Abstracts of recent articles published in Teaching of Psychology

Abstract

Background: Many students use laptops in the classroom to take notes; however, even when laptops are used for the sole purpose of taking notes they can negatively impact academic performance. Objective: The current study examined state-dependent effects, and the potential for a match in note taking and quiz taking methods to improve quiz performance. Method: Participants were placed into a congruent (take notes by hand and complete the quiz by hand or take notes using a laptop and complete an online quiz) or an incongruent condition (take notes by hand and take an online quiz or take notes using a laptop and complete the quiz by hand). Results: The results revealed that participants who took notes by hand performed better on the quiz overall, and better on conceptual questions, then students who took notes using a laptop. We failed to fi nd evidence for state-dependent effects. Conclusions: The current study suggests that taking notes by hand may improve how students encode material, and result in higher quality external storage used by students when studying for quizzes. Teaching Implications: Reinforcing the notion that taking notes by hand may bene fi t quiz performance for lecture-style information and could improve student performance in class. Background: Previous research suggests a relationship between teacher behaviors and students ’ effort. However, it is not clear what role the students ’ expectations (i.e., importance of teacher behaviors) play in this relationship. Objective: Utilizing the teacher behavior checklist, this study sought to investigate whether teacher behaviors mediate the relationship between the importance students set on teacher behaviors and students ’ effort. Further, the study explored which speci fi c behaviors in fl uence students ’ effort. Method: Cross-sectional survey data were analyzed ( N = 159) using mediation analysis and step-wise multiple linear regression. Results: There was evidence that teacher behaviors mediate the relationship between the importance students set on teacher behaviors and students ’ effort. Four of the 28 teacher behaviors had a signi fi cant relationship to students ’ effort: creative and interesting, enthusiastic about teaching, happy/positive/humorous, and promotes critical thinking. Conclusion: Knowing students ’ expectations (i.e., the importance of teacher behaviors) is essential to increasing students ’ effort. Teaching Implications: Happy/positive/humorous had a negative relationship with students ’ effort, while creative and interesting, enthusiastic about teaching, and promotes critical thinking showed a positive relationship with students ’ effort. strategies, they are less likely to be challenged by the concepts of samples and variables and threats to internal validity. Our fi ndings provide a clear map of student potholes in research methods courses and suggest ways to change student attitudes about the same. Background: The course on cognitive assessment is mandatory for all school psychology programs. However, there have been no published studies that have explored learning objectives for this course. Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine content covered and complexity of learning objectives in the cognitive assessment course. Method: Five raters coded 90 syllabi from school psychology cognitive assessment courses across the United States on a sample of six American Psychological Association assessment-related standards and on complexity using the six Bloom ’ s Taxonomy levels. Results: The majority of objectives were addressing lower levels of complexity as measured by Bloom ’ s Taxonomy with few syllabi including learning objectives addressing a wide range of levels. Based on the analysis of objectives by the sample of Standards , learning objectives most frequently addressed administration accuracy and test selection, whereas integrating results and linking to recommendations were often missing. Conclusion: The learning objectives included in syllabi ranged in quantity, complexity, and content but focused on lower complexity skills. Learning objectives in cognitive assessment courses do not re fl ect the diverse assessment-related practice demands of school psychologists. Teaching Implications: To align training with future practice, instructors are advised to review learning objectives with attention to complexity and content standards. careers causing them to drop out within their fi rst year. This gives courses with high fi rst-time freshman numbers such as introductory psychology courses a unique opportunity to reach many of these students. Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine new perspectives of FG students that may further explain hindrances to retention and achievement. Method: One hundred and ninety-three undergraduate students in an introductory psychology course completed surveys on task values in reference to psychology content at three different time points across the semester. Students ’ exam scores were also reported as a measurement of academic achievement. Results: Analyses showed that FG college students reported higher levels of cost value and growth in cost value across the semester compared to non-FG college students. Conclusion: FG college students experience academic challenges that may be related to their valuing of their educative experience in psychology courses. Teaching Implications: Educators should actively attempt to alleviate academic obstacles facing FG college students by increasing access to the professor, ease of access to help, and assignment clarity. the instruction was in a face-to-face format. Students with previous skill training maintained their learning gains over time. Conclusion: Student empathic communication improves most with face-to-face instruction in Basic Helping Skills rather than an internship experience. Teaching Implications: For the development of empathic communication skills, prerequisite require-ments for Internship and instructive scaffolding for the application of skills may be recommended. Identifying effective and time-ef fi cient approaches to teaching students how to write from scholarly sources bene fi ts students and instructors. Students in a general psychology course learned a concrete method to improve this type of synthesis writing. The intervention was brief, consisting of viewing an online tutorial outside of class and spending a single class period on instructorguided practice with writing samples. Students used this method to write literature reviews for a poster assignment debunking psychological myths. Compared to a previous semester that did not learn this concrete technique, students ’ writing scored signi fi cantly higher on most measures of synthesis. This suggests that a short tutorial teaching a concrete application, paired with limited in-class instruction, can help improve this important aspect of writing. Background: Instructors and students are on a continuing quest to identify predictors of learning. Objective: This study examines the associations between self-reported exam score and study techniques among students in two courses, Introductory Psychology and Computer Science. Method: We used an online survey to measure the extent students ( N = 249) used 10 techniques studied in cognitive science. We also measured students ’ perseverance, metacognitive skill, distrac-tions, and procrastination. Results: Student use of speci fi c study techniques varied between the two courses and a high utility technique, practice testing, was well used. Students reported low levels of spaced practice. Perseverance and metacognitive skills both correlated signi fi cantly with many of the study techniques. While no study techniques predicted exam scores in Introductory Psychology beyond variance predicted by GPA, the use of spaced practice predicted a signi fi cant portion of variance in students in Computer Science. Conclusions: Students ’ use of study techniques varies between their courses and while related to GPA and exam scores, are not unique predictors of variance in learning. Additional moderators and mediators of learning need to be identi fi ed. Teaching Implications: We discuss ways instructors can help prepare students in Introductory Psychology and key needs for future research on studying. Method: Seventy-three undergraduate psychology students played the role of a student counsellor interacting with a virtual client in two role-plays, one via desktop and one via head mounted display (HMD). Students provided feedback on their experience. Results: 70% of the students found the experiences very interesting, engaging and immersive, with 82% preferring the HMD mode of presentation. The virtual characters were believable as distressed clients with 96% of students perceiving greater negative than positive emotion expressed by the characters. Most of the students (64%) mood improved from the beginning of the experience to the end, however 14% experienced a decline in mood. The students agreed (95%) that the experiences would be a valuable experience to a psychology course. Conclusion: Our results provide evidence that the virtual role-play experiences are well-liked by students. Teaching Implications: The approach presented in this paper represents a practical method to provide virtual role-play experiences to both on-campus and online undergraduate students. of the CREATE system in psychology courses as a strategy for facilitating multicultural awareness and skills. Introduction: Creating a multiculturally aware and inclusive class is critical with students. The lack of face-to-face contact with asynchronous courses limits instructors ’ ability to form relation-ships with students. A myriad of teaching research provides strategies for incorporating multiculturalism, social justice, and identity into synchronous courses; however, considerably less research exists with asynchronous courses. Statement of the Problem: The purpose of the current