I’ve been thinking a lot about identity and how our identity—whether it’s an accurate reflection reality—influences our behavior. Most recently I’ve been thinking about this after reading Jeff Holmes’ article in the Teaching of Psychology journal on students who have identified themselves as bad test-takers (Holmes, 2021). Holmes opens the article with this statement: “One of the best ways to be bad at something is to tell yourself you are bad at it” (p. 291). In Holmes’s study of 311 college students, a whopping 91% believed that students who otherwise know the course material can be bad test-takers with 56% of the students identifying themselves as bad test-takers. A third of the students said that someone else told them that they were bad test-takers. Importantly, those who identified as a bad test-taker were more likely to disagree with “I know how to study effectively.” Additionally, “Students who see themselves as bad test-takers…tend to—relative to students who do not possess such an identity—have lower confidence in their broader academic abilities, expend less effort on cognitive activities, and feel entitled to positive academic outcomes regardless of performance” (p. 296). And, yes, those who identify as bad test-takers were also more likely to report test anxiety, even when other variables—such as overall academic performance and study skills confidence—were controlled for. I could retire early if I had a dollar for every time I had this conversation with a student: Student: “I studied hard for this test, and I still failed! I’m just a bad test-taker.” Me: “Tell me how you studied.” Student: “What do you mean?” Me: “When you sat down to study, tell me what you did.” Student: “I read the chapter, then I read it again, and again. Oh! And I highlighted stuff.” Me: “Tell me what you know about <concept covered on exam>.” Student: <awkward silence> “I don’t remember.” <More awkward silence> Since I’m a bad test-taker, can I do something for extra credit?” In Intro Psych, wherever you discuss attributions (e.g., social psych, abnormal, psychotherapy), consider using the bad test-taker attribution as an example. If a student does poorly on an exam and they say, “I’m a bad test-taker,” they are making an internal, stable, and global attribution. Internal: It’s a trait I have. Stable: It’s a trait that’s not going to change. Global: My bad test-taking applies regardless of the test. It is unlikely that a student who makes this attribution will do anything differently on the next test.   Now ask students to imagine a different attribution. After doing poorly on a test, the student says, “I didn’t know that material well enough.” This is an internal, unstable, specific attribution. Internal: The grade was because of something I did. Unstable: If I do things differently, I can get a different result. Specific: This is what happened on this specific test; that doesn’t say anything about the next test. This student has agency. “I’m going to try out some of the known-to-be-effective study strategies my instructor told me about.” Reiterate to students that in both examples, the result of the first test was the same; both students failed. But who is most likely to fail the second test, too? To make that second attribution—“I didn’t know the material well enough”—students have to have enough insight into their own knowledge or have to accept that their test score is a reasonably accurate reflection of their knowledge. When students read and reread chapters over and over and over again, the material begins to feel familiar. That familiarity can feel like knowledge. It’s not. It’s the illusion of knowledge. One of the many benefits of self-testing is that it keeps students from deluding themselves while they study. Unless they attribute their poor self-testing to being a bad test-taker. [Side note: If the student sees test-taking as a skill that can be learned (unstable attribution), then they may choose to work on upping their test-taking skills. A quick Google search of “test taking skills” produced a number of websites with a bullet-point list of strategies. The sites I saw all included some version of “be prepared.” What’s the best way to be prepared? Use solid study strategies to learn the material.]     References Holmes, J. D. (2021). The bad test-taker identity. Teaching of Psychology, 48(4), 293–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628320979884 ... View more

MARCH 10 | 3:00 PM ET Join Jonathan S. Comer, the renowned best-selling co-author of Abnormal Psychology and Fundamentals of Abnormal Psychology, as he reviews the rapidly growing body of research on how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the state of mental health and its treatment. Register today to save your seat! REGISTER HERE *NOTE: You must follow this link to register. Responding above as "going" will not register you for this event. ... View more

My Intro Psych students, on the whole, are able to design a pretty good study when given a hypothesis. They describe using a control group and one or more experimental groups. They describe holding everything constant except for the independent variable. They describe the use of one or more dependent variables. Where they most often falter is in applying the labels. For our non-psychology majors, how important is it that students be able to say what the independent variable is? Even for our psychology majors, the world won’t end if after Intro Psych they can’t yet apply the correct label to the independent variable. It not like we keep our psych majors from taking Research Methods if they missed the research methods questions on their first Intro Psych exam. By the end of Research Methods, they should have the differences between independent variable and dependent variable down solid, but it might even be possible to pass Methods without having a solid grasp of which is which. I bet a psych major could even earn a BA degree in psych without doing better than chance on identifying the independent variable and dependent variable. I’m nearing the end of revising an Intro Psych textbook. For the last 12 chapters, my brilliant wife has been my in-house editor. We’ve been together almost 25 years. She’s heard a lot of psychology during that time. Reading this textbook, she’s learned even more (as have I in writing it). Periodically, she will say, “Oh! That’s that thing where <description of concept>.” Last week, she perfectly described the tragedy of the commons applying it to something she had just read in a non-psychology source, but she couldn’t come up with the name “tragedy of the commons.” I confess that it took my brain a minute to dig through my mental files to come up with the term. For Intro Psych, I think of my neighbors as my audience. Many of my neighbors have bachelor’s degrees in something other than psychology. Looking at how many college students take Intro Psych, it’s likely that most of my neighbors took the course. As we all know, our writing and speaking has to be geared to our audience to be most effective. When I think about my Intro Psych audience, I think about my neighbors—people who will go into careers like healthcare, business, engineering, and social work. What do they need to know about psychology? This brings me to my terminology crisis. Which is more important? That my Intro Psych students/neighbors can design a decent experiment? Or that they can accurately label the independent variable and dependent variable? Is it more important they can identify a novel example of the tragedy of the commons? Or that they can accurately label the example as the tragedy of the commons? When I gave multiple choice tests, most of the questions were about accurately labeling. I didn’t do that because I gave deep thought to what my multiple choice questions should be testing. I did it because that’s how I was tested, that’s how my colleagues tested, and those were the bulk of the questions in the test bank. If everyone is testing for knowledge of terminology, then I must test for knowledge of terminology, too. (Is it more important that I recognize this as an example of going along with the group or that I can accurately label it “conformity”?) Here’s an example of testing for concept knowledge, rather than terminology knowledge. In a city, the roads are a shared resource. As individuals, we have a choice to drive (or take some other individualized transportation, such as a cab/Uber/Lyft) to work (adding to air pollution) or to take public transportation (not adding to air pollution). What does psychology predict that people are most likely to do? Drive (or take some other individualized transportation) without consideration for what is good for all of us. “If I drive, I won’t be adding much air pollution.”) Take public transportation because it is for the good of all of us. (“If I take the bus, I won’t be adding more air pollution.”) For those who can’t quite give up terminology altogether, tack this question on at the end. For ¼ point extra credit, what is the name of the concept that describes this? _________ Here’s another example. A researcher hypothesizes that students who take tests in hot rooms will score more poorly on the test. Which research design would be best for testing this hypothesis? Give students a test in a hot room and see how they score. Ask students if they would prefer to take a test in a hot room or a comfortable room. Put those who prefer a hot room in a hot room and those who prefer a comfortable room in a comfortable room. Give all students the same test and see how they score. Ask students if they would prefer to take a test in a hot room or a comfortable room. Put those who prefer a hot room in a hot room and those who prefer a comfortable room in a comfortable room. Give the hot room students a difficult test and the comfortable room students an easy test. See how they score. Randomly divide students into two groups. Put one group in a hot room and another group in a comfortable room. Give all students the same test and see how they score. Randomly divide students into two groups. Put one group in a hot room and another group in a comfortable room. Give the hot room students a difficult test and the comfortable room students an easy test. See how they score. For ¼ point extra credit, identify the independent variable in this example. ___________ For ¼ point extra credit, identify the dependent variable in this example. ___________ Currently, my Intro Psych students take open-note, open-book, take-at-home essay tests of a sort. In looking through my questions, for about half of them, I have an expectation that my students will be able to wrestle with the terminology and accurately apply it. My students aren’t expected to memorize the terms, but I do expect them to go from definition to application. Is it because it’s really necessary? Or is it out of my own convenience? For example, in one question in the learning chapter, I give students four examples, and ask students to identify the schedule of reinforcement. It’s much easier for me to score whether “fixed ratio” is correct, than it is to score “reinforcement after a set number of responses.” Although, in the end, what I really want is for a student to remember years later is something like, “I want to exercise more. I’m going to put a quarter in the jar for every 2,500 steps. I can only use jar money at the coffee shop.” If they don’t remember that this is a fixed ratio reinforcement schedule, I’m okay with that. If I’m okay with that for years later, it seems like I should be okay with it while they’re in the course. ... View more

I read an article in Nature about how academics who work with graduate students could do a better job preparing grad students for non-academic careers (Forrester, 2022). It reminded me of when I was in grad school 30 years ago. (Yes, I walked through the snow uphill to get to campus–and to get home.) While I don’t remember anyone explicitly telling me that choosing/getting/accepting an academic job that primarily involved teaching would mark me a failure in the eyes of the program, I implicitly got the message. I remember one grad student who got a job in an applied field, and her work was discussed as a curiosity, not as a legitimate option for life after grad school. If we take the discussion down one more level, we can talk about the expectations undergraduate psychology programs put on bachelor’s students to go to grad school. If we’re not actively talking about career paths outside of grad school, we’re implicitly telling students they’re a failure if they don’t go the grad school route. Take a look at APA’s Center for Workforce Studies’ Careers in Psychology page to see how many people with which degrees and at what career stage are working in each career field. In the word cloud, click on a career field to get the estimated number of people working in the field and a percentage of this segment of the workforce. While the Nature article was written with an engineering, physical, and earth science grad faculty audience in mind, the advice works for psychology, too. And for both grad students and undergraduates. “Voice your support for alternative paths,” and “[g]ive students time to explore.” Let’s talk with our psych undergrad and grad students about psychology’s career path possibilities. If we feel we are not well-versed in the topic, then let’s make it an assignment. Turn students loose to do their own research with a report back to the class. Be prepared to learn a lot! As advisors, let’s “[a]sk students about their career interests and goals,” and “[d]evise a mentoring plan to help [our] students.” If students are interested in careers that we know nothing about, then it’s time to tap our networks. Let’s connect our students with others with similar degrees who are working in the fields they’re interested in. Have a psych major who is interested in going into business or healthcare? Or a grad student who is interested in helping golfers avoid the yips? If you don’t know where to start, I recommend posting to the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) Facebook group. If you’re not on Facebook, try Twitter; STP’s Twitter name is @TeachPsych. Join the STP PsychTeacher email listserv and ask for networking help there. You may also want to contact the leadership of one or more of the 54 APA divisions that most closely matches your student’s interest. Don’t overlook your own department’s alumni. What are your former students doing now? If career and career interests match, are they willing to have a conversation with your current students? Mentoring isn’t always about having the answers. Sometimes it’s about helping finding someone who does.   Reference Forrester, N. (2022). How lab leaders can support students’ non-academic career plans. Nature, 601(7894), 655–657. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00162-y   ... View more

Students should not only be taught the core concepts of introductory psychology, but also how those ideas play out in their daily lives and the world around them. In a seven-part video series produced exclusively for Macmillan Learning, Garth Neufeld shows how APA’s Introductory Psychology Initiative (IPI) offers a guided structure for doing just that. As Professor Neufeld (Cascadia College) explains, APA’s IPI’s themes help students understand the trends and patterns of human thoughts and behaviors, which are concepts they can then apply to their current and future studies, and to their lives beyond the classroom. Furthermore, APA IPI themes allow instructors to organize course goals, learning, and assessments around these key topics. Watch the full series with a community account. ... View more

In the October 1, 2021 issue of Science, Jennifer S. Chen shares with readers her experience switching from one research direction to another mid-graduate career. The four big lessons she learned from this experience apply to, well, life. But since this is a blog about teaching, let’s talk teaching. “It’s OK to fail.” In the context of doing research, failure is part of the game. Although, if a study didn’t go as I expected I don’t know that I thought of it as failure. In any case, I certainly don’t think that way now. Regardless of the results, we always know more after the completion of a study than we did before. Even if I managed to screw up the procedure in some way, I now know to be more careful next time. That’s progress. In teaching, how often have I tried something new—assignment, discussion, activity—only to have it completely bomb? Raise your hand if you have ever passed out a test only to discover that the answers were copied onto the last page. Those instructors who are so fearful of failure are too paralyzed to try anything new. Anyone else thinking of growth mindset? If we are going to get better—at teaching, at science, at life—we have to see failure as a learning opportunity, not as a comment on who we are as a teacher, a scientist, or a human being. I have worked with faculty going through the tenure process, and I have served on the committee that recommends faculty for tenure. I was not looking for perfect teaching. I was looking for instructors who were willing to take risks. If that risk didn’t work out, what did the instructor learn from it? What are they going to try next? “Value your transferable skills.” All of the time Chen spent working within her first research area was not wasted time. Instead, she learned skills, such as how to quickly read a research paper, that will serve her well, no matter her research area. The two biggest skills that I have learned through teaching that come immediately to mind are public speaking and translating science for a general audience. I am not saying, by any stretch of the imagination, that I am perfect at those, but I am sure a whole lot better than I was 30 years ago! While teaching a new course for the first time can be intimidating and we don’t feel like we know everything to be covered in the course, we have the basic skills: public speaking and science translation. I see these in all of you, too. When I attend conference sessions, those who spend a lot of their time teaching are, on the whole, much better speakers than those who don’t. And because we have to communicate (sometimes complex) psychological findings to novices, we get pretty good at translating psychological science to the general public. I would love to see more psychology instructors writing blogs, writing editorials, or hosting podcasts geared toward a general audience. Have you noticed that a lot of psychology instructors lead college and university teaching and learning centers? (See for example, Claudia Stanny at the University of West Florida, Elizabeth Yost Hammer at Xavier University of Louisiana, and Regan A. R. Gurung at Oregon State University.)  Given our knowledge of psychological science and our ability to communicate those scientific findings, instructors of psychology are easy choices for departments that help others become better instructors. “Ask for help.” In Chen’s new research area, there was one component of her research that she didn’t know how to do. Rather than take weeks to learn how to do it on her own, she solicited the help of another lab who had the experience and the expertise to do it for her.   Teaching Intro Psych is hard. The word Intro is deceptive. “Introductions” to things should be easy. The Intro Psych course is not so much an “introduction” as it is “a tidal wave of information from every corner of the field.” But we don’t call it that because it exceeds the number of characters allowed by the course title field in our college catalogs. If you have a colleague who is an expert in sensation and perception, then ask them to present that content to your Intro Psych students. Take notes! Now you can lecture on it for the next year or two. Then invite your colleague to do it again. Take notes on what’s changed, and you’re good to go for another year or two. If you are having a tough time with a particular concept, ask. If you don’t work with someone who knows, put it out to the teaching of psychology community. At the time of this writing, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook group has over 16,000 members. Someone will know the answer to your question. “Share your story.” When Chen started talking about her experiences with failed research studies and switching research areas, she discovered others who had had the same experiences. Talking with our teaching colleagues about our teaching failures helps us normalize the experience. This is especially important for our colleagues who are relatively new to teaching. Trying and failing are all part of the profession.   Reference Chen, J. S. (2021). Embracing a change. Science, 374(6563), 114 ... View more

How has learning been impacted by our always-available "google it" culture? This blog outlines some of the ramifications and offers suggestions for moving the discussion into the classroom: https://theeffortfuleducator.com/2021/09/13/hgiil/ ... View more

Do your students know what makes them happy? They probably think they do, and much what they think is probably wrong. Professor Gilbert will discuss the science of happiness, and tell you about some findings that will surprise your students – and maybe you as well!      WATCH RECORDING ... View more

Summer 2021: June 1 to August 31 Sports psychology Recommended by a member of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology History of psychology Written by a person with a disability Recommended by a colleague at your institution Written by a BIPOC psychologist Neuroscience   On your shelf Cognition Written by a person diagnosed with a psychological disorder Written by a person who identifies as transgendered Stress & coping FREE Fiction Prejudice & discrimination Emotion Written by an APA 2021 keynote speaker I/O psychology Written by a psychologist who works outside the U.S. Social justice/activism Comparative psychology Cultural psychology   Science that is not psychology Written by a psychologist under the age of 40 Sensation & perception   Created by Sue Frantz                                               Read books that match the categories. Only one book per category. Write in the author’s name and title of the book in the box. A bingo is 5 across, 5 down, or 5 diagonally. How many bingos can you get? If you read 24 books—one that matches each category--that’s a blackout. Congratulations! Between August 31 and September 6, share your completed bingo cards to the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook group or Twitter using hashtag #psychbookbingo. Happy reading! [Download as a Word file]    [Download as a PDF] ... View more

The planning fallacy tells us that everything will take longer than we think it will (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982). In a fun—and unpublished—study, MIT graduate student Kaley Brauer, tells us about what they learned about the planning fallacy—albeit never named as such—when a “small group of postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates inadvertently formed a longitudinal study contrasting expected productivity levels with actual productivity levels.” It all started in an effort to be more productive by holding each other accountable. Once a week this group would get together to declare what tasks they wanted to accomplish for the following week and report on what they had accomplished the previous week. As part of this accountability, each person was asked to predict how long each task would take and then report on how long each task actually took. Nine months and “559 self-reported tasks” later, the data are interesting if not surprising. “The actual number of hours required to complete a task is, on average, 1.7x as many hours as expected (with a median multiplier of 1.4x).” The worst estimates were for tasks related to writing and coding. The best estimates were for tasks that had a set deadline. To help ourselves overcome the planning fallacy, there are three things we can do. First, break the task down into its component parts and estimate how long each component will take. When we do this, our predicted times to completion are more accurate (Forsyth & Burt, 2008; Kruger & Evans, 2004). Second, make a plan. When we decide when and where we are going to do these subtasks, we are more likely to complete them in the time predicted (Koole & van’t Spijker, 2000). Lastly, when we are working on the task, getting rid of distractions and interruptions—phones set to silent!—will help us finish the darn thing in the time we predicted (Koole & van’t Spijker, 2000). After sharing information with your students about the planning fallacy and how to mitigate it, ask your students to take a look at the assignments remaining in your course. Send students into small groups to break down each assignment into smaller, component parts, and provide a time estimate on how long they think each part would take to complete. As a “deliverable,” ask each student to submit a work plan for each component. For each remaining assignment (or, perhaps, just one large assignment), for each subcomponent, note how long they think it will take to complete and identify where and when they will do this subcomponent task. If you’d like to do a follow-up, ask students to keep track of how long it actually takes them to complete each subcomponent task, and submit this information when they submit their assignment(s). Giving students some practice with this skill now may benefit them enormously in the long run.   References Forsyth, D. K., & Burt, C. D. B. (2008). Allocating time to future tasks: The effect of task segmentation on planning fallacy bias. Memory and Cognition, 36(4), 791–798. https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.36.4.791 Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1982). Intuitive prediction: Biases and corrective procedures. In D. Kahneman & A. Tversky (Eds.), Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (pp. 414–421). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511809477.031 Koole, S., & van’t Spijker, M. (2000). Overcoming the planning fallacy through willpower: Effects of implementation intentions on actual and predicted task-completion times. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30(6), 873–888. https://doi.org/10.1002/1099-0992(200011/12)30:6<873::AID-EJSP22>3.0.CO;2-U Kruger, J., & Evans, M. (2004). If you don’t want to be late, enumerate: Unpacking reduces the planning fallacy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(5), 586–598. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2003.11.001 ... View more

I just finished reading Evan Nesterak’s Behavioral Scientist interview with Wharton organizational psychologist Adam Grant about his new book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Grant discussed an interaction he had with Danny Kahneman that has given me much to think about. After a talk Grant gave, Kahneman, who was in the audience, came up to him afterward and said, “That was wonderful. I was wrong.” Grant found the reaction unexpected. Upon later inquiring what Kahneman meant by that, Kahneman replied (Grant’s paraphrase), “No one enjoys being wrong, but I do enjoy having been wrong, because it means I am now less wrong than I was before.” I was immediately reminded of an email I received from a student from a recent course. After receiving a lower-than-typical score on an assignment, she emailed me to thank me for the explanation of a particular concept in the rubric. She was glad she got that concept wrong because now she understands the concept much better than she did before. Like Kahneman, she “enjoy[ed] having been wrong, because it means [she is] now less wrong than [she] was before.” Since this is not the kind of email I usually receive from students, I wrote her back, and asked how she came to take that view. She said when she first went to college years ago, that was most certainly not her attitude. Instead, her primary reaction to being wrong was to be defensive. It was after she dropped out of school she realized how much her defensiveness kept her from learning. In her job, she started seeing that every time she was wrong, she learned something new, so she started seeing being wrong as a good thing. Being wrong is evidence of learning. And it was with that attitude that she came back to college. You may not be surprised to learn that she earned an A in the course. Again, Adam Grant paraphrasing Danny Kahneman, “Finding out that I was wrong is the only way I’m sure that I’ve learned anything. Otherwise, I’m just going around and living in a world that’s dominated by confirmation bias, or desirability bias. And I’m just affirming the things I already think I know.” What helps is that, as Grant reports, Kahneman separates himself from his ideas. Ideas are just ideas, not who he is. Ideas are easy to ditch; our identity is not. Early in my career, I learned that it was freeing to say, “I don’t know.” I teach a lot of Intro Psych. Students can come up with a lot of questions about people and why we do what we do. While I know more now about psychology than I did then, I still don’t know everything. Heck, our science of psychology does not know everything. My identity as a psychology instructor was not wrapped up in knowing absolutely everything about psychology. As a bonus, saying “I don’t know” made it easier for students to trust me when I did respond to a question with something that I knew. Or was pretty sure I knew.   Next, I learned that it was freeing to say, “I don’t know, but I would guess…” and then provide my guess, while also sharing my thinking about why I was guessing that. I love this kind of thinking on my feet. And, by pulling in content previously covered in the course, previewing content coming up, and content not covered in the course, students get to see how different areas of psychology are connected – or, rather, could be connected if my guess is correct. If a particularly motivated student did some research into the question, and reported back a different answer, I got practice is saying, “Thanks! I was wrong.” In recent years, I’ve gotten more comfortable saying that. I can’t say that I’m to the point of embracing “wrong” like my student and Danny Kahneman are, but I’m closer than I used to be. Psychologist Paul Meehl was renowned for telling his students near the beginning of a course that half of what he was going to tell them was wrong; he just didn’t know which half. That’s science. With every study, we learn where our ideas are wrong, which ideas need to change. For Danny Kahneman, learning where he is wrong is just another data point. Talk about the scientific attitude! Now the million dollar question. While I can work on reframing my own thoughts around being wrong and what it means to be wrong, how can I help my students do that same important reframing? While it’s important for learning, it’s much bigger than that. Kahneman has it exactly right—when we can admit we are wrong, confirmation bias, belief perseverance, <insert just about any bias>, cognitive dissonance all disappear. If those who believed the rhetoric of QAnon could say, “I was wrong,” like Lekka Perron has done, imagine how freeing it would be for them. Perhaps the best way to help our students see being wrong as learning something new is to model it ourselves. “I believed X, but the preponderance of the evidence points to Y. I was wrong, and now I’m less wrong than I was before.” ... View more

Do your students know what makes them happy? They probably think they do, and much what they think is probably wrong. Professor Gilbert will discuss the science of happiness, and tell you about some findings that will surprise your students – and maybe you as well! WATCH THE RECORDING ... View more

Dr. Kelly Goedert and Dr. Susan Nolan will describe how the use of statistics in psychological science is changing as the field undergoes an open-science revolution. They will highlight ways to update your undergraduate statistics course that center on an ethical approach to analyzing, interpreting, and reporting data, and will offer engaging examples and activities you can use in your classroom. WATCH THE RECORDING ... View more

I hadn’t been teaching very long when I had decided that I didn’t want to be in the business of identifying good student excuses from poor student excuses for the purpose of determining who should—and who should not—get a deadline extension. I wasn’t comfortable passing judgment on what was a significant level of stress for a student. Was this student close enough to their aunt to warrant a deadline extension upon reporting her death? Can I believe that their aunt actually died? I know other faculty ask for some kind of proof. Am I comfortable asking for some kind of proof? Or that car crash that my student was in. How bad was it? And does it even matter how objectively bad the crash was given what we know about how differently people respond to various stressors? A fender bender that is no big deal to one student may send another student into stress overload. Rather than evaluate individual excuses, I decided to structure my course for flexibility. (For those of you familiar with the “4 Connections for Faculty-Student Engagement,” you’ll recognize this as part of “practice paradox.”) At that early point in my career, students had four 50-question unit exams and a 100-question comprehensive final. The first 25 questions on the final corresponded to the first unit exam (different questions, same content), the second 25 questions on the final corresponded to the second unit exam, and so on. If a student missed the first exam—for whatever reason—I would double the points earned on those first 25 questions, and those points would be entered as their exam one score. A student could miss all four unit exams and just take the final. No one ever did, but they could. Additionally, I would compare the total score for the four unit exams (200 points) to the final exam (100 points x 2 for a total of 200 points). I excluded the lower score and used the higher score to calculate final grades. If a student, for example, decided to try to power through and take a unit exam even if they weren’t in the right space to take it, and they ended up doing poorly on it. No worries. The final exam, if higher, would replace all four unit exams. I would say, “It doesn’t matter to me if you show me that you know the course material as we go through the course or at the end of the course. Just show me that you know it.” Later in my career, I did away with in-class exams in favor of what amounts to weekly take-home exams (I call them write-to-learn assignments; read more here). In my online courses, there are weekly discussions. With multiple assignments in each of these categories that are worth the same number of points, doing poorly on one, two, or three will not greatly harm a student’s course grade. Additionally, I drop the lowest take-home exam score and the lowest discussion score. Stuff happens in students’ lives. I don’t need to know what that stuff is. We’ll just drop the lowest scores. In my courses, all assignments are available from the beginning of the course. Students can choose to work ahead if they’d like, and several of my students do. The only place where that doesn’t work is in writing responses to other students’ discussion posts. In comparison to other work in the course, writing responses is not generally a labor-intensive activity. I know many faculty who are philosophically opposed to extra credit. For myself, I’m fine offering extra credit. While I’m comfortable with my assignments and scoring rubrics, they are not perfect. They can’t be. In a nod to this inherent measurement error, offering students some extra credit feels fair. I offer extra credit under two conditions. First, the extra credit has to be available to everyone. All of the extra credit in my courses is published as part of the course at the beginning of the term, so everyone knows what the extra credit is and when it’s due. Second, the extra credit has to advance my agenda. In my online discussion boards, I ask students to share their good news for the week. (Read more about this.) In their replies, I ask students to respond to the initial post’s good news with a reaction and a question. For one point extra credit, students can answer the question asked in the reply (maximum two points, one each if the student answers two replies). In an online course, students miss the opportunities to build community by chatting with each other before class starts or during breaks. Structured discussions can push the sense of community a bit, and a little extra credit for advancing the discussion can push it even further. The other place I offer extra credit is within the take-home exams. In some of these assignments, I will include extra credit questions that ask students to reflect back on earlier material in the course, particularly correlations and experimental design. We know that spaced practice and retrieval practice help students remember course content, so I encourage students to revisit these concepts throughout the course. The best thing I’ve done in the last year to build flexibility into my course is to include an automatic 24-hour grace period. Historically, I’ve had the take-home exams and initial discussion posts due on Monday and discussion responses due on Wednesday. If I move the due date back 24 hours—take-home exams and initial discussion posts due on Sunday and responses due on Tuesday—I could then add an automatic 24-hour grace period. Effectively, assignments are really still due on Mondays and Wednesdays, but for students, their target deadline is 24 hours earlier. If they need the extra time—for whatever reason—they have it. Frankly, it’s the easiest way for the most rigid of faculty to add flexibility to their course. Set your deadline, then subtract 24 hours. How does the 24-hour grace period work in practice? Early in the course, about two-thirds of my students make the initial deadline. As the term progresses, that slips to about half. Recently, a student ran into a technical problem with his computer’s Internet connection. Unfortunately, he discovered the problem 23 hours and 45 minutes into the grace period—and he missed the drop-dead deadline. He emailed me to explain what happened. He wasn’t asking for extension. He just wanted to let me know what happened and acknowledge his mistake. He understood that the grace period was for exactly those issues, and that he would return to aiming for the initial deadline. Finally, whatever your policy, stick with it. Do not make exceptions—unless your policy says that you will make exceptions. Otherwise, you reward the students who ask, and the students who follow your rules and who never ask, do not have the benefit of your generosity. There’s nothing fair about that. If all of those structural elements are not enough to help a student who is having a tough term pass the course, they have one more option: students can retake the course. ... View more

What better tour guide through My Psychology than the author himself, Andy Pomerantz. In each of these brief videos Andy introduces a specific chapter, highlighting important topics to come while addressing student preconceptions. Using these is a terrific way to set the stage for your lectures and your students' encounters with the course material. Preview the Lecture Launchers by Chapter: Chapter 1: The Science of Psychology Chapter 2: Brain and Behavior Chapter 3: Sensation and Perception Chapter 4: Consciousness Chapter 5: Memory Chapter 6: Learning Chapter 7:  Cognition: Thinking, Language and Intelligence Chapter 8: Motivation and Emotion Chapter 9: Development Across the Lifespan Chapter 10: Diversity in Psychology: Multiculturalism, Gender, and Sexuality Chapter 11: Stress and Health Chapter 12: Personality Chapter 13: Social Psychology Chapter 14: Psychological Disorders Chapter 15: Therapy ... View more