instrumental in allowing me to learn more about the culture of medicine while also demonstrating how these young physicians-to-be can make use of what has been studied in psychology and how that knowledge can contribute to quality health care.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I have an exercise I call, “What’s in a Name?” and have used it in my courses in intercultural awareness development as well as in the very first week of classes for first-year medical students. Students pair up and find out information about the name of their partner, and then introduce their partner to the larger group (or a small subset if I’m working with a large group of students, like the roughly 160 students who arrive each year for medical school). The questions include: how the person likes to be addressed; the person’s full name at birth (and when they got the name); who gave the person that name; if the person was named for anyone, and if so for whom and why; the etymology of the name; and any changes to the name over the years and what prompted the change. In addition to getting to know each other through this ice-breaker exercise, my students quickly see that there are differences between them that aren’t necessarily easily seen, and that each person has a unique story.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I use a lot of problem-based learning in my courses, and I make sure to include a written assignment that requires a student to get out into the community, whether that’s taking a tour of a hospice or interviewing a member of an institutional review board or ethics committee.

What’s your workspace like?

Well, in none of my teaching settings do I have my own workspace! I do have my private practice office where I do most of my course preparation, but often my teaching workspace is in a café on the UCSF campus where I go to review upcoming classes and catch up on the educational research literature.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Responsive, challenging, and humorous

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Passionately involve yourself with your students’ learning.

The result of this was certainly brought home to me when I won the 2013-14 UCSF Essential Core Teaching Award for “Inspirational Teacher.” This is a school-wide recognition where both the nominations and the selection are handled by the medical students themselves.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I had a day-long workshop to teach on a Saturday, and less than an hour into the day my data projector light blew out. There went all my work making engaging presentation software slides! Fortunately the handout I created had the majority of the information from the slides, so I just got from behind the lectern, sat on the table at the front of the room, and we proceeded to complete the rest of the day using the information the students had in their hands. Since I could look at my laptop for cues to send people on breaks and lunch, the day turned out surprisingly well, and the students appreciated my (seemingly) imperturbable nature.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Three weeks before I started my psychology fellowship I rode my bicycle for 7 days (including 3 “centuries,” which are 100+ miles days) as part of a fund-raising ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to benefit AIDS service organizations in those two cities.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I actually just finished Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and chuckled throughout the book. As the youngest of my husband’s and my four children recently left home, with nary a twinge of empty nest syndrome I am catching up on some of the classics I missed along the way. Next up: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Wi-fi. My students bring laptops and tablets to work on the problem-based learning cases we have available on line, and it allow us to focus on developing clinical thinking and interpersonal team building skills, leaving more didactic learning to time outside of class.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

My chatter tends to happen at faculty development meetings and in my café “office” and is a blend of how our own offspring are doing (and how we are doing with our offspring!) and figuring out how to best approach the total curriculum revamp for the medical school that will début in in the 2017-2018 school year. I suppose my closest colleagues and I can be called “health professions education wonks;” we’re as interested in educational scholarship (both consuming it and creating it) as we are in the actual teaching of the curriculum and the professional development of our students.

John Edlund: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 13:19:34 GMT

School Name: Rochester Institute of Technology

Location: Rochester, NY

Type of college/university: Masters Granting Department

Classes I teach: Introduction to Psychology, Social Psychology (Undergraduate and Graduate), Experimental Methods, Evolutionary Psychology, Forensic Psychology, Interpersonal Relationships

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Not to be afraid to say “I don’t know, but let me get back to you on that.” I have always found that this is an acceptable answer, especially when you get back to the class the next period on what the answer is (or what the controversy is). I think this is especially important today as students can get surface-level answers with a quick google in class, but you as the instructor can give a better answer.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

McKeachie’s Teaching Tips

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach: Introduction to psychology.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment: One of my favorites is my first day activity where I pass out a “Quiz on Commonsense Psychology”. Of course, the list of 25 questions is simply a collection of commonly held myths of psychology. I make the students get up and move around the class related to their answers and have them discuss why the answered the way they did. This activity and its discussion never fail to get a few laughs, and it spins nicely into my discussion of research methods and pseudo-science which follow in the subsequent days.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

For me, it really depends on the class; in my lower level classes I like to have students do exercises that force students to relate the topics to their own lives. In my upper level classes, I like discussions of recent empirical articles (the discussions are done both online and in person).

What’s your workspace like? I teach in many different classrooms which range in size and scope. My office is has my desk, a work station (really just a small desk) for meeting with and helping students, along with many photos of my family and some mementos from my years in academia.

Three words that best describe your teaching style: Passionate, interactive, lively

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Science, writing, and critical thinking; oh my!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I am an internationally awarded amateur winemaker and brewer.

What tech tool could you not live without? My laptop; it is how I do nearly all of my work.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Children and sports

Herbert Coleman: I'm a Member of STP, and This is How I Teach.

(Past member) — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 19:11:30 GMT

School name: Austin Community College

Type of college/university: community college

School locale: Mid-sized city (Austin, TX)

Classes I teach: Introduction to Psychology, Human Growth and Development, Human Sexuality

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Teach to your strength. You can refer the things you don't feel comfortable with or assign it as a reading and then discuss but no one is an expert in every area.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled and Leo Buscaglia's Living, Loving, Learning.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course is Human Sexuality. It was always my favorite topic to cover in the intro class. Then I found out from a colleague how uncomfortable she was in handling that topic. That's when I decided to get trained and teach the course. I feel like it has more practical information for students and no topic is dull. Students have strong opinions on every construct covered. I also love teaching Human Growth and development. Since most of my students in that course are nursing or allied health majors, I treat each discussion topic as how should we, as a health care institution, approach it. This gets them out of their own head and forces them to think in a larger context.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I teach using the Michaelsen, Knight and Fink model of Team Based Learning. I love this process because I get to watch as students struggle and discuss the topics. Their explanations simply blow me away. I break each class into 5 units so they have 5 controversial topics that they have to make a decision about as a team. This is where the bulk of the great discussions take place.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Team Based Learning and clickers (student response system). I have combined these two techniques to provide students with quick feedback and to guide my instruction. I haven't graded a scantron in 10 years.

What’s your workspace like?

I work from behind the multimedia station for presentation but wander around the room as they work in teams. I truly have become the "guide on the side."

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Clicker Team-based Learning

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Everyone can learn, if they want to.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

In team-based learning I had one student who did the ultimate betrayal to his team. They enter their agreed upon answer using the electronic response pad. The team had agreed upon an answer but he entered what he was "sure" was the correct answer, twice. He was wrong on both occasions. It was very difficult to get them to rebuild their trust and he had gotten very depressed. I literally had to force them to work together as a team. They survived and made it through.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I'm pretty much an open book in class. My students know I'm a grandfather and that I work in the transgender community but my biggest hobby, origami, never comes up in class. Everyone else who has been to my office knows I do an inordinate amount of origami (no piece of paper is safe). However, this never comes up in class.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

The Internet. ;o) I read a lot of articles (never was big on fiction or novels). I’m halfway through Sex at Dawn, and about a dozen books I have on my Amazon Kindle account.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My iPhone. I can do so much with it and my iPad that I forget sometimes that I've only had it for 7 years and the iPad for 4.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

The changing state of education. As my colleagues eschew flipped classrooms, MOOCs and blended learning, I tell them they are reacting very much like the music industry did when Napster came along. When one colleague quipped back, "So yeah, how's that Napster thing working out," I responded, "It's not but iTunes is (number one music seller), as is iTunes U."

Trisha Prunty: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 22:49:41 GMT

School name - Lindenwood University at Belleville
Type of college/university - small liberal arts school
School locale - small town, Belleville, Illinois
Classes you teach - Principles of Psychology, Behavioral Neuroscience, Learning and Memory, Human Sexuality, Human Development, Advanced Research Methods, Senior Seminar

What's the best advice about teaching you've ever received?
Love what you do. If you love the material and love teaching, that energy and exuberance translates over to the students who pick up on your enthusiasm. I've seen this work with even the most taciturn students.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?
No single piece of work comes to mind but instead a culmination of a variety of research on the teaching of psychology. I often find tidbits that are both intuitive and seemingly painless to implement that then shape how I teach classes in the coming semester. If the methods pan out, I keep them. If they end up being more trouble than they are worth, I revise. Teaching is such a process of evolution!

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.
My hands down favorite class to teach is Behavioral Neuroscience. I love that it is largely new, and often frightening, material for students who have been more focused on psychology and less on the biological aspects. It is a highly interactive class that always gets students loving the material by the end.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.
My favorite in-class activity is during the vision portion of the Behavioral Neuroscience course. I introduce trichromatic and opponent-processing theories and provide several examples of after-images which the students always love. We discuss how opponent-processing occurs in the retina and that complex cells in the brain allow for motion after images. I then have students look at various stimuli and either switch eyes, demonstrating that color after images only work in the same eye that saw the initial stimuli, but that motion after images persist regardless of which eye saw the movement.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?
What works best for me (and also my students) is to provide a lot of graded opportunities. My classes typically include 4 exams, in-class reaction papers where students react to an ethical quandary or other dilemma, four written assignments, and a final project that is presented during finals week. For example, in my Behavioral Neuroscience class, their final project is to put together a 3 to 5 minute "Brain Awareness" video that demonstrates some aspect of neuroscience to a lay audience. They are usually freaked out at the concept of creating a video but often step up to the challenge with wonderful and entertaining results.

What's your workspace like?
My work space is usually covered in my pile of junk that I've dumped out of my bag. I swear that I organize and re-organize almost daily! It's my biggest struggle. Otherwise, I have a lot of room to work and my office includes a small table so I can have more personal conferences with students rather than me sitting in the "big chair" to talk to them. I love that the arrangement of the room does not allow for a desk to sit between myself and the student, aiding to the open and friendly environment.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.
Passionate, consistent, and interactive.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?
Get students to ask critical questions in life.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you've had.
During my first or second year teaching, I thought it would be fun for students in my Human Development class to present a "Day in the Life" of a person of a certain age group. I assigned them to various groups and gave them ages, ranging from infant to elderly. The instructions were vague; I thought this would allow them to be creative. The idea was to present what it was like to be a 3-year-old, for example. Several groups took creative license and role-played, providing factual and entertaining presentations of a "Day in the Life." More than half the class, however, got up and gave a Powerpoint presentation with a laundry list of physical, cognitive, and socioemotional changes that occur in the life of the person. I was upset at first but I realized that the fault truly was mine for not giving them a clearer idea of what I was envisioning. I am happy to report that I did this project again this past semester and everyone in the class demonstrated a creative application of the assignment with Powerpoint nowhere to be found! The things we learn after teaching for 9 years.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?
They would be surprised to learn that I had a pretty bad fear of public speaking when I was an undergraduate. In fact, I had no intention of ever becoming a professor because it involved public speaking. I was forced to teach two chapters of Introductory Psychology as part of my Master's teaching assistantship and that experience changed my worldview.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?
The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson. I make a point of reading for pleasure each and every night, even if I ultimately fall asleep while reading. As I get older, the number of pages read before I wake up with the Kindle pressed to my face has definitely diminished.

What tech tool could you not live without?
I'm actually pretty low tech. I don't have a smart phone (nor do I want one). I would be pretty lost without my desktop (I'm so old school I'm not a fan of laptops either), but I think I'd ultimately adapt.

What's your hallway chatter like?
Most of the discussion revolves around changes at the University. Given that we are a young campus, there are almost always new developments happening. It seems as though we take a new step nearly every day and there is usually a buzz of excitement regarding the future of LU-B and how we are going to get there. Other conversations revolve around our students, their successes and struggles, and our own personal lives. It's a wonderful atmosphere to work in.

Rachael Reavis: I'm a member of STP and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 19:53:55 GMT

School name: Earlham College

Type of college/university: Small Liberal Arts College

School locale: small town

Classes I teach:

Introduction to Psychology; Research Methods in Peer Relationships; Adult Psychopathology; Developmental Psychopathology; Senior Research

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice was actually the first time I taught a class. Someone told me that I wouldn't be particularly good at it that first semester, but that I would get better. That was really helpful. My first semester was OK, but I tried to do too much and there was a lot I wanted to change. Because of the advice I had, I didn't feel like a failure -- I just felt normal. Subsequent semesters were much better as I learned from my mistakes.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

The courses I teach on psychopathology are my favorites. I always have students who are doing service-learning placements. Sometimes all the students are doing placements as a requirement of the course; sometimes it is an optional additional credit. They work 2-3 hours per week out in the community for most of the semester. I have them respond to journal prompts, lead discussions in class, and present on their experiences at the end of the semester. It's really satisfying to read their reflections and to see them change throughout the semester. I don't think there's a good way to demonstrate the complexity of real-world people and institutions within the classroom. Students learn a lot more when they are out in the community, but reflecting on their experiences in a structured way and making connections to class material.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

In Developmental Psychopathology, I developed a "case" for students to practice assessment on. Students are given a brief intake description of a child. In small groups, they talk about the case and what kinds of assessments they want, such as unstructured interview with the mom or behavioral checklist from the teacher. They have to ask for each assessment one at a time, take it back and talk about how the information has influenced their case conceptualization -- what they think is going on with this kid and his family. I have 15 or so prepared assessment reports for this assignment. We usually take a full class period to do it, and the groups never get all of the possible assessments. Then we talk about each group's view of this child, possible diagnoses, broader family issues, etc. Pretty much every time, the groups end up with different perspectives because they collected different pieces of information. I use this to show them that diagnosis is a complicated process and the kinds of questions we ask (assessments we get) can really change our perspective. The students almost always comment that the assignment was very difficult but also illuminating and enjoyable.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

In my introductory courses, I use a lot of quizzes. I post questions from previous tests into online quizzes that are completely non-graded. I also give quizzes with questions similar to the test in class, scored taken/not taken. Since I've started doing this, particularly the in-class quizzes, I've seen test scores go up. I believe this is largely from improved study skills. A lot of students have pretty bad metacognitive skills and overestimate what they know. The in-class quizzes give them firm evidence that they need to study.

What’s your workspace like?

Controlled chaos. Mostly. Sometimes just chaos.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Organized, Fast-paced, Applied

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

My first semester teaching in graduate school, I was teaching sensation and perception, and I pronounced "timbre" like "timber." A very nice, polite student waited until the other 300 students had left the lecture hall to come up and mention that it's actually pronounced "tam-ber." Oops.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

They seem easily surprised. Most recently one of them was surprised that I was also a religion major in college.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Five Billion Years of Solitude

What tech tool could you not live without?

computer

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Probably too much chatter. We talk about food and cute/absurd things we've seen on Facebook.

Amanda Vanderbur: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 23:54:12 GMT

Editor's note: Amanda is the 2014 winner of the Mary Margaret Moffet Memorial Teaching Award! Congratulations, Amanda!

Zionsville Community High School, Zionsville, Indiana. My town is a suburb northwest of Indianapolis with approximately 1,800 students. I teach AP Psychology Honors, Psychology, and U.S. History

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?
This question makes me laugh because most of the advice I received wasn’t great advice. Some examples include: “Work smarter, not harder,” and “You just gotta throw a lot at ‘em and hope some of it sticks.” I’ve learned ways to “work smart.” I prioritize. I avoid busy work for myself and my students. I assess what’s essential and not frivolous activities. However, I also know you have to work hard to be a successful educator. I put a great deal of energy into professional development, sharing with others, and using what I learn from them.

I also believe that it’s important to provide students with as much information as I can, but I also know students have limits. I don’t have to inundate them with an information overload. I want students to be critical thinkers and walk away with a clear understanding of the content. It’s not about being a minimalist, but it does mean I’m selective about what I “throw at ‘em.”.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?
The book that shaped my work as a psychology teacher is one I wrote myself. Last year I compiled a Psychology teachers resource guide. It was a body of work I created over the past 16 years. It contained 50 lesson ideas that correlated to each of the National Standards for Psychology, AP Psychology Standards, and our local standards in Indiana. Not only did I “shape it,” but it “shaped me” as I reflected on what I teach, how I teach, what I assess, and how I assess.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.
My favorite topics to lecture on are ones for which I have many mnemonic devices. I love not only teaching the content, but I also enjoy giving students techniques for recalling difficult material. When we cover the structures and functions of the brain, I have an extensive list of “memory tricks” to help them remember the content. It’s very gratifying when I have a student who has gone from high school Psychology and through graduate school who still remembers to think of the thalamus as “Thelma (thalamus) the switchboard operator who sends sensory information where it needs to go” or “Amy the emotional girl (amygdala)” and others in the long list of mnemonics we use.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.
My favorite in-class activity is when students reflect on how the content connects to their own lives. Sometimes during the unit on Development, for instance, they’ll write journal articles, make a baby book, or create a Power Point or Prezi on how the theories to their own lives.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?)
Some of the teaching strategies I use include class discussion, daily reading quizzes, on-line lab activities, and chapter tests. I find that with the use of frequent assessments students retain more information. We sometimes do projects, but I find students getting wrapped up in making something look pretty, but it’s weak in content. I am enjoying our 1:1 student:computer ratio, and I’m deliberate about infusing meaningful technology into my teaching. One of my goals this year is to learn better ways to do this.

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is often looks like a disaster zone, but I can usually find what I’m looking for! I like having what I need within arm’s length, and I use a lot of ancillary materials. I usually have a stack of papers to grade, and one that’s been graded and is ready to hand back. I’ve got my plan book – hard copy and on-line copy, folders for each subject and each unit, and usually a few empty Diet Coke cans. I have funny pictures of students, my daughter, and one of my brother and I when we were preschoolers eating corn on the cob at the Indiana State Fair – my diplomas, certificates, and thank you notes from students and parents. These things are my security; they are what makes me smile; and they are what keep me moving!

Three words that best describe your teaching style.
Storytelling, humorous, interactive

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?
Help students become the best they can be.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.
My disasters usually happen in U.S. History and not Psychology. For example, I interchange the words pregnancy and presidency all the time: “During Ronald Regan’s pregnancy….” The kids crack up when this happens, and I have no idea why I do this. Is it a Freudian Slip?

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? Early in my teaching career, I spent Spring Break in Okinawa, Japan visiting a friend of a friend whom I’d only met one time before. I was so excited, as I also teach U.S. History, to visit a location with such historical significance. Since I could only afford the plane ride, the friend let me stay in a comfortable guest room and was my personal chauffeur for the entire week – free of charge. It was my most unique and memorable spring break. I spent the plane ride each way grading Psychology research projects.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?
I’m not…What is this “reading for pleasure” of which you speak? Honestly, what I read for pleasure are cookbooks. I love trying new things, and cooking is my outlet at the end of a busy day.

What tech tool could you not live without?
I’m learning to use Weebly, and we have Canvas as our course management system. I love both of these!

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?
We usually don’t talk about school in the hallway – when we’re talking to kids, it’s usually about a recent sporting event or extra-curricular activity.

Stephenie Chaudoir: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 20:07:43 GMT

School name: College of the Holy Cross

Type of college/university: Liberal arts college

School locale: City of Worcester, MA

Classes I teach:

Introduction to Psychology, Social Psychology, Health Psychology, Psychology of Stigma

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Create ways to empower students to become the “teachers.” If you want students to think deeply about a concept, create an opportunity for them to explain the concept to other students. And, if you want students to become more invested in the course, create spaces for them to be part of the process. For example, instead of telling students what the “ground rules” are for conversations about sensitive topics (e.g., racism), I ask the students to generate their own ideas about how we can engage in civil discourse. Nine times out of ten, they come up with the same list of items that I would have given them. But because I created space for students to become their own teachers, they take more ownership of the conversation and get more out of the class.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. It has inspired me to empower students to become be active participants in the production of knowledge rather than to treat them as passive recipients of my own knowledge.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Hands down, my favorite lecture topic is the social construction of prejudice. I ask students to watch “A Class Divided” - the Frontline depiction of Jane Elliot’s “Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes” experiment - before coming to class. We then recount the steps Jane Elliot used to create a new prejudice from scratch. First, she identifies brown eye color as a devalued characteristic, a stigma. That single social categorization now creates two classes where there once was one. Then, she commits a series of illusory correlations, inferring the brown eye color is associated with negative behaviors. Soon, she’s created stereotypes and prejudice that have a life of their own. And then the students are in on it. They begin to engage in confirmation bias, only noticing information that confirms their new stereotypes.

Once we unpack these steps together in class, students start to see how prejudices are socially constructed. And, then the real fun begins. Because once students understand the mechanics of how a prejudice is created, they can start to see these dynamics unfold in their daily lives. Suddenly students start to question their own stereotypes based on race, gender, or sexual orientation. They start to notice racial bias in the media. And, from this space, we can then begin to unpack stereotype threat and understand how these stereotypes can threaten performance and well-being. In fact, you can even see evidence of stereotype threat in the underperformance of the brown eyed children when they are in the devalued group. The film provides such a rich starting point from which to launch into these topics and it is arguably one of the most dynamic conversations we have all semester!

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

Lawrence, S. M. (1998). Unveiling positions of privilege: A hands on approach to understanding racism. Teaching of Psychology, 25, 198-200.

In this activity, students are asked to construct a mobile and are randomly assigned to a low or high resource group. Because they work in separate rooms to create their mobile, they have no idea that the resources are unequal. But, when they all return to the classroom, the inequality is apparent. They see it. But more importantly, they feel it. I could lecture for hours about the social dynamics of inequality--how the low status group always notices the difference but the high status group is relatively blind to it, for example--but creating a way for students to experience it for themselves is so much more powerful. This simple idea--that creating ways for students to experience the lesson first builds incredible bridges for them to then understand it more deeply later--has totally changed the way I approach all my courses

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I use a lot of group work and think-pair-share in class. My exams are usually mixed format and always include an essay that requires application of course material to novel real world situations.

What’s your workspace like?

Our building used to be a women’s dorm, so our offices are actually quite large. There’s enough room for my desk and a small table with chairs, which is really great for student meetings.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

I queried my students for this answer, and they say: engaged, passionate, and rigorous.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Engaging courses create lifelong learners.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I hate to admit this, but the second time I was an instructor in grad school, I passed out one of the exams with the answer key stapled to the back. Yup. You read that correctly! I had accidentally given all the students the answers. Luckily, one of my more conscientious students raised her hand and asked if I had meant to do that. It was totally embarrassing, but I’m glad I got that epic of a mistake out of my system early on in my teaching career!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I was the first female competitive power-lifter at my high school and won my weight division in a regional competition. As my colleagues will tell you, those skills still come in handy when changing the enormous water cooler bottles in our faculty lounge!

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I’m working my way through Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21^st Century.

What tech tool could you not live without?

The Internet, Dropbox, and power point clickers, in that order.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Like most places, the chatter varies from the mundane (“The printer is jammed again?!”) to the meaningful (“Is higher education really ‘doomed,’ as the recent Atlantic article would lead us to believe?”). But, there is almost always someone laughing. And that sort of easy-going, collegial environment is a big part of what makes Holy Cross such a great place to be.

Christopher Poirier: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 18:36:00 GMT

School name: Stonehill College

Type of college/university: Small liberal arts college

School locale: Easton, Massachusetts, a small town 30 minutes south of Boston

Classes you teach: General Psychology; Child Development; Research Methods in Psychology; Advanced Research in Developmental Psychology; Capstone

(Photo credit: Patrick O'Connor Photography)

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I have learned a lot from reading the Lessons Learned: Practical Advice for the Teaching of Psychology series. I am embarrassed to admit that I have not read the volumes cover to cover. However, the selected readings have been quite helpful in shaping how I teach courses and interact with students. In addition, Teaching of Psychology has been an invaluable resource for improving my teaching.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is Child Development. The main reason that I love teaching this course is because it gives me an opportunity to share stories about my two children: Cameron (6-year-old) and Kennedy (3-year-old). In addition, we have a Child Development Playroom on our campus, and my students are required to complete two observational research projects. Often, my wife and children are the participants in the playroom! It is a wonderful opportunity for me to blend family life and work.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I enjoy covering children’s eyewitness memory. I assign one of Maggie Bruck and Stephen Ceci’s articles on the suggestibility of children’s memory. Then, during class we watch a short video on a recent criminal case that involves a young child as an eyewitness. Finally, we have a class discussion in which we apply some of the suggestible interviewing techniques to the case. I really love this class because it clearly demonstrates the application of developmental research to improve children’s welfare. Notably, my students usually agree with my assessment and often rank it as the best class of the semester.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?)

I rely on over a dozen different techniques. I present material via multiple media (e.g., YouTube videos, PowerPoint), provide a variety of in- and out-of-class activities (e.g., writing assignments, small group discussions, class discussions, reading assignments), and use multiple assessment tools (e.g., low-stakes quizzes, cumulative exams, papers). Taken together, this approach has been well-received by my students.

What's your workspace like?

It depends on the time of year. If it’s the beginning of the semester, my office is extremely neat and organized. However, if it’s the end of the semester, my office could be condemned.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Passionate, fair, challenging

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Apply evidence-based practices to enhance teaching.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I don't like to get my hands dirty. For example, I eat donuts and pizza with a fork.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

People have time to read for pleasure? Does Teaching of Psychology count?

What tech tool could you not live without?

The Blackboard Learn course management system

What's your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I am extremely fortunate to be on the faculty at Stonehill College. One of the best aspects of my job is having the opportunity to interact with my talented colleagues, both within and outside of the Psychology Department. When we are not talking about work-related issues, we discuss music (Dave Matthews Band!), the Boston sports scene (Patriots! Red Sox! Bruins!, Celtics!), and our children (cute and smart!). It’s an ideal working environment.

Matthew Callahan: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:23:54 GMT

School name: Sonoma State University

Type of college/university: Public, teaching focused

School locale: Sonoma County CA.

Classes I teach:

Social Psychology, Research Methods, Advanced Research Methods, Social Psychology of Gender, LGBT Psychology

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Just because you “cover” it, doesn’t mean they have learned it.

This came from one of my mentors - Cindy Decker Raynak- at the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence. I know it sounds obvious, but I and many other instructors have a default worry that there isn’t enough time to “cover” everything. This approach leads to class sessions where instructors plow through concept after concept, show graph after graph, and summarize study after study. Students leave with their eyes glazed, wondering what will be on the test.

My approach now is to think “what can I present that will invigorate the material? What will promote long-term retention of the concepts?” Sometimes I use examples from my life. Other times I ask students to generate examples from their lives. And sometimes I do present studies and graphs, but only if it helps them learn the material. This approach takes time, and I do indeed end up covering less material. But that isn’t what I am after anymore. My goal is for the concepts to be remembered and referenced years after graduation.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Actually, it is not a book or article but a series of youtube clips. Andy Field’s Statistics Hell website is a treasure of resources to use in class. But more importantly, there are videos of him teaching his undergraduate statistics course. His ability to teach advanced concepts such as bootstrapping and fitting models is masterful. I use many of his metaphors and examples in my research methods class and the students get it right away.

Also, my graduate assistantship and post-doc at the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Penn State gave me invaluable training that continues to blossom to this day. If you have a teaching center at your institution, check it out. They are an incredible resource.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Benevolent sexism. It changes lives.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

Self-presentation styles on social media. Students take out their phones/laptops and go on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter - whichever they like. They look for examples of self-presentation styles (i.e., self-promotion, ingratiation, supplication, intimidation, exemplification). They then look to see the response – were there a lot of “likes” or re-tweets? Did it backfire and receive snarky comments? Which styles are most prevalent and why? (Self-promotion is always the most common.) The students are fascinated by this activity.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Frequent, lower stakes tests instead of exams. Every two weeks is a test on two weeks of material. They are just as challenging as an exam, only on less material. The research evidence overwhelmingly shows that this practice leads to better performance and deeper retention. You would think that the students would groan at more tests, but they don’t. They tell me that it is one of their favorite aspects of my classes.

What’s your workspace like?

To off-set the chaos in my head, my space is clean and soothing. There is a little fountain, pictures of various nature scenes and soft lighting. By the end of the semester all civility and order is gone. Empty Diet Coke bottles, Altoids tins, and piles of papers. Each November there are reports that several forks and spoons go missing from the department kitchen. I can neither confirm nor deny this, but please do not open my desk drawer.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Learning while laughing.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Respect the students. Strive for connection. Don’t be boring. (*nine words)

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

An alarmingly large lizard ran over my foot while teaching. After I returned to the ground, I was told that the lizard was a “service animal for depression” and that “he liked me”. Since then, I set firm policies that prohibit lizards in class.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Few can match my skill and fervor for step aerobics. Its heyday may have come and gone, but I still rock the bench, waiting for the triumphant return of step to mainstream fitness.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Spark by John Ratey, which is focused on the neuroscience research about exercise.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Course management software. Gone are the days of those tiresome green gradebooks, bringing extra copies of handouts to class, and students wondering what their grade will be.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We share our grading woes. Grading papers can be tedious. To break up the doldrums we share some of our favorite writing mishaps. Below is the current winner.

“Freud came up with the edible complex.”

Stephen Chew: I'm a Member of STP, and This is How I Teach

Wed, 06 Aug 2014 16:40:03 GMT

School name: Samford University

Type of college/university: Private, regional, masters-level University (although we have no graduate programs in psychology and operate more like a liberal arts college). We are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention of Alabama.

School locale: Birmingham, Alabama.

Classes you teach (current): I regularly teach General Psychology, Statistics for Social Sciences, Cognitive Psychology, Journal Seminar, and Directed Research.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Ooh, so many to choose from. I’m going to cheat and list two, one early in my career and one later. First, when I was in grad school, I attended a training meeting on how to teach. The guy leading it was an older grad student who had taught 5-6 times (that qualified him as a teaching expert), but he did make one point that I always remember. Teaching involves lying to your students because you must simplify material to make it understandable to them. You have to omit detail and gloss over controversies. You have to meet the students where they are, then take them where you want to go. The critical outcome is that your students have a better, generally correct understanding than they had before they took your course. And make sure that the lies you tell students match the lies in the textbook.

In mid-career I had the opportunity to participate in the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) run by Lee Shulman. Lee taught me how to think of teaching as scholarly inquiry. All teaching should be driven by evidence of student learning.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

As far as books are concerned, The Activities Handbook for the Teaching of Psychology was a godsend when I was starting out. I have all four volumes. I also sifted through old issues of ToP. Going to conferences such as NITOP was also incredibly helpful.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I guess my absolute favorite is Cognitive Psychology because it is my area and it is a chance to share what I love about it with my students. It’s an advanced course, so we can replicate a lot of studies as part of class. Statistics and General are close seconds. I like Stats because of the challenge of getting students over their math anxiety and I like General because I am showing the students what psychology really is and how interesting and useful it is.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I do one activity in General Psych that is a sentimental favorite because I learned it from my grad school mentor, Jim Jenkins. I teach research methods in General Psych about the second week of classes. I discuss descriptive methods, then correlations, and finally experiments. After explaining correlations, I discuss how correlation can’t establish causality. After some simple examples, I state that we’ve known for decades about the correlation between cigarette smoking and cancer, but, because it is a correlation, tobacco companies have always been able to claim that there is no established causal link between the two in humans. I discuss why this conclusion is correct because of uncontrolled extraneous variables. I ask the class to list some likely confounding variables between smokers and non-smokers possibly related to cancer. They come up with exercise, diet, pollution, genetics, stress, work environment, and others. Next I talk about experiments and their properties. I talk about the strengths of the method in addressing causality. We go through some simple examples and then I pose the following problem: Say the National Institutes of Health gave you unlimited amounts of money to conduct an experiment to determine once and for all if cigarette smoking causes cancer. Design the perfect experiment for this purpose. We go through the steps of experimental design. Who would be our subjects? They can’t be adults, too much has already happened to them. They can’t be people who smoke already, we don’t know their health backgrounds. We have to have to control for genetics. So the only solution is to use sets of identical twin babies. We have to randomly assign one twin of each pair to be a smoker and the other a control. Then we have to control all other variables. We have to ensure that they get the same diet, exercise, stress level and so on. When one baby smokes, we have to have the control baby do everything except inhale. Then 50 years later, we see which group developed more cancer. Of course, the students are APPALLED that we would even discuss taking babies away from parents and teaching them to smoke. It’s a perfect context to discuss the ethics of research and why this study would never be done. But if we can’t do it with babies, who can we do it on? Lab animals, of course, (and here I can discuss ethical principles of working with non-human animals). So animal studies do show a causal link between cigarette smoking and cancer as well as other diseases, but now we have to worry about problems of generalization from animals to humans, and from lab studies to the real world. We discuss how the perfect experiment is really impossible to do. No one can think of all possible confounds, much less control for all of them. This give me a chance to discuss confounding and the importance of replication. This activity accomplishes a number of desirable goals for me beyond teaching research methods. It creates a sense of intrigue for students. They don’t know what outrageous ideas might be discussed in class. It shows the students that they have permission to think in unconventional ways in class. It creates an atmosphere where students expect to contribute in class.

I’ve done this activity for all the years I’ve taught General Psych. Perhaps it takes some finesse to pull it off without offending the class and it may not work for everyone, but I find it very useful.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

When done properly, formative assessments have tremendous benefits for students and teachers and virtually no downside. Formative assessments are brief, no-stakes or low-stakes activities that make the level of student learning and understanding visible to both student and teacher. Think-pair-share, exit problems, predict-observe-explain, in-class quizzes, conceptests or “clicker” questions, are all examples. The exam should never be the first time the teacher assesses student learning. But the formative assessment has to be designed and implemented properly and the results have to be used constructively by teachers and students. I see teachers sometime going through the motions without actually understanding what they are trying to accomplish with their assessments.

What’s your workspace like?

I’m happy to report that as of right now it is pristine, because I was forced to clear my office to get new floor tile. That being said, I’m terrible about taking the time to organize and file stuff away, although I do make honest efforts. I also seem to be under constant deadline pressures, but I know that is true of most all faculty. When I cleaned off the two foot high stacks of papers on my desk and credenza, I found stuff dating back to 1999. My office was pretty legendary for its stacks of piled up papers. Once it was empty, several people in the building came by just to look. I’ve taught generations of psych majors at Samford who never saw the top of my desk. I resolve to be more organized in the future.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Enthusiastic, demanding, supportive

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

I’m happy you are here, let’s learn together.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

So many to choose from. I’ve actually got a mental list of them that I reflect on often and continue to learn from. I’ve discussed several of them in my chapter for the STP e-book on teaching psychology through autobiography. But here I’ll describe one that really haunted me at the time. It happened early in my career.

In the 1980’s, psychologist Nancy Wexler made a dramatic breakthrough in identifying a chromosomal marker for Huntington’s disease, which made it possible for the first time to test for the disease before symptoms developed. It was a dramatic story because Huntington’s runs in Wexler’s family and her mother died from it. Wexler then had to confront the question of whether she wanted to know if she carried the chromosome, a question that all members of families with Huntington’s now had to face.

I saw this research as a great teaching opportunity for my General Psych course. It was clearly an important breakthrough, it had a great human element, and it showed psychologists in roles contrary to the popular stereotype. I explained the breakthrough to my class. Then, to make the story more personal to them, I asked them the following: If they had Huntington’s disease in their families, would they want to know? Would they take the test for the disease? I had them write down their answers and reasons and turn them in to me. In my enthusiasm, I didn’t consider the possibility that I would have a student who had Huntington’s disease in his or her family. Of course, I did. In her written statement, she said she and her sister had been grappling with that very issue, and she had almost burst into tears when I was discussing it. She found it demeaning that I would see what was going to be a life altering decision for her as an interesting academic exercise. I wrote her an apology and offered to meet with her but I never heard back from her. My first thought was that I should never have brought up a topic that might be affecting my students in such a personal way and I should take care to avoid such topics in the future. Over the next few years, though, my thinking changed. It was an important issue for students to learn about and to understand. Many topics we cover in General Psych are personal to students, from attachment to prejudice to behavior disorders. My fault was in not mentioning the possibility that someone might be personally experiencing what we were discussing and explaining the importance of covering it. I’m much more cognizant of doing that now.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

They are surprised to learn that I used to teach ballroom dance. I was never a “Dancing with the Stars” type dancer, but I was a good social dancer and taught it for several years in Jan. term.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I recently finished reading Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy, a history of the African and European campaigns in World War II. I also listen to a lot of young adult fantasy and historical fiction with my son in the car. I enjoy it as much as he does.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Article databases. Young whippersnappers today have no idea how much time and effort is saved by using article databases. They never had the pleasure or the exercise of sifting through volumes of Readers’ Guides and the Social Science Citation Index.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most?

Mostly we talk about students. We are a small department and we know our majors well. Often we compare notes on them, resolve advising issues, and discuss research projects we are doing with them; stuff like that. We do talk about teaching, and any problems that might have come up in a class.

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Stephen Chew talk with Garth Neufeld about how he uses some of the cognitive psychology activities mentioned in this blog post with students, including a discussion about his fabulous YouTube "How to Study" series. - https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/interview-with-stephen-chew

Kosha Bramesfeld: I’m a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 00:33:20 GMT

School name:

I just very recently started teaching at Ryerson University located in the heart of Toronto, Ont. The Psychology department at Ryerson University is very research driven, but my position is teaching focused. Prior to this, I taught for four years at Maryville University, a small liberal arts university located in a suburb outside of St. Louis, MO.

Classes you teach:

Introduction to Psychology, Social Psychology, Group Dynamics, Organizational Behavior, Community Psychology, Interpersonal and Intergroup Dynamics, Evidence-Based Leadership, Critical Thinking in Psychology, Statistics, Research Methods, Tests and Measurements, and Senior Seminar.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best teaching advice that I ever received is, “Bring your own personality into the classroom. Find what works for you and go for it.” This became particularly relevant when I first started teaching at a small liberal arts university a few years back. Up until then, I had taught large enrollment classes for a state school, so lecturing was considered perfectly acceptable, and I was good at it. However, at my new institution there seemed to be an unspoken bias against lecturing in favor of discussion. Indeed, in observing some of my colleagues at work, they were masters at throwing out a question, letting it stew amongst the students, and then gently guiding the discourse to a logical conclusion. Rarely was a PPT slide used. I, on the other hand, was quite bad at this! For me, a discussion-only format felt like the world’s most painful staring contest. (Who would blink first, me or the students?) So, I went back to doing what I did best: I lectured from PowerPoint and used my humor, student-relevant examples, visual displays, activities, and discussion to engage students in the material. This format works well for me, so I have embraced it and never looked back!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

The book that made me think the most about my own teaching was Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen. Although this book focuses on the teaching of American History, it made me realize the importance of representing psychology truthfully, through multiple lenses, and remembering to represent all of the members of our society when doing so.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

There are so many to choose from! I love teaching about sensation and perception. There are so many fun illusions and demonstrations; and for a short while I get to feel like a magician. I also love teaching about social influence and group dynamics. Again, there are so many fun ways to engage students in this material. I also really love teaching courses in Statistics. Students come into the class with so much fear. I enjoy the challenge of breaking down those anxiety barriers in order to help students appreciate the value of statistics.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I have developed an in-class role playing game designed to engage students in a discussion about issues of intersectionality, privilege, and oppression. In the game, students are assigned a character and then navigate life decisions and scenarios as that character. The consequences (good and bad) of each decision vary based on student’s own unique characteristics. As the game progresses, students are able to see how race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and SES interact to influence the opportunities that are available for some but not for others. For years I struggled with how to teach this material without students becoming defensive and shutting down. This new approach really seems to work and the discussions that follow the activity have been great!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?)

I like any assignment that treats learning as a process, rather than an outcome. For example, I provide online quizzes where students can continue retaking the quiz (with a different set of questions for each attempt) until they feel as if they have mastered the material. When time allows, I also like to assign multiple drafts of the same paper so that students can engage in critical self-reflection, submit their papers for peer review, and receive feedback from me prior to turning in a “final” version of the paper. I want students to internalize that learning unfolds over time as a process and is not simply an end product of “memorization and regurgitation.”

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is best described as “functional.” To an outsider, my office probably appears impersonal. I guess my personality comes out in my behavior and social interactions, more so than it does in my material surroundings. =)

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Energetic, zany, & well-organized.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Create passion, make it relevant & focus on process. (The ampersand saves the day! I used exactly 8 words).

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I am constantly saying or doing random things that are embarrassing. Indeed, I rarely go a semester (or even a class period) without tripping over something or saying something random and weird. Most of the time, the students and I laugh about it, shrug it off, and move on. But one time I really did embarrass myself. I was introducing SPSS to students in my statistics course. To illustrate the many user friendly features of SPSS, I had intended to give the example that, for any given study, I am typically bad at remembering how I coded participant sex. The labeling function of SPSS helps me keep track. However, what I actually verbalized was: “I am really bad at sex.” As soon as I realized what I said, I became embarrassed and tried to back track, but in the process I just made things far worse! “I did not mean to say, ‘I am bad at sex.’ I am not bad at sex! This is not to say that I am standing before you saying that I am good at sex. Although, I’m not saying I’m NOT good at sex either…” Fortunately, the students were used to me saying random bizarre things, so we had a good laugh about it. Still, I cannot believe that I announced to a classroom full of students that I was “bad at sex” and then went on to try and explain to them that this was not true! Definitely a “TMI” moment for all of us. =)

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

In the classroom, I am very lively, energetic, sociable, and outgoing. Outside of the classroom, I am introverted, preferring to curl up with a book, rather than socialize. In addition, in social situations where I do not know what to expect, I can be quite shy.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

My sons and I have started to read together some of my favorite books from childhood. We just finished Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls and we are currently reading Two Old Women by Velma Wallis. Next up: Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I consider access to PowerPoint, a course management system (and all of their bells and whistles), email, YouTube, and TED talks as “essentials” to my teaching. My teaching style would have to drastically change if I did not have access to these tools.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I am at a new institution, so I am still testing the social waters, but in my previous position the hallway chatter between my colleagues and me was always lively, fun, and silly. We were (and still are) very close and talked about anything and everything (including teaching ideas, family, etc.). We also liked to pull funny, silly pranks on one another. I love chocolate and was notorious for popping into people’s offices mid-afternoon just to raid their candy jars. In addition, as a fundraiser each year, I would make and sell tie die shirts for charity. My colleagues would dutifully buy one each year to support the cause. At my very last faculty meeting before I moved, my colleagues staged a surprise flash dance to the song Age of Aquarius while wearing the tie died shirts that they had purchased from me over the years. They also presented me with a HUGE Hershey’s chocolate bar. I was so surprised! I had no idea they were planning this. After years of helping to pull silly pranks on others, they pulled the absolute best one on me. =)

Jane Halonen: I'm a member of STP, and this is how I teach

Thu, 03 Jul 2014 14:35:36 GMT

School name: University of West Florida

Type of college/university: Regional Comprehensive University

School locale: Pensacola, Florida, a military-friendly, tourist-oriented, and historically significant town (oldest American settlement in America) on the Gulf Coast {This “oldest settlement” is a controversial issue since the Pcola settlers got wiped out by a hurricane giving final honors to St. Augustine Florida for oldest continuous settlement in America}.

Classes you teach (current): I’m returning to the classroom in the fall after ten years of service as a dean during which time I still taught honors introductory psychology. I will be teaching Honors Introductory Psychology and, for the first time, Positive Psychology.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

When you don’t know something, don’t fake it. Turn it into a critical thinking moment and have the class speculate about how to answer the question. If possible, come back with expert opinion in the next class. This gem and many others from Bill McKeachie.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

The fabulous Teaching Tips by the fabulous Bill McKeachie. I discovered the book in my first year of teaching and practically slept with it under my pillow.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I most enjoy teaching intro and have done so for nearly every year in my career. The reason I like it so much is that it gives me an opportunity to capture the most suited students for the major and also enlighten those who are not suited to the major to figure some other honorable ways to meet their career goals. In this class, more than any other, students are capable of surprise and open to changing how they think.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I love an ice-breaker activity that I think I originally learned from Norine Jalbert. In intro I want students to understand the difference between describing behavior and inferring meaning from that behavior, a fundamental goal of intro that often gets neglected. To do that, I provide a list of several multiple choice questions about me that they must determine the right answer to merely from observation and intuition. An example would be, “Who has kissed me on the cheek? The Governor, Denzel Washington, Steve Martin, or a member of Monty Python.” They must generate a hypothesis, commit to it by holding up a color coded for the appropriate answer, and then engage in vigorous defense. It is a great way to illustrate hypothesis generation, the nature of evidence, and confidence in judgment, as well as allow students a little glimpse into me and my eccentricities. By the way, the answer is Terry Jones of Monty Python. Twice!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Although I enjoy traditional test construction, I prefer the long-lasting learning effects (“velcro learning”) offered by authentic assessment strategies. An example is the final exam I have historically given in intro psych. I rearrange chapters so that I conclude the course with personality, abnormal, and treatment. The final takes place on the last formal day of class. I recruit a former student from the class to role-play a famous deceased person with mental health problems of the person’s choosing (e.g., Sylvia Plath, Zelda Fitzgerald, Emily Dickinson, Kurt Cobain). The class serves as an interviewing body with the obligation of coming up with an explanation of how the problems derived, a tentative diagnosis, and a provisional treatment plan. There are some reliable outcomes from this event. The class explodes with questions. Despite my warnings, students get sucked into personal judgment rather than professional questioning. Someone usually asks if it is “okay” to do additional research. Typically, a student volunteers for the next class’s experience. Instead of meeting to take a final, the class returns to discuss why their answers didn’t agree and what that means about the nature of the discipline. We then switch to discussing the experience of the course itself, returning to the syllabus and talking about ways their thinking should have changed. This arrangement allows me to end the class properly, a pedagogical necessity I learned from Neil Lutsky.

What’s your workspace like?

I’m currently moving into a new workspace after surrendering the luxurious digs of the dean’s office. As the most senior member of the psychology department, I was offered a double sized office with lots of project and discussion space, bookshelves, and rooms for cherished artifacts collected over a long and satisfying career. I have what one of my colleagues calls the “I Love Me” wall filled with diplomas, plaques, and tributes. I also have a Mary Englebreit poster (“Don’t Look Back”) featured prominently to remind me about the excitement that looms head. I’m exquisitely lucky, knowing how little space most faculty typically have. I do not have a separate lab as most of my colleagues do since my scholarship doesn’t usually involve data generation.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Passionate, fair, funny

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

I am a disturber of the peace (see photo)

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

My favorite embarrassment story happened when I was teaching a large intro class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as an adjunct very early in my career. My dread zone (we all have one) in intro is S&P. Physics and I are just not on good terms and I always need to rehearse the basics to get through. For some reason, this particular large class showed the spunk and curiosity that I claim to love but they peppered me with questions that I didn’t have the first clue how to answer. For example, “Why do we see ourselves upside down in a spoon?” I didn’t know we did, let alone know how to explain it. “Why do car wheels appear to be turning the wrong way in movies?” They ultimately came up with an array of “stump the prof” questions to which I confessed both ignorance and amazement. I promised to and did come up with viable explanations in the next class. Because I am regularly the star of my own show on God’s comedy channel, that class just happened to be the class my brand new husband visited to watch me in action. Mortifying. It was an especially big Dufus Day but it certainly taught me not to be afraid of student curiosity.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

This gets more surprising to students as I get older, but I’m a Big T Personality. I like scary rides, have driven my own motorcycle, and used to be a glider pilot.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I just finished David Sedaris’ Naked. I am about to start The Book Thief.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Powerpoint. I love being able to blend images with bulleted text to make the key ideas more memorable. Powerpoint has maximized the artistry of my teaching.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most?

It saddens me to say that the most animated conversation tends to come about in relation to student misbehavior - the newest strategy for cheating, the most outrageous incivility, the often expressed wish that our current students could be as good as we were. We are such deluded romantics!

PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: Listen to Jane talk with Garth Neufeld back in 2019 about intro. psych - you will get inspired (or re-inspired!) to teach!

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/e068-intropsychsessions6-jane-halonen-from-the-university-of-west-florida

BONUS 2ND PSYCHSESSIONS UPDATE: In this 2nd PsychSessions episode, Jane argues (sorta) with Eric Landrum about assessment. Fun!

https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/website/e096-jane-halonen-part-2-formidable-generous-industrious-sovereign-ruler-of-janeland

Lyra Stein: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach.

(Past member) — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 03:34:05 GMT

School name: Rutgers University

Type of college/university: large research university

School locale: city

Classes I teach:

General Psychology, Social Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Personality Psychology, Advanced Topics in Social Psychology, Research Methods in Psychology, Soul Beliefs

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice I have received is not to talk at the students, but to is in the discussion. I do not “lecture” at them but include them in the process of learning.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I love teaching social psychology because the students are amazed at their biases and the manner in which they think. I usually ask students questions relating to thoughts about the self and attribution of others and the reality is never what they think. We tend to believe we are better than we really are, that we make logical decisions, and that we know ourselves. In class we challenge these “common sense” intuitions and realize that we don’t really know ourselves and there is really no reason to try to uncover our self-serving biases.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

One of my favorites addresses the debate of similarity and complementarity. I have students get together with a partner with whom they are not familiar (one is a confederate). I tell one person either to always agree with their partner or always disagree (depending on the dyad). Before the exercise, many indicate that opposites attract, but after the exercise the individuals who had someone agree with them enjoyed the conversation much more than those who had someone disagree with them.

When we talk about the bystander effect, I have a student lay on the floor at the beginning of class to determine if anyone would help the student. Almost no one stops and we talk about why they did not try to help the student.

I am able to recreate the Asch study by having confederates give the wrong answer on the line matching task. Inevitably, almost everyone agrees with the incorrect answer and we discuss conformity.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I usually give online quizzes every two weeks, 3 midterm exams, an application writing assignment, and clicker questions (participation points). Given that my class usually consists of 400 students, I am limited on essay exams. Some students do not like having to attend class, but I tell them it is not the grade, but the experience. I try not to lecture, but have a conversation with the students. Even in a class with hundreds of students, I will ask for input and discussion. Just the other day I had students come up to debate whether personality can be defined by traits or situations and then the class voted on the team that gave the best arguments. I usually have demonstrations and students come up on stage to break up the class. I also tend to ask controversial questions to get students thinking about issues and themselves.

I recently started teaching an online class called Soul Beliefs, which was created by Dan Ogilvie and Len Hamilton. Students discuss the soul in relation to psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, and religion. The course consists of weekly in depth discussion, weekly assignments, and take home essays.

In my abnormal psychology class, students can perform an abnormal behavior and record the reactions of individuals around them for extra credit. These videos have become very elaborate with music and interviews with people who observed the behavior.

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is organized chaos. It may appear disorganized, but I know where everything is located. I have many books and many piles of paper and everything is where it should be.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Passionate, engaging, though-provoking

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Involve the students in the experience!

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

We were talking about bullying and a student with awkward social skills kept waving his hand back and forth. A student behind the awkward student was making fun of him and, in a sense, bullying the student. I asked him if we realized the irony of the situation since we were discussing the topic of bullying and he stopped right away. I felt bad for putting him on the spot in front of other students.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

They would be surprised to know that I am actually a person. In my class, when I talk about the series “Breaking Bad,” or any pop culture reference, they start laughing because they can’t believe that I may have the same tastes that they do. They would also be surprised to learn that I am a procrastinator just like they are.

When I talk about my previous careers, I always get laughs and chatter. For example, I used to work as a private investigator and they cannot reconcile that occupation with the professor who is teaching their class.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I am currently reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts, by Susan Cain. My students would probably be surprised to learn that I am actually an introvert.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My laser pointer.

Kara Sage: I’m a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 15:54:05 GMT

School name: Hamilton College

Type of college/university: Liberal Arts College (~1800 students)

School locale: small town – in the quaint village of Clinton, NY

Courses I teach: Introduction to Psychology, Child Development, Educational Psychology, Lifespan Development, Statistics for Psychology, Cognitive Development, specialty course called “Psychology, Children, Media, and Technology”, Collaborative Research, Senior Project

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice I’ve received is to just be myself when teaching, especially on the first day of class when you are establishing a rapport with a new batch of students. Talk openly and have a conversation. Make the students feel that you are talking with them and not just at them. On a similar thread, during the term, make the class your own – Intro Psychology a la Kara Sage. Even if great ideas can come from outside your own mind, always try to put your own unique spin on the topics to make your class memorable.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

For teaching activities, I’ve consulted Favorite Activities for the Teaching of Psychology, edited by Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr. and published by APA. That book offered some creative ideas to increase the interactivity of Introductory Psychology in particular. I also recently read Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle and had this as an assigned book for my class this past spring semester (Psychology, Children, Media, and Technology). The book was extremely timely and thought-provoking, focusing on how engrained technology is in our lives; it led to many interesting and reflective conversations with students. Lastly, an article by Sana, Weston, and Cepeda (2013) has influenced my classroom policies on technology use – Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers. It often surprises students to read and discuss how technology use in class might be distracting for not just themselves, if they are tempted to flip to that Facebook page for a moment, but also affects the learning of others around them. I’ve been trying out different course rules around technology use, and having students read this article at the start of the term led to a great understanding of why we might opt out of students utilizing technology in class, especially given the prevalence of media multitasking.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is "Psychology, Children, Media, and Technology" - a specialty course that encompasses aspects of many parts of psychology from developmental to social psychology, and most certainly the up-and-coming sub-discipline of media psychology. Discussing how pervasive technology is in our lives and the lives of Generation M (aka today's children) is such a relevant topic that fascinates both me and my students and also encourages skepticism since this a relatively new area of research. We spend most classes critically discussing recent research into such media and technologies as Facebook, virtual worlds, online gaming, television, and video games and the related effects on the person, from body image to self-esteem to friendships. There are a lot of anecdotes and thinking about how Generation M will grow up differently given that they are saturated with technology. There are also many discussions that borderline on the philosophical, such as if AI systems can ever be, or ever should be, considered human.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

A favorite in-class activity for Introductory Psychology is one titled Be the Neurologist. To help students learn about the various brain parts and their functions, they receive a list of brain areas and what behavior might be awry should that area have a lesion – for instance, touch sensitivity would be off if there was damage to the somatosensory cortex. Students are paired off and take turns being the patient (selecting one lesion) and the neurologist (conducting behavioral tests until they have enough evidence to substantiate a diagnosis). There is a lot of fun and laughter along with learning that comes with this activity, as the patient role plays the appropriate behavior and thus might showcase deficits in walking, talking, etc.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Over the years, I have determined that different techniques work better for different classes and that flexibility given a particular semester’s students is key. For Introductory Psychology, I blend some lecturing with interactive activities and videos to bring the content to life. An important goal is to establish that psychology is a science. The audience is typically freshmen with a handful of sophomores. For a topical course like Child Development, generally with a blend of upperclassmen enrolled, there is more discussion and reading of empirical literature for us to discuss. It is also interesting to focus on parenting and what lessons I can impart in that regard. For these courses that focus on development and education, including Child Development and Educational Psychology, an important learning technique is to offer hands-on experience with children. I have my students volunteer hours at a local daycare or school so that they can see “development in action” and we can discuss how the concepts from the course translate. Lastly, for a specialty course in an emerging field, like my Psychology, Children, Media, and Technology course, I utilize a discussion-heavy format where most class sessions are us (~20 students and myself) sitting in a circle and critically thinking through what the material for the day has to offer on our topic and extending that material with anecdotes, examples, and reflections.

What’s your workspace like?

Surprisingly neat and tidy! I am a very organized person, and I extend that to my workspace. I feel that it makes me more productive with getting tasks, like grading and reading, completed in a timely fashion. When I’m there, there is most often a large receptacle of coffee on my desk as well and perhaps a rubber duck or two (which I give out as prizes to kids who come into my lab and sometimes even my students). My bulletin board has a blend of personal and academic postings – from pictures of my honeymoon to printed copies of my publications.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Energetic, passionate, collaborative

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Be yourself; Foster passion and critical/scientific thought

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I think the biggest disappointments come when I’ve put a lot of effort into developing a particular activity and it doesn’t seem to fly with a particular class, even if it worked well with other classes. I try out many interactive activities with my Introductory Psychology class in particular, and there is always at least one flop every semester that can be a bit of a downer.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

My students might be surprised to learn that I am a Zumba fanatic and have a secret aspiration to be a certified Zumba instructor. A perfect activity for de-stressing and just having fun!

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Based on a student’s recommendation, I am currently reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. It presents one image of where technology could go in the future, and is an exciting and intriguing read.

What tech tool could you not live without?

YouTube! In all of my classes, video clips are used as examples to bring concepts to life – let’s see babies babbling or cognitive behavioral therapy in action. The videos can really lift words off the pages of the textbook to illustrate concepts well.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Students are very frequently in my office space and in my colleagues’ spaces, so there is much discussion about their busy schedules, lives in general, and whether or not they are going to challenge me to a game of Settlers of Catan. There are discussions of random teaching ideas that ensue between my colleagues and myself. With one of my colleagues in my office ‘pod’, we sometimes sit at a little table with some treats and chat about academic and non-academic topics when the day is particularly stressful for whatever reason – helps us both unwind!

Spring Schafer: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Tue, 20 May 2014 23:06:08 GMT

School name: Delta College

Type of college/university: Community College

School locale: both rural and city locations

Classes I teach:

General Psychology (our version of Intro Psych) and Exploring Diversity in both traditional and online formats

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

The best advice I have received is to “set the tone” on the first day of class through both the class activities and the syllabus. The first day of class can often predict how the rest of the semester will turn out in terms of student engagement and participation as well as the level of respect students have for the instructor. It helps to be authentic.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Most recently, I have been impacted greatly by Stephen Brookfield’s book, The Skillful Teacher. As a result of the book (and meeting Dr. Brookfield in person--what a wonderful guy!), I use a Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ) at the end of every class. Students answer 3 questions that help inform what will happen the next class period. The information I gather from students enables me to better meet their needs both in an outside of the classroom and demonstrates to them that I care deeply about their learning and their overall experience in class.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite lecture topic is Social Psychology as part of the General Psychology course. There are so many ways to demonstrate the social psychology concepts that make this topic one of my favorites. I enjoy getting to use activities and videos for social Psychology concepts that tend to get students “all fired up.” The best part about teaching this section is helping students become more aware of their own biases so that they might become more empathic toward others. I find that students become quite passionate and seem to want to take action toward reducing stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

One of my many favorite in-class activities demonstrates “shaping,” “superstitious behavior,” and other general operate conditioning concepts. I get 5 volunteers to serve as pigeons/rats. Then, groups of their classmates must train them to perform a somewhat complex task (e.g., “take off your left shoe”). The catch is that the trainers may only use the word “good” as positive reinforcement. This activity always evokes lots of laughter and silliness (especially when there are very creative pigeons), yet it enables me to demonstrate several concepts. It’s super fun!

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Variety works the best for me. I know my students don’t like to be bored, and I certainly don’t enjoy hearing myself talk for 2-4 hours at time. My students are expected to explore the textbook prior to coming to class, and they sometimes have a quiz over information they have gathered from the text (via an “optional” Chapter Prep guide). There are 4 in-class tests and 3 critical thinking assignments (writing assignments.) I give students opportunities to learn from their mistakes, such as allowing re-writes of papers for additional credit. In-class time is an interaction (as much as possible. I don’t lecture at my students; I provide them with information and dialogue with them as we go. I also incorporate as much group-work and small group discussion as possible, and there is typically a smattering of mini-demonstrations, short videos, and practice activities. Students in my classes are provided with a large number and variation of opportunities for learning in my effort to reach students with diverse learning preferences and strengths.

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is organized chaos. It is also currently cluttered with stacks of books, magazines/journals, and boxes of odd things such as handwarmers, mittens, and mints. I serve in various roles outside of teaching, and my workspace is really highlighting this at the moment!

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Dynamic, interactive, fair

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Be authentic and responsive, holding the bar high.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

One of my most recent embarrassing moments (I have had many) involved my first attempt at a mini experiment during teaching research methods. A colleague gave me the idea to do a JellyBelly taste test where the tasters would be blinded and would taste the same jellybeans with their noses plugged then open. I was very excited about the countless concepts I might demonstrate through this exercise, as well as the chance to have some fun with my students. Long story short, I realized in the middle of the experiment that I didn’t have enough jellybeans for all 4 of my participants. The experiment was ruined, for the most part. But, we had some great discussion about all of the problems with my experiment!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

When I was an undergraduate, I would shake uncontrollably, turn red, and start to tear up when attempting to give presentations. It was nothing like the confidence I display in the classroom as a teacher.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I don’t have much time to “read” for pleasure. So, I listen to books in CD while commuting. I won’t mention what I listen to as it might diminish my respectability in certain circles. ;-)

What tech tool could you not live without?

Just the internet. I have gadgets (which, of course, give me greater access to the Internet), but I rely so heavily on the Internet for quick research and communication.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

It depends on who is in their office. I am in one office in a 4-person office nook. The other 3 offices are inhabited by some of my fantastic psychology colleagues. If “B” is in his office, we are likely chatting about teaching OR his love life. If “S” is in her office, we are likely chatting about kids or mommy blunders. If “D” is around, I stop in for personal or professional advice.

Karen Thompson: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 05 May 2014 13:15:12 GMT

School name: Columbia College

Type of college/university: Small, single-gender liberal arts school

School locale (e.g., small town, rural area, city, country/region: Columbia, SC. It is a mid-sized capital city.

Classes you teach: Statistics; Research Methods; Learning, Cognition, and Memory; Biological Psychology; Introduction to Psychology; Drugs, Behavior, and Society; Psychology Lab; Psychology in the Workforce; Research Seminar; Academic Writing (an APA format prep course).

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

A seasoned faculty colleague taught me that a true “crisis” in our business is rare. Students can be prone to crisis mentality when there is a problem, and I sometimes remind them that it’s not like we’re in an ER saving a life with precious few minutes to spare. Whether it is an IT problem, a missed homework or test, illness, or some other issue, there is nothing that can’t be handled calmly and efficiently. The only exception I can think of is when a student is at risk for not graduating – that might constitute some urgency!

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Interestingly, it is Peterson’s (2009) article entitled, “Minimally Sufficient Research.” It was in a special issue on improving psychological science in Perspectives on Psychological Science. The article called into question the “more is better” approach to data analysis. To summarize, Peterson found that the results of complex data analysis yielded essentially the same conclusion as a straightforward correlation – in other words, “more” was not necessarily better. I still have the hard copy of that issue on my shelf. I remind myself of that article when I start to put too much “stuff” into my classes, thinking more is better.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course is probably Research Methods. I love teaching it because students often comment that after the course, they can never look at a statistic or research finding in the same way because they have acquired a “critical eye.” My favorite topic is item construction – students will bring in examples of surveys with poorly-worded items (such as a suggestion card at a restaurant). They claim that they can’t take surveys anymore because they question the validity of the items.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

One of my favorite activities in Research Methods is based on Rajecki’s (2002) Teaching of Psychology article on using personal ads for content analysis. I like to do the content analysis as an in-class activity near finals week. I’ve found some really amusing personal ads in our local free newspaper so it is a lot of fun for students to conduct and a great stress reliever.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I try to use a mix of assignments (in-class small group discussions, in-class reviews, traditional homework, and exams). I think they all have merit. In-class reviews seem to work best – in most of my classes, I lecture on a topic and then have students complete a short application assignment with a partner as a review to make sure they’ve “got it.” Then, I ask them, “Would you be able to do this on the next exam?” to which they usually agree. That seems to build their confidence. If they don’t agree, we review the trouble spots.

What’s your workspace like?

I have a small corner office in a building that was originally the college’s infirmary. It now houses faculty offices for our division. It is rumored that the building is haunted, but I have yet to witness anything unusual. My office looks out over the main green area of campus – it is great to see students reading, playing Frisbee, having class, or just hanging out on the Green when the weather is nice (which is often – this is South Carolina, after all).

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

“No surprises” (that is, no “making it up as we go along” or springing assignments on students), “comprehensive” (if I don’t know the answer to something, I’ll try to find it), and “committed.” Teaching isn’t something I squeeze in between other obligations. I am constantly looking for ways to improve students’ learning and I solicit feedback from them often.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

This quote is attributed to Plato (it’s longer than 8 words – sorry): “Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

Oh, there are so many embarrassing moments to recount – most of them have involved me getting tongue-tied in front of class and as a result something amusing has popped out. At least we all get a good laugh out of it! Most of my disasters are IT-related (that is, something doesn’t work as it should, so I have to quickly devise a Plan B). Perhaps this suggests that relying on technology for class is not always the best way to go.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

They would be surprised to learn that I am a real softy. Students typically describe me as the “hard but fair” professor, which makes it sounds as if I am “tough” or even cold-hearted. In fact, I am completely the opposite. I get misty-eyed during sappy commercials or movies, and my children make me laugh constantly. I love a good time and have a great sense of humor. When students come to me with difficulties, I am very sympathetic and quick to accommodate. Students might also be surprised to know that my husband and I enjoy riding our Harley and that I frequently attend DragonCon in Atlanta (the southeast’s complement to ComicCon).

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

During the semester, it’s hard to find time to read books for pleasure, but I always have magazines handy for a mental break.

What tech tool could you not live without?

YouTube. I show a lot of video clips in class. However, I wish there was an easy way to hide some of the more “interesting” sidebar ads. We have had more than a few laughs in class over them.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

We like to talk about new restaurant finds, recipes, and life in general (kids, travel, weekend plans, etc.). We also talk about concerns regarding the college. We share the same struggles many colleges face with respect to “selling” a liberal arts education in the current economy.

Eric Stephens: I'm a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:36:03 GMT

School name: University of the Cumberlands

Type of college/university: private liberal arts university

School locale: We are located in one of the poorest Congressional districts in the United States (southeastern Kentucky)

Classes I teach:

I teach Research Design and Statistics, Learning and Cognition, I/O Psychology, Sport Psychology, Freshman Orientation Seminar, Senior Seminar, and various online courses.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

One of my teacher friends often reminds me that the good teachers are ones who can educate young minds without losing their own.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

McKeachie’s Teaching Tips is a resource I still consult often.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Research Design and Statistics is my favorite course to teach. Many of my students refer to the course as “sadistics” when it begins. Often their fear is rooted in math anxiety. However, most of them beg for computation problems rather than conceptual problems as the course progresses. Moreover, most of them develop a much better understanding and appreciation of how numbers serve as tools to help address questions about human behavior. I see more cognitive growth in my Research Design and Statistics students than in any other course.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

Although I have my “go to” activities and assignments that always go well, I do not have a favorite. In general, my activities and assignments are applied in nature. For example, rather than have students define change blindness I will ask them to give me an example of where they have seen change blindness in action this week. Moreover, I might ask students to do a change blindness “experiment” on their own, such as switch clothes in the middle of an event, report on how many people noticed the change, and give plausible reasons why the change was noticed or not.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Although it increases my grading load, I give students numerous opportunities to earn points during the semester. Students must provide some type of “deliverable” nearly every class period. By doing so I get a sense of which concepts need further explanation, students have ample opportunities to actively think about course material, and plenty of deliverables also minimizes situations where students beg for extra credit at the end of the semester.

What’s your workspace like?

Because I have a heavy teaching load of face-to-face classes, online classes, and supervising independent research projects, keeping my workspace tidy often falls near the bottom of my priority list. I often quip that a cluttered office means a clear mind. Although I have never misplaced a student assignment or important document, I occasionally have trouble reading the notes I have written to myself. My handwriting skills seem to be decreasing with age.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Repetition boosts learning!

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Learning is an active and constructive process.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

A prospective donor to the university recently sat in on one of my courses. I was lecturing the students on the importance of proofreading their written work because there had been numerous writing errors in recent assignments. Shortly after my lecture I gave a handout to the class. The donor wryly pointed out to me that my handout contained a typographical error. He was right!

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

My wife and I lived inside of a funeral home for a year.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Most of my pleasure reading these days is in the domain of success. I am intrigued by the fact that my students with the most potential (academically or athletically) are not necessarily the ones who turn out to be most successful. I want to learn more about what characteristics ultimately lead to success in life so I can try to help instill these characteristics in my students and children. I am an avid sports fan and read a great deal about sports too.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I would not want to go back to academic life without course management systems such as Blackboard.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

The hallway chatter in my department often involves student stories. Some of them are humorous such as telling my colleagues about a student who called to notify me he could not come to class on a cold day because he did not have an ice scraper to remove the ice from his car windshield (true story!) Others are more depressing such as looking for advice about how to motivate a student taking a class for the third time who is failing the course again.

Alisa Beyer: I’m a member of STP, and This is How I Teach

(Past member) — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 20:08:55 GMT

School name: Northern Arizona University, Extended campus

Classes I teach: child and adolescent development, developmental psychology, adult development, research methods, statistics, organizational psychology

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

When I was in graduate school I read McKeachie’s Teaching Tips (11^th edition). It was a great read while starting out teaching. Also while I was in graduate school, I read Dempster (1993), Exposing our students to less should help them learn more, published in Phi Kappa. I really tried to think about the less is more approach while feeling overwhelmed with what I had to teach students. I also tried to connect ways to elaborate and it got me thinking more about the textbooks I choose (if I had the choice).

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.
I really enjoy teaching developmental psychology courses, research methods, and statistics. Recently, I have begun to teach more and more on-line (administrative request). This has led me to shift a bit on my favorite lecture topics/courses. In person, a few of my favorite topics are infant cognition (child and adolescent development), adolescent cognitive abilities (child and adolescent development), creating formulas in excel (statistics), and career and work (adult development and aging).

I have found it easier to transition the developmental courses online. For online courses, I keep the same shell recipe for the different courses I teach (with some adjustments). This semester I am teaching research methods online -- keeping the rigor of the face to face requirements (4 credit writing intensive course). I am focusing the semester on a broad research topic with the class first participating in survey research (I have students fill out a questionnaire during week 1 that serves as data for this project, and then they do a literature review of the topic and write up the findings as their first research paper write up) and then we move to experimental designs on the same topic (group based projects that they can collect data online). I am hoping that this becomes a favorite course.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.
Anything that brings information alive to students and where they are connecting to the learning material. I keep telling them the best way to know you “know it” is to be able to explain it to someone else and come up with your own examples. Any activity I can develop or find that does that is a favorite. My favorite assignment for developmental psychology was a service learning project I did while at Dominican University. Student worked in a low-income Kindergarten or first grade classroom. I had bi-weekly assignments connected to their classroom time. The main project was to develop fun, educational games. Students worked in pairs to develop games and the class chose four to be implemented. The class worked on creating the materials to play the games in the classroom and for the kids to take them home. We then had a game day for the classes and the kids took the games home. Students then wrote a final reflection paper. It took me a couple of iterations before I felt like the project really connected well with students and course content.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

For online teaching, I use the exit ticket every week to check in on student learning (I also ask what they feel they learned really well). For the exit ticket, students need to respond with an explanation or application of a concept covered that week along with a question they still have about the material. Students look over each other's exit ticket posts and respond to peer posts. The exit ticket is a weekly discussion board. I follow up with a quick clip video of common topics students asked about in addition to responding to each student's posts.

I also use rubrics for grading papers, projects, and discussion boards. I try to use as many assignments with an applied approach.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style?

practical, authoritative, invested

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Emphasize science, make it applied, and come alive.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

Last summer, as an adjunct I submitted copies for the final exam for an evening summer course. The copy center moved with renovations going on, and it closed before my class started. I only came to campus once a week. The copies were not in my box. Luckily I had access to a printer and could print them all off, but it was a rush and stressful. Come to find out, in my panic, I did not see that they were in the mail box below mine. I still can’t comprehend how I missed them. We started class five minutes late and I was just glad the class was almost over.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I like driving stick-shift--I really wish I did not trade in my old car for a minivan I run a destination half-marathon race at least once a year. My husband is Canadian. Things they already know--I am an identical twin and mother of three children.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I just finished How Children Succeed by Paul Tough. Before that I read Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.

What tech tool could you not live without?

I really enjoy using Poll Everywhere and I use YouTube weekly to post class quick clips. And, I just got a new desk mount that allows me to work standing or sitting (see picture!).

David Simpson: I'm a Member of STP, and this is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 15:17:09 GMT

School name: Carroll University

Type of college/university: independent, co-educational comprehensive university grounded in the liberal arts tradition

School locale: Waukesha, WI

Classes I teach:

Introductory Psych; Statistics and Experimental Design; Psychological Testing and Assessment; Experimental Social Psychology; Research Seminar; Specialty Courses (Web 2.0 Learning Tools; Happiness; Why War?; SPSS; Web-based Surveying)

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Be yourself. Don’t chase after “Best Practices.” Observe and reflect on what makes a teacher (in)effective at engendering learning, resilience, and love of learning. BUT DON’T try to be JUST like that master teacher.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Postman and Weingartners (1971) Teaching as a Subversive Activity and most recently, Gardner and Davis’ (2013) The App Generation.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

Statistics and Experimental Design (PSY205). Here is what I tell my students at the start of this class: “Statistics is a way of thinking about things, and is a set of tools for answering questions. Using statistics on a regular basis is the best way to learn this language and to learn how to use statistical tools appropriately. Therefore, it’s very important that you attend labs, work on problems I assign you from the text, and actively participate in data collection exercises. To further help you understand uses of statistics I shall often share with you examples of applications of statistics from my own work of that of student and faculty researchers.”

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

Collecting meaning data, especially if related to a study recently published in a journal like Psychological Science or which can be used in conjunction with software such as Research Randomizer, SPSS, and Survey Monkey. This gives us data that we can refer to throughout the semester as we learn together.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

In my Statistics class, I give no quizzes or homework per se. There are five regular exams (criterion-referenced) which focus on being able to perform correctly the appropriate data analyses by hand and by computer, to interpret computer output, and to be able to write a report that a motivated layperson would understand. Students also take a comprehensive final examination whose emphasis is on demonstrating mastery of knowing what data analysis to do--and why that particular data analysis is appropriate. I use for a regular text and my own materials. There is a weekly lab taught by me where they learn how to use SPSS. I also introduce some additional software (StarQuiz) which allows for computer assisted review.

What’s your workspace like?

Cluttered but the source of much creativity, computation, and collegial conviviality. I have a lab room adjoining my office where six student research assistants continually provide me support and intellectual stimulation. I sit at a desk which has a Dell desktop sitting next to a MacBook Pro and an iPad. They get along. I am surrounded by books and students. My classes are within walking distance of my office. I have an open-door policy and am rarely alone.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Playful; Personalized; Patient

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Strive for consistent excellence; Listen; Reflect; Learn; Love

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Until I started college/university teaching, I suffered from a fear of public speaking.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

The Golem and the Jinni: A Novel (P.S.)

What tech tool could you not live without?

I pride myself on NOT being dependent upon tech tools (but I’ve also been known to blog extensively about them).

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Alas, I am not known for my small talk--or for standing in the hall. Ars longa, vita brevis.

Dee Posey: I’m a member of STP, and this is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 20:09:28 GMT

School name: Washington State University, home of the Cougars!

Type of college/university: R1, though my position is as instructional faculty.

School locale: Pullman, WA. Pullman is a small town in eastern Washington state. It’s surrounded by rolling wheat fields and gets plenty cold during the winters.

Classes you teach: My primary teaching responsibilities include our statistics course, an enjoyable course on pseudoscience, Psychology of Women, and Social Psychology.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Looking back on my entire teaching career, I can’t point to one piece of advice that I received that really helped me develop as a teacher. The piece of advice I gave my husband, who has recently become a professor himself, was to think first about the reputation he wants to have, and then teach according to this reputation. I would have loved to have that advice when I was starting out.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I’m not sure I can point to a single book or article that has shaped my teaching, but I am a devoted reader of every issue of the Teaching of Psychology. I’ve learned many interesting techniques, new strategies, and student issues that constantly push me to try new approaches in the classroom.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite subject to teach is statistics. Statistics is a course that students mostly dread and is a course that can easily be taught in a way that perpetuates students’ dread. Every semester that I teach statistics, I challenge myself to make the course and material approachable and to teach it in a way that reaches the most students.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

The in-class activity that I’m most proud of is titled Fantasy Football League: A z-Score Activity. It came about in a moment of panic, when my usual z-score activity failed and I had to quickly think of another activity to use in its place. The Fantasy Football League requires students to draft a fantasy football team consisting of one quarterback, one running back, one tight end, one wide receiver, and one kicker. Using the players’ fantasy football stats, which can be obtained from any sports-related website, students compute z-scores for each of their players and then compare their players’ performance to the other students’ players. By the way, the kicker is usually the best player on the team! I think it’s a fun and relatable way to introduce z-scores.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Because I’m constantly challenging myself to improve my teaching of statistics, I regularly modify my course. In the past, I’ve found that allowing open-book, open-note exams works well. Now that I’ve revised my course again to accommodate a much larger class (upwards of 160 students per semester!) I find that the old-school method of hand writing lecture notes to be amazingly effective. I find that it forces me to be precise in what I convey and how I convey it, and students appreciate it (probably because it slows me down).

What’s your workspace like?

I try to keep my office well organized and organize it frequently which I think is a carryover from my home life. At home I have a 2-year-old and nothing is ever fully clean or organized. At my office, I actually have control over how neat or messy it is, and I lean toward neatness.

Three words that best describe your teaching style

Approachable, Challenging but fair, Enthusiastic.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Promote psychology as a science through approachable enthusiasm.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I’m far more introverted than my students probably think I am and I’m fearful of public speaking. I had my students participate in an in-class activity where we correlated scores on the Big 5 introversion/extraversion scale with the number of times the students “flipped” a Necker cube. Because the class was small, I contributed my data to the data set. Once the students knew I was participating, a bet began among the students to guess my score on introversion/extraversion. The students all guess that I was far more extraverted than I actually am (my score nearly bottomed out on the scale)! My students were shocked!

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I have three books on my bedside table, one called Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Wells, an American Academy of Pediatrics tome about child development through 5 years of age, and a How-To book on crocheting. The novel is my for-fun book, the child development book is so that I can read up on why my child is doing what he’s doing, and the crochet book is so that one day I can actually pursue a hobby!

What tech tool could you not live without?

Only one??? I can think of four: my iPad, my laptop, my wireless remote control, and a document camera.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

I’m probably a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to hallway chatter. In addition to being incredibly busy at work, I also have a busy home life with my 2-year-old son. So when I’m at work, I work and don’t socialize much. When I do chat with colleagues, it’s usually about teaching.

Jeremy Houska: I'm a member of STP, and this is How I Teach

(Past member) — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 19:13:27 GMT

School name:

Centenary College of New Jersey

Type of college/university: Small Liberal Arts College

School locale: Rural

Classes I teach:

Intro Psych, Intro to the Major, Stats, Methods, Tests & Measures, Social, Personality

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

This nugget: “Teach depth over breadth.” I heard it first from Wayne Weiten when I was a student in his Teaching of Psychology seminar at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. At the time, that advice made a lot of sense for us budding instructors who were hell-bent on covering as much material as we could in a 50 minute class session, and proving our competence. Now I take something different from it. There are very real limits to human attention and processing; we see this in our classrooms every day. So, it makes sense to dive deep with just a handful of themes during a class session. Differentiate formats of instruction, elaborate upon the themes, let students deeply connect with them, practice retrieving the information, and then assess students’ grasp both informally and formally. If anything, the textbook provides the breadth.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

I was first introduced to McKeachie’s Teaching Tips back in Wayne’s seminar, and I still pick it from time to time when I need to be reenergized about being a professor.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite courses, due to the content and importance within the curriculum, are Stats and Research Methods. But when taking my students' interests and motivations into consideration, it would have to be Social Psychology. In particular, one of my favorite topics to teach would have to be Sexual Strategies Theory. The topic and predictions from this framework always seem to elicit discussion--especially new empirical questions. I particularly enjoy integrating research components into courses, and so topics like this can get students thinking like scientists. Eventually some join the research enterprise...

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

My classes tend to be discussion-heavy, so I will often rely on activities such as minute papers, think-pair-shares, small group conversations, and then whole class discussion. I would say that I most enjoy bouncing around from small group to small group. That way I am able to gain some sense of how students are processing and relating to the information in real-time. I am also able to privately answer questions students would avoid asking in a whole class discussion. I can reinforce students’ insights and encourage them to share with everyone when we regroup and break into full discussion. For me, this type of interaction is simple to achieve in small to medium classrooms, and it accomplishes a number of immediate and longer term outcomes.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I have occasionally made use of a “flipped” or “inverted” classroom over the last few years. I first toyed with putting up notes, reading quizzes, websites, YouTube clips, or pre-class assignments on my course management system. Eventually I got the bug, and uploaded my amateur podcasts and cheesy video lessons. I have found that this approach allows students to revisit lessons whenever, and for as many times as they would need. More importantly, perhaps, “flipping” can set a more interactive environment into motion within the classroom. In theory, students will come to class prepared and the level of discussion can be raised to a level much higher than it would in a completely traditional “read the textbook, take reading notes, then come to lecture, listen to me profess, and take lecture notes” mode of operation.

What’s your workspace like?

I have been told my office resembles a T.G.I. Friday’s with all the sports and college memorabilia on my walls and bookshelves. My office chair is a balance ball, so that gets looks too. As much as I enjoy that space, I have found that I am happier and more productive if I hold my meetings and do less cognitively demanding work there. For some reason I tend to do my best writing and class preparation holed up in the back of a Starbucks.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Conversational, comedy, collaborative

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

To be a firm--but fair--learning coach.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I have not embarrassed myself lately, because I think I have reached the blissful state of not caring or “embracing the unexpected”… knock on wood. But back in my Master’s program, about 10 years ago, I was a guest lecturer delivering a Social lesson--attraction, mate selection, and the like--in a big auditorium. It seemed to be going well. The videos on PowerPoint were working, the dry erase pens in the classroom had ink. How rare is that? Students were respectful, attentive, interested (or at least well caffeinated), and even laughing at my jokes. I was feeling pretty good about things on all levels, in this, one of my first lessons at the university level. About 20 minutes in, my master teacher came up from the back row of the auditorium. I was shocked to see him on his way up to the stage. Was he bringing the hook to drag me off the stage? So, I asked him, “what’s up?” He whispered that I had a black streak on my face, completely across my forehead. I felt the blood immediately rush to my face. My cheeks became beet red, and then I playfully chastised the audience for not telling me I smeared dry erase ink across my forehead. I tried to recover, plowed on, and finished the guest lecture with no further hitches. This experience taught me two valuable lessons: 1.) use the back of your hand if you feel the need to touch your forehead while in the classroom, and more importantly 2.) you can recover from any teaching disaster with the right attitude.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

I was a washed-up college athlete and fraternity president before I found psychology.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Alternating between classic ToP articles on Introduction to the Psychology Major courses and Zachary Lazar’s Evening’s Empire: The Story of My Father’s Murder.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My iPad. I use it to help me put students’ faces to names, take attendance, and randomly select students to call on. Also, if I use slideware for a presentation, I prefer to control it and make annotations using my iPad.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

The second floor hallway in Bro Hall is rather lively, and as a new faculty member, I am particularly grateful for such a warm environment. During prime time many of us are riffing on events of the day, making light-hearted cracks about one another, or bemoaning the plight of the Mets, Giants, and/or Nets. It is also a hallway culture in which folks keep their doors open most of the time. This allows colleagues to pop in and consult about statistics, solicit teaching suggestions, and touch base with one another.

Christopher Scribner: I'm a member of STP, and this is How I Teach

(Past member) — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 13:53:19 GMT

Background questions

I teach at Lindenwood University, a medium-size liberal arts university in St. Charles, MO, just outside of St. Louis.

My classes include Abnormal Psychology, Personality, Psychotherapy, Critical & Creative Thinking, and various occasional Special Topics courses in the area of psychopathology (to date, this has included courses on Depression, Personality Disorders, and “Madness”).

What's the best advice about teaching you've ever received?

I kind of backed into teaching, transitioning from 11 years of clinical practice to adjunct teaching, to full-time teaching. I don’t really recall any seminal advice I received about teaching, as I never had a formal mentor or guide who prepared me to be a teacher. Of course, once I started doing it I cultivated valuable relationships with more senior colleagues, but the advice they shared with me was mostly about small, day-to-day matters related to grading, managing the classroom, etc.

What feels like the strongest “shaping influence” was the model presented by my major professor in my own undergraduate days – Dale Noyd, a man who taught with great passion, humor, and incisiveness. I seek to emulate him each time I step into my own classroom.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

If I had to pick one book that has shaped my work, it would be Jerome Frank’s Persuasion and Healing. It’s about psychotherapy, but also about so much more – what with its cross-cultural emphasis (before this was fashionable), its wide-ranging exploration of “healing traditions,” its relentlessly broad perspective, and its effort to cut across discordant theoretical schools in search of what unites them all.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY (and various special topic courses derived from it). In this course I relish the opportunity to capture students’ interest, stoke it further, and to challenge the unfortunately numerous misconceptions about this field that are widely held. I also like being able to extend beyond the “disorders” themselves and explore how they can serve as inroads to fascinating topics like: What is “normal”? How much influence does culture exert on people’s behaviors and perceptions? How do “mind” and “body” interact with each other? How does “different” get transformed into “undesired”? What challenging things happen at the intersection of science, marketing, and mass media?

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? (quizzes? homework? take home exams?)

Concerning teaching/learning techniques, my favorite is unquestionably discussion. I like to engage students face-to-face, respond to them in individualized ways, and facilitate their engagement of each other. I get to know the students, their ways of thinking and their ways of expressing themselves. My favorite move in discussions is to relentlessly adopt a “devil’s advocate” position, prodding students to think more deeply as they seek to support or justify their perspective on the material under discussion. I always did this when I was a student, and it feels very natural to continue it in my role as instructor (which, of course, is simultaneously a role as student).

I recently took an online course, with online feedback given/received, and “discussions” conducted solely through the keyboard – and I pretty much hated it!

What's your workspace like?

I’m notorious for having music playing constantly in my office – it energizes me and helps me focus, especially when I’m doing routine or mundane things (for serious writing, the music goes off). It’s fun to perplex my students with my eclectic tastes – ranging from electric Chicago blues to bebop jazz to 1940s R&B to 1970s soul to modern hip-hop.

My walls (in my office as well as in my home) display numerous of my photographs – having them around me reminds me that I can be creative, and they make me feel centered and “at-home” with my creativity when I’m at work.

I make a point of arranging my office such that I can engage students with no desk between us. It might be a holdover from my days as a clinician. Most of my colleagues have a desk between them and students who come in to talk.

For grading and/or extended reading of books or papers, I have a second rolling chair that I position near my large windows; they afford me lots of natural light (I often turn the electric lights off in my office; I find dim environments soothing), and some fresh air when the weather allows it.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

My teaching style is often described as PASSIONATE, HUMOROUS, and ENGAGING.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

My short, punchy teaching philosophy? Engage them, intrigue them, and strike a spark that blows their minds open. I realize that’s more than eight words, but it’s in keeping with the notion of broadening rather than confining!

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you've had.

My teaching disaster happened this past semester. I distributed a multiple choice exam to my Abnormal Psychology class, and two-thirds of the way through the exam a conscientious student came up to tell me that her exam had the answer key printed on the back of the final page of questions. Soon thereafter, another student approached me to deliver the same quiet message. I then realized that every question packet probably had a copy of the answer key on the back of the last page. I quickly announced this to the class and asked them not to peek at the back of that page as they finished their exams. I told them this was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate their academic integrity. I later graded the exams, fully expecting that I’d have to re-administer it – but found that the grade distribution for the exam was similar to what I’d seen previously with this version of the exam, and there were no astonishingly-high scores. The next class period I apologized to the students for my error, confessed my embarrassment, and told them I was impressed that they apparently had behaved honestly. Several students then volunteered comments like “when I noticed there were answers on there, I just assumed it was some sort of psychological experiment you were doing on us …”. I do occasionally use dissimulation in small ways in my classes, so I guess this is understandable.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

One thing my students would be surprised to learn about me is that I’m a published writer of satire, humor, and light verse, and that I’m taking coursework toward a MFA in Creative Writing.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I don’t really “read for pleasure,” unless reading academic books counts. I read a LOT in my job, and reading is often the last thing I want to spend leisure time on. Having said that, I am constantly reading new releases within my fields of interest, always looking for new and fresh material for classes, and new prospective texts for classes. I have one full shelf of recently-published books in my areas of interest that I’m slowly making my way through.

What tech tool could you not live without?

At the risk of sounding like the old fogey I’ve apparently become, I’d cite e-mail as my indispensable “tech tool.” I LOVE e-mail as a method of communication with students (second only to face-to-face contact). I HATE talking on the phone, and I find that phone calls can be intrusive (whether making them or receiving them) – but I can respond to e-mails when the time is right for me, and so can recipients of my messages. I also like having an electronic paper trail of communications with students and administrators. Lastly, I am an e-mail pack-rat, archiving messages indefinitely. There have been probably a half-dozen occasions when I was able to retrieve some important bit of information by pulling up an old e-mail from last month or last year …

Jill Johnson: I'm a member of STP, and this is How I Teach

(Past member) — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 23:00:00 GMT

School name: Carl Sandburg College

Type of college/university: Community College

School locale: Galesburg, IL; rural

Classes I teach:

Intro, Developmental, Gender and Society. I have also taught Human Sexuality and Social Psychology.

What's the best advice about teaching you've ever received?

Some of the best and most recent advice that I received came from my vice-president. I was discussion the lack of motivation and sense of responsibility when it came to student learning. She looked at me and simply said, "They are not the students you were, but you have them, and you have to figure out how to teach them." That is when I completely changed my teaching style from traditional lectures and passive learning to peer to peer collaboration and active learning.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Lately I have found inspiration in Dr. Mark Taylor's article about "Generation NeXt." I have come to the realization that complaining about lack of student preparedness and whose fault it is does nothing to educate the student. It is my job as an education to figure out a different path to meet the educational objectives of my courses. I have totally thrown out all lecture notes because of Dr. Taylor, Eric Mazur, and others like them.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

I absolutely LOVE discussing how media influences our gender development. Students will start off very rigid in their belief that the cartoons they watched, games they played, or stories that were read had little to no influence on their gender belief system. We usually watch the documentary Mickey Mouse Monopoly, which has a variety of scholars decoding and analyzing what Disney characters teach us about gender and race. Because students grew up watching these shows, it is easy for them to identify with the characters discussed in the film. There is always a lively conversation about the impact childhood shows like this can have. The reason I love this topic is because for many, if not all, it is the first time they ever really looked at the hidden messages about gender that are given to us. Some students dig their heels in and refuse to believe that it had any influence on them (and that is ok), but most are amazed when these messages are brought to their awareness. Regardless of where they fall, students always leave the class talking about it and continue to talk about it outside of the classroom. It is very rewarding to have them come back to class and tell me how they discussed it with their friends and family.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I finally came to the realization that students do not learn the way I learned. I was having dismal completion rates and had to do something. Students weren’t reading the book and there weren’t really studying for their tests, so I decided I needed to teach them how to do both of these things. I made study guides. They had assigned questions for each class and would be given a study guide quiz (on which they could use the study guide) at the beginning of each class. The questions on the quiz were application questions, such as identifying an unconditioned stimulus in an example rather than giving the definition. I wanted to see if they could go from factual to applicable while they had the notes right there, and folks, some of them couldn’t. So the study guide served two purposes; it taught them how to read a textbook and it was used to illustrate critical thinking.

After the quiz, we get in small groups. Students tell me which questions they need clarification on and what we need to discuss. Once all the confusing questions are listed, we begin with small group discussion to attempt to answer each question to make sure everyone understands. Then, I call on one student to explain it to the class, at which point I may add some other examples. This process makes everyone participate, because it is very difficult for someone to “check out” when you are in a group of 3-4 and everyone is talking to you. I think the greatest benefit is the connection students establish with each other; that connection has been found to be important in completion.

The last thing I want to touch on is multiple testing. I have created a test bank of 100s of questions. Students can practice taking the test over and over though our learning management system (we use Moodle). Once we finish a series, students have a week to take the test with me. We go to the computer lab on campus and they have three tries to take it. I wanted to show them that using practice tests, even though the questions may be different, is a very effective way to prepare for tests. Student grades and completion rates skyrocketed in my class. The interesting thing about all of this is that the test questions did not really change. I just added more of the same to create big test banks. Now, are the students learning the way I did…no. Are they learning? You betcha, and I would bet money that their retention for this information is much better than my previous classes where they had one test and that was it. My objective is for students to learn, not to learn the same way I did.

What’s your workspace like?

I have one of the most magnificent views on campus. I have a huge window where I look out at a lake and trees. I have seen bald eagles, deer, coyotes, grey squirrels, egrets, and a variety of other water fowl. It gives me a place to turn and take a couple of deep breaths when things start getting stressful. I have pictures of my family, autographed pictures of blues artists, and a star fish sitting on a desk, which is there to remind me that sometimes we need to fell the reward of helping one.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Relaxed, collaborative, student driven.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?

Once a teacher, always a student.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

I would say the pivotal semester (Spring 2011) when I had 69% fail or drop my class was the most embarrassing moment in my teaching career. That was the catalyst of change for me. Because of the pedagogical changes I made after listening to Eric Mazur and Mark Taylor, last spring (2013) I had a 6% drop or fail rate. Quite a change!

What is something your students would be surprise to learn about you?

I am 53 year old blues groupie that goes to blues concerts and hangs out after the show in hopes of meeting the artists. Right now I have five 8x10 autographed pictures of me and various blues artists in my office.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

I just finished I am Malala and am now reading The Power of Habit.

What tech tool could you not live without?

Learning Management System: Moodle. It is so efficient to provide materials to students, contact them, record grades, etc. It even allows my face to face students to have due dates on Sunday.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Interestingly enough, our hallway has a whiskey club. We usually are discussing the next type of whiskey we will try and who will be hosting the event. My favorite so far has been Johnny Walker Blue.

Neil Lutsky: I'm a member of STP, and this is How I Teach

(Past member) — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 16:05:00 GMT

School name: Carleton College

Type of college/university: Liberal Arts College

School locale:

Small town (pop. = 20,007) in a rural area in close proximity to a major metropolitan area (Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota).

Courses I teach:

Introductory Psychology, Social Psychology, Laboratory in Social Psychology, Personality, Laboratory in Personality, Psychology of Endings, Positive Psychology, First Year Interdisciplinary Seminar on Quantitative Reasoning called “Measured Thinking”.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?

Reading is the source of the most memorable prods about teaching I’ve encountered. Here are two. The artist Josef Albers observed “Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers” (Interaction of Color). In Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace, the classicist James O’Donnell wrote “…we teachers do not automatically deserve a future. We must earn it by the skill with which we disorient our students, energize them, and inculcate in them a taste for the hard disciplines of seeing and thinking.” Quite the challenge.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

Peter Gray’s “Engaging Students’ Intellects”, published in Teaching of Psychology, 1993, 20(2), 68-74. I first heard him talk on the topic at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology in 1992, and I thought he captured sharply my more muddled and evolving philosophy of teaching. It was thrilling to hear, and I recommend his article highly.

Tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

There isn’t a course I teach that I don’t love teaching, and there are important, challenging, exciting ideas and findings in all of them. I suppose if I could only teach one, it would be my Measured Thinking course on quantitative reasoning. Although not in content a psychology course, Measured Thinking embodies the methodological values and insights of psychological science. If I were forced to choose one topic, it would have to be the Milgram “obedience” experiment, which I take to be much less about obedience than about the challenges of navigating social-situational influences on behavior.

Describe a favorite in-class activity or assignment.

I enjoy conducting demonstrations of “telepathic” abilities but nothing equals the sheer terror of staking your own financial health on strategic interaction games or class lotteries (see, e.g., Larson, Teaching of Psychology, 1987, 14(4), 230-231). However, what I value most in class are those times discussions I’ve structured to have a high probability of generating “Aha” moments when students understand or apply ideas in a newly insightful way actually succeed. For example, in my social psychology course after we discuss students’ personal experiences conducting social norm violations, we then consider what social life must be like for someone whose attributes or status may be taken to violate social norms on an ongoing basis. In my personality course students view psychoanalysis in a different light after I ask them to apply psychoanalytic thinking to understanding emotional reactions to relationship break-ups.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

Lecturing! My style is rather old school, not surprising given that I’ve been teaching for 40+ years. I have found that a well-constructed presentation, one that invites student attention and participation and that does something meaningful or challenging with material, stimulates active learning. I strive to cultivate students’ thoughtful listening, intellectual excitement, and disciplined engagement.

What’s your workspace like?

Flooded with books, papers, notebooks, posters and plaques, odd paperweights, vintage pens, and mementos of cycling trips, family, and former students, but open to views of campus trees and Carleton’s historic Goodsell Observatory.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.

Serious, challenging, playful.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? (OK, Eight big words!)

Encourage informed and responsible thinking, the critical use of evidence, and a love of learning.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had.

What’s more meaningful to me than an embarrassment is a teaching disappointment, which I experience often. It occurs when I am excited about the material, have invested heavily preparing a class, can’t wait to try something out, and find that the session flops. I don’t perseverate about embarrassments; I’m haunted by teaching failures.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

Do students recognize how much skin I have in each and every class? I’m not sure. As for the “me” outside of work, students soon learn about my passion for cycling, a bit about family origins (e.g., the fact that my grandmother couldn’t read or write, or that my daughter failed the water-level task), and my interest in vintage fountain pens (which mark and sometimes stain their papers). It’s still startling to me that I once won a blue ribbon at the Minnesota State Fair for my sour cherry-rhubarb-blueberry jam. I suppose that might surprise students as well.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Certainly not the computer screen on which I type this. I just finished Aili and Andres McConnon’s Road to Valor, about the cyclist Gino Bartali, who won the Tour de France before and after World War II and worked courageously during the war on behalf of Italian Jews in Italy. Starting to read Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, a popular contribution to behavioral economics and cognitive psychology.

What tech tool could you not live without?

My career offers a pre and post-test of work in academia relying on the everyday use of the Internet and the World Wide Web it supports. I treasure the nearly instant access to information we have, our ability to satisfy curiosities so richly, and the opportunity to share what I learn through teaching.

What’s your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Minnesota weather, beer, classes and teaching, travel plans, family.