Intro Psych is Great

Grinnell College's approach to Intro Psychology

For any readers not acquainted with Psychology at Grinnell College, it is important to know that the Psych Department here is committed to its distinctive Intro Psych programming. It’s been an immensely stimulating and exciting format in which to try to engage students’ active participation and to bring them an up-close look at scientific research.

To support close scholarly interactions among students and faculty,

-the sections are small (capped at 26 people)

-there is a class mentor to help mediate between students and faculty.

To give students an early hands-on glimpse of research,

-students get experience with writing a full APA formatted paper

-all intro sections have their own lab section in which the same instructor from lecture leads the research activities ranging from literature search to data analysis and which culminate in full experimental projects giving students the chance to design their own experiment, collect and analyze data, and document it in a paper and/or presentation in scholarly format.

“Psst, what is a class mentor?”

It’s an upperclass student who is more advanced in the Psych major who holds out-of-class study sessions and helps mediate between instructor in students. It is much like having a teaching assistant, but the responsibility for the student employee is much less. Also, where as teaching assistants serve usually to farm out instructive labor, the purpose of the class mentor is to bring students closer to instructors and make the class environment more inclusive.

Back to General Approach/Intro or back to In the Classroom