Teaching Psychology

At the 1984 Institute on Teaching Psychology to Undergraduates, a discussion of team teaching revealed that psychologists are teaching courses with faculty from such diverse departments as English, fine arts, and biology. Those faculty who have had such experiences report that they were educational for themselves as well as for the students, and recommend such activities to others. Interdisciplinary courses connect psychological concepts to a wider body of information, and thus enhance the likelihood that psychological principles will be remembered outside the context of the psychology classroom. Because most of our students do not end up as psychologists anyway, anything we can do to help them "decompartmentalize" their learning will enhance the likelihood that such learning will be useful - and used - in the future.

Lecturing remains one of the most common approaches to teaching psychology on both sides of the Atlantic. The nature of computer-based psychology teaching and learning is, of course, changing rapidly with the move from main-frame to microcomputer. The next two articles by Collyer and Butler, respectively, illustrate some different approaches to using computers in teaching psychology. Collyer examines five things that seem to foster thinking in both teachers and students. In our view, it is rather more important to develop applications such as these than it is to simply use computers to automate the presentation of stimuli for laboratory type work (valuable though this can be). Butler reports the results of surveys of faculty interest in computer-assisted instruction (which is high) and faculty use of computers (which is low).

The author examines the reasons for this state of affairs and concludes that as the barriers to using computers in the classroom are overcome, computer-aided learning will play a larger part in teaching psychology in the future. Classic research paradigms and servicedelivery situations seem to me a fertile ground in which to develop simulations for teaching psychology.

Much of the commercially-available software for teaching psychology does consist of simulations of well-known experimental procedures, intended to be used as student projects. These computer projects "work," in the sense of comparing favorably to traditional experimental projects, and in some cases being complementary to them. When used only as lab projects however, not many of them can fully exploit or even illustrate very well the leverage available in simulation as an instructional strategy. The gain achieved in getting across the idea of a receptive field using a simulation to provide relevant experience is one example of how simulation could add to a lecture on difficult material. Increasingly, the computer will be used as an integral part of lectures and discussions, as well as in laboratory and independent work.

If one thing is clear about teaching psychology, it is that we have not yet mastered the problem of teaching statistics. Most teachers of psychology will be familiar with the different methods that we have tried: Statistics have been taught in classes that are supposed to be applicable to students in a variety of disciplines.