Associate Professor of Psychology
California State University Fresno
This site provides examples of instructional resources created in the Humanizing Online STEM Academy, a professional development program funded by the California Education Learning Lab and administered by the Foothill DeAnza Community College District.
I have been designing Psych 63, Introduction to the Psychology Major, for over ten years. Its focus on both student success during the undergraduate major and career options and success following graduation covers a lot of territory. Psychology at Fresno State is a very large department; we currently have 2,000 majors, with about 350 students per semester taking Psych 63. For a long time I taught a class here and a class there, and hoped the other professors had a good approach to their own teaching. Over the pandemic, I shifted my approach and began developing an online asynchronous component to the course that was given to all of the semester's students to make sure that all of our students were given equivalent learning opportunities.
As I continue to develop Psych 63 I am focusing on increasing student belongingness and engagement to increase the effectiveness of the students' learning. Though I learned earlier that shorter videos are better, many of my included videos are pushing 20 minutes, so I'm rethinking the chunks of material. At the same time, I am continuing to increase my focus on conveying a warm emotional presence through my videos, I am much more comfortable with Canvas design than I was and am focusing on improving course navigation to enhance the expression of my engagement with the students.
I plan to decrease the length of my videos while increasing the frequency of new material. Next semester I plan to make a weekly short video introduction to each module. My current written introductions are friendly and descriptive, but freshly recorded video introductions will be more topical and engaging. I feel that small weekly videos will welcome my students into my life and engage them with storytelling in a way that will help them feel my investment in them. I am really working on being more comfortable with making brisk off-the-cuff videos. I also plan to create small groups of students in the classes next semester to enhance student-to-student interactions and build an increased sense of community in my classes.
Psych 63 is a required pre-major class for all students who want to major in Psychology. Students take it their first semester at Fresno State, so they usually come into it rather confused and trying to find their way through a completely new system. When you combine this with the pedagogical structure of Psych 63, where half of it is asynchronous online material and the other half is weekly in-person meetings, and each half has its own professor, it's a recipe for confused students.
My goal with my liquid syllabus is to explain this class structure in a clear and friendly way while stressing how invested all of the Psych 63 instructional team is in the success of every one of our students. It will be very helpful for communicating class structure to students before classes begin, to help them enter into their Fresno State career with a sense of mastery and an understanding of our investment in them. I plan to email the link to enrolled students before the class begins, so they can start out with some of their questions answered and a warm invite to engage with us.
Psych 63 is all about working with students who are interested in Psychology but have no idea of how they can turn that interest into a profession. We spend the semester thinking about how to succeed in the Psychology major at Fresno State and what their success will prepare them to do after they complete the major. There is a strong emphasis on finding their own way, but doing it with significant help and support. I am passionate about helping them find out where Psychology can take them.
My homepage is the landing page that is the starting point for my class, so it's important to me that it is welcoming. I also want it to be really informative! I added a link to the most recent announcement at the top, to make it easy for students to track communications. Then, it has a big friendly welcome message, followed by a very brief description of the main goals of the class. After that, I will have a picture of the section instructor with a description of their role in the class and how to contact them. Next, there's a picture of me and how to contact me. Finally, the feature that gets a ton of use is the grid of buttons. The buttons are set up to take students directly to each module throughout the semester, to save them a bunch of scrolling around. I think a successful landing page is a strong combination of easy-to-use and emotionally inviting!
It's crucial to build trust with students so that they understand that you want to know who they are, and that you want to be a safe place for them to bring any difficulties that they are having. My getting to know you survey gives me insight into where they are in their journey with choosing Psychology and exploring future careers, but it also helps me find out if they are facing any particular challenges. I want to know what problems they anticipate, so I can help them solve those problems before they become unmanageable.
This icebreaker assignment was designed to get my Psych 63 students to share parts of their lived experiences with one another, to add a personal interaction feeling to the class. To complete the icebreaker they reflect on their personal values, find an object from their lives that is associated with those values, and then record either a video or an auditory clip on the Flip tool to share both the values and the object with their classmates. This gives them a strong message that their individual experience will be valued in the class, as well as allowing them to start forming insights into each others' worlds. It's crucial to invite students to bring their experiences to the material that they are learning. It enhances their understanding and memory of the material, but it also helps create a shared sense of belongingness, which is crucial for student retention and educational success.
This video was made to explain how Psych 63 is structured. It's often confusing to students that the class is composed of an online asynchronous component with weekly modules as well as a weekly in-person component. Since the class meets once a week, there is a significant loss if the student does not realize that they should attend the first class. With this warm outreach, I hope the students feel invited into a learning process, and realize that their instructors are human beings that are very excited to be working with them, and are eager to help them succeed.
Learning Objective: Evaluate the appropriateness of internships at an undergraduate level to enhance applications to graduate schools in psychology-based areas.
One recurrent focus of Psych 63 is helping students prepare for successful employment or graduate school applications after their undergraduate work is completed. An important part of that preparation is completing internships to gain professional experience in the areas they want to pursue. However, I have learned that sending students out with a recommendation that they apply for internships can cause significant issues, as "intern" is also a term used for specific positions in the field that require concurrent graduate school enrollment and more skill background than my undergraduate students possess. This video was made to explain this complexity of the field to students to help them evaluate and select more appropriate internship learning experiences for their educational level.
