Background: During the past two decades, psychology has become a favorite school subject in many countries. This situation has led to studies on students' attitudes and perceptions of psychology as a secondary school subject. Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare motives for choosing psychology as a school subject among secondary…

Introduction: Student motivation is a critical predictor of academic achievement, engagement, and success in higher education. Motivating students is a crucial aspect of effective teaching. Statement of the Problem: Although there is a wealth of research on student motivation, practical guidance for putting theory into practice in challenging…

Background: Student transition to university can be a challenging time. Research suggests that providing space for student reflection and goal setting may facilitate this period of transition. Objective: I describe the "Postcard to my Graduating Self Project," in which psychology students were invited to write postcards to their future…

Background: This paper describes findings from research conducted on students who participated in a service-learning course in South Africa. Objective: The study aimed to understand how participants constructed their experiences of service-learning and to interrogate their emotional investments in these constructions. Method: Data were collected…

Background: Limited research has examined how service-learning (SL) outcomes align with learning goals proposed for the undergraduate psychology major by the APA Board of Educational Affairs Task Force on Psychology Major Competences. Objective: To obtain student perspectives of SL, and to evaluate learning and inform curriculum development of SL…

Background: First-generation (FG) college students have been a popular subpopulation to study within educational literature as these students experience many unique challenges in their academic careers causing them to drop out within their first year. This gives courses with high first-time freshman numbers such as introductory psychology courses…

Recent research suggests that designing a syllabus using learner-centered principles may increase students' perceptions of their instructor on the characteristics of rapport, caring, helpfulness, willingness to seek help from the instructor, and student motivation. Typically, a learner-centered syllabus is one that presents a positive tone at the…

Despite attempts to engage students, undergraduate instructors are often challenged by low motivation among students to study outside of the classroom. The current study adapted motivational interviewing, which is often used with therapy clients ambivalent to change, to target college student motivation to study for exams. Findings indicated…

We created an activity in an upper-level personality psychology course in which interested students created an "entry" for a contest in which they chose a popular song that illustrated a course concept. The class evaluated these entries and voted on their favorites in a tournament-style bracket system; winners received extra credit.…

What an instructor does on the first day of a course can impact students' motivation in the course. To build upon these prior research findings, we implemented a first-day intervention to influence students' motivation by increasing their perceptions of course interest, course usefulness, and instructor caring. The participants were undergraduate…

This article provides a list of statistical mnemonics for instructor use. This article also reports on the potential for such mnemonics to help students learn, enjoy, and become less apprehensive about statistics. Undergraduates from two sections of a psychology statistics course rated 8 of 11 mnemonics as significantly memorable and helpful in…

Psychology courses often include an experiential component whereby instructors require or allow students to participate in research or an equitable alternative activity for course credit. We investigated self-reported reasons why students chose to not participate in research, in spite of the potential incentive of earning extra credit. Our sample…

Rapport traditionally has been measured in therapy or in other one-on-one relationships such as with roommates. As yet, no scale is available to measure professor-student rapport. In this study, 51 undergraduates created items to measure professor-student rapport, and subsequently, 195 different college students rated their agreement with items…

Traditionally, professors use the first day of class to build rapport. However, current technology allows professors to contact students prior to the first day of class. This study assessed how the receipt of a welcoming e-mail from a female professor 1 week before the first day of class affected student motivation and attitudes toward the…

Four sections of introductory psychology participated in a test of personal response systems (commonly called "clickers"). Two sections used clickers to answer multiple-choice quiz questions for extra credit; 2 sections did not. Even though we used clickers very minimally (mainly to administer quizzes and give immediate feedback in…