Free resources: Neuroscience and I/O

[sue_frantz]

Here are two free resources that will help you prepare for your next Intro Psych course. While I suggest assignments, you can certainly keep these for your own reference.   

Neuroscience

I hear from Intro Psych instructors that the biopsych chapter is one they are frequently uncomfortable teaching. As a resource, I highly recommend this free book: Brain Facts: A Primer on the Brain and Nervous System. It is published by the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) and is available as a pdf, ePUB, MOBI, and as a Sound Cloud audio book. At 136 pages (71 pdf pages), its 18 chapters will help you help your students better understand psychology’s biological underpinnings. Here’s a sample of chapters:

Chapter 2: Senses & Perception

Chapter 7: Infant, Child, & Adolescent Brain

Chapter 11: Childhood Disorders

Chapter 12: Psychiatric Disorders

Chapter 14: Injury & Illness

Better yet, because this book was written for a general audience, you can assign chapters to students. For example, first ask your Intro Psych students to match each chapter in the Brain Facts book with the chapters you will be covering in the course. Next, ask students to pick one chapter to read. A student who was particularly interested in the biology of sleep might choose Chapter 9: Brain States. Or a student with a grandparent who is experiencing cognitive challenges might choose Chapter 8: Adult and Aging Brain. Or a student who has experienced addiction—either themselves, or as a friend or family member—might choose Chapter 13: Addiction.

Since the purpose of this activity is to introduce students to free resource from a reputable organization, you can simply ask students to quote part of the chapter that they chose to read that they found particularly interesting, and then explain why they found it interesting. If you’d like to put a minimum word count on the assignment, tell students that the quote does not count toward that word count. Score the assignment as complete/incomplete.

Industrial/Organization Psychology

For instructors wanting to include more examples of how psychology can be applied to real-world situations, the good folks at the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology (SIOP) have written a free I-O chapter. You are welcome to use this chapter—just be sure to give SIOP credit. If your Intro Psych textbook allows for customization, add the chapter to your book. The nicely-designed pdf is 23 pages.

The chapter could work as an end of course assignment. If you are using APA’s integrative themes, one option would be ask students to quote text from the chapter that illustrates each of the integrative themes with a brief explanation of how their chosen example fits the theme. If you are not using the themes, another option would be to ask students to quote text from the chapter that illustrates content from, say, at least five chapters that you covered in the course. Again, each quote should be accompanied by a brief explanation of how that quote fits with their chosen chapter. This assignment could also be scored as complete/incomplete.