Add I-O content to your Intro Psych course with this stand-alone chapter

[sue_frantz]

I have been—and continue to be—a proponent of re-envisioning the Intro Psych course. While psych majors take the course, the vast majority of students who take Intro Psych are not psychology majors. What do the non-psych majors need to know about psychology? The good people from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) make a solid argument for why we should be covering industrial/organization (I-O) psych topics in Intro Psych: “If you're like most people, you'll spend more of your waking hours working than doing anything else.” It’s not a long argument, but it is a solid one.

I will take that argument one step further. Not only is the psychology of work personally useful to our students—regardless of their career field—but in their workplaces, we want our former Intro Psych students to recognize when it may be appropriate to bring in an I-O psychologist.

SIOP formed a Getting I-O into Intro Textbooks (GIT SIOP) Task Force that produced an I-O chapter for the Intro Psych course under a Creative Commons license: “The Creative Commons license means you can use it as-is, use parts of it, or even adapt it, as long ....”  

You have your choice of formats. There is the very pretty pdf with images (23 pages), a pdf without images (26 pages), and an easily-editable Word document (25 pages) where you can take what you want (with proper attribution) and leave the rest.   

Chapter outline

Overview

Industrial psychology

Job analysis

Recruitment, retention, and placement

Evaluating and managing worker performance

Training and development

Organizational psychology

Employee attitudes

Worker health and safety

Motivation

Teamwork and leadership

Conclusion

If using the chapter doesn’t work for you—or you’re not quite ready to find a spot for it in your Intro Psych course—SIOP has also created an Introduction to Industrial-Organization Psychology Mini-Course. Students read content and answer multiple choice questions. At the end of the course, there is a 10-question quiz. With a 70% on the quiz, students earn a certificate. Ask students to send you their certificate to earn credit. SIOP estimates that it will take students 30 minutes to complete this mini-course.

And if that all is not enough, SIOP has created a webpage to help instructors. Resources here include “incorporating I-O into Intro,” “I-O resources for teachers,” and “teaching tools by topic.”

SIOP deserves high praise from the Intro Psych teaching community for this work.

With SIOP setting the bar, I encourage the Society for Personality and Social Psychology to undertake a similar project that would bring the Intro Psych personality chapter into the 21st century.