2024 Schedule

8:15-9:00  Registration, breakfast

9:00-9:30  Welcome

9:30-10:30     Short presentations

Encouraging Persistence with Collaborative Quizzing (link to slides)

Alison Melley, George Mason University

Preventing “First Year Psych Student Syndrome”: The Most Important DSM Criteria for Early Students (link to slides)

Ryon Cummings, NOVA Loudon and George Mason University

Mindfulness activity: Getting students to slow down (and also learn something!) (link to slides and student handout)

Rachelle Tannenbaum, Anne Arundel Community College

Using ChatGPT as a Study Buddy for Psychology (link to slides and student handout)

Julie Grignon, Anne Arundel Community College

10:30-10:45 Break

10:45-11:45   Keynote

Envisioning and Implementing a More Inclusive Introductory Psychology (link to slides)

Dana S. Dunn, Moravian University

11:45-12:45    Lunch

12:45-1:45      Roundtable discussions

Involving Students in Research
Sonia Bell, Prince George’s Community College

Saving Time and Sanity While Grading
Juli Hawk, Baltimore City Community College

Academic Integrity
Eve LeBarton, Anne Arundel Community College

1:45-2:00      Break

2:00-3:00    Short presentations

Fact Checking: Building Scientific Literacy (link to slides)

Juli Hawk, Baltimore City Community College

Teaching Stereotypes Out on a Limb

Jason Spiegelman, Community College of Baltimore County

Using Perusall to Boost Student Engagement (link to slides)

Matthew Patton, Anne Arundel Community College

WEIRD Predictions: Examining Cross-Cultural Results in Introductory Psychology (link to slides and activity)

Jarred Jenkins, Anne Arundel Community College

3:00-4:00    Group discussion

Turning knowledge into action: Where do we go from here?
Victoria Taylor, Prince George's Community College

4:00-4:30     Closing, giveaways, next steps

15-minute presentations

Encouraging Persistence with Collaborative Quizzing

Description: Participants will experience the “student view” of collaborative quizzing. I developed this method when I brought testing back into my Introductory Psychology classes, in an attempt to both decrease anxiety and increase engagement and persistence with testing. Before this I was using short, online, open-book tests. Many students waited until right before the due time and spent very little time on the tests. They had two attempts and took them one after the other. Scores were often low. In-class collaborative quizzing has been a learning experience for both me and the students!

Bio: Alison Melley is an Instructional Associate Professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. She teaches large enrollment sections of Introductory Psychology and facilitates the Teaching Practicum and related training experiences for graduate students. Her interests focus on accessibility in higher education. She is especially interested in mentoring teachers and encouraging students to become effective consumers of information. Currently, she is developing a resource for Introductory Psychology - lessons focused on the seven integrative themes. Alison earned her M.A. at West Chester University of Pennsylvania and her PhD in Clinical Psychology in 2003 at the University of Virginia. After that, she was raising kids (5 of them) and part-time research consulting, then added teaching at Montgomery College Maryland for eight years before beginning at GMU in 2019. Her other interests include anything outdoors and active. 

Preventing “First Year Psych Student Syndrome”: The Most Important DSM Criteria for Early Students

Description: While most introductory texts mention disorders, or even explain the basic idea of the DSM-5, many leave out the most important criteria for a disorder. Para-phrasing and identifying this missing piece may be one of the most important things we can communicate to these early students. It seems to help with the understanding of disorders, and preventing unnecessary stress in the students, their friends, and their families.

Bio: Ryon Cumings is an adjunct instructor at NOVA Loudon, as well as a current PhD student at George Mason University, where he is a part-time instructor as part of my assistantship. Between the two, he has roughly 3 years of teaching experience in various psych courses including Intro, Developmental, Research Methods, and Applied Intro for Non-Psych Majors.

Mindfulness activity: Getting students to slow down (and also learn something!)

Description: There is a wealth of research documenting the benefits of mindfulness for both physical and mental health. In addition, students are often so busy that they simply do not have time for much of anything besides school, work, and family obligations. In this activity, I sent students out of class to take a 20-minute walk. After returning to class, students work in groups to relate their experiences to other topics from previous units (research methods, biopsychology, health psychology, and the science of learning). The walk also served a springboard for discussion about social norms. 

Bio: Rachelle Tannenbaum is a Professor at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, MD. She primarily teaches Introduction to Psychology, which is her favorite course by far; she also teaches and is course coordinator for Developmental Psychology. She has been actively involved in training and review processes related to online learning and course design, her department’s learning outcomes assessment efforts, and efforts to reshape the curriculum to emphasize access, diversity, equity, and inclusion. After 23 years, she's still in love with the fact that she gets paid to spend her time learning new things. She was inspired to create MAESTRO Psych as a result of her experiences on the steering committee for the Psych One conference.

Using ChatGPT as a Study Buddy for Psychology

Description: Without direction, some of our students are using AI instead of completing their own work. This session will focus instead on how to encourage students to use ChatGPT as a means to support their studies. ChatGPT prompt suggestions will be provided.

Bio: Julie L. Grignon, Ph.D. is an experienced educator, school psychologist, and associate professor of psychology. She was an adjunct instructor of psychology and education at Anne Arundel Community College for 13 years before becoming a full-time professor in 2017.  Julie also has more than 20 years working as a teacher and school psychologist at the K-12 level.  In the classroom, Julie sees herself as a facilitator of learning who engages and inspires students with her love of psychology and teaching.  She enjoys the challenge of learning new educational technologies and exploring them with her students at Anne Arundel Community College.

Fact Checking: Building Scientific Literacy

Description: Go over a set of scaffolded assignments that culminate in the “Fact-Check Assignment.” This includes workthrough style quizzes, in class group work, and a worksheet to complete. The goal is help students start to think a bit more critically about sources (in general), build familiarity with searching for peer-reviewed sources, and specifically using the tool of CRAAP.

Bio: Juli Hawk, PhD, is an assistant professor of Psychology. She delights in sharing her love of learning with others, particularly in the following areas: adverse childhood experiences, resilience, emerging adults, suicide prevention, educational psychology, and leadership. Outside of psychology, she likes to play board games, read books, and wear fun earrings.

Teaching Stereotypes Out on a Limb

Description: Introduction to Psychology predictably includes a discussion of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, usually within the chapter on Social Psychology. Students are often misinformed about the nature of stereotypes, failing to understand their origins, nature, and utility. They incorrectly assume that all stereotypes are “bad,” and they fail to distinguish stereotypes from prejudices. 

This teaching demonstration will present an in-class exercise, admittedly a risky one, that draws students in and shows the ubiquity, nature, and usefulness of stereotypes. It also demonstrates the fact that stereotypes are often (though not always) exaggerations of factual schemas. 

Bio: Jason Spiegelman is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the Community College of Baltimore County, where he has taught for over 20 years. He is a Fellow of the Eastern Psychological Association, and co-director of the Mid-Atlantic Teaching of Psychology (MATOP) conference. He has extensive experience in the creation and revision of ancillaries that accompany a wide range of psychology textbooks, and has worked for every major publisher in the United States, as well as some in Canada and the United Kingdom. He is a regular contributor at teaching conferences, and helps to represent the Society for the Teaching of Psychology at the National institute on the Teaching of Psychology. In 2022, he was honored with the Wayne Weiten Teaching Excellence Award for 2-year and Community Colleges at STP’s Annual Conference on Teaching in Pittsburgh. He lives in Pikesville with his wife, Mitzi, and their three sons.

Using Perusall to Boost Student Engagement

Description: Do you struggle with getting students to actually read the course material, and to engage with it as they do? In this demo, you’ll learn how you can use low-stakes, automatically-scored “social annotation” assignments to encourage both. Perusall is a free tool that allows students to comment on readings and videos. Unlike with a traditional discussion board, their comments are tied to specific text or timestamps, creating a dynamic conversation with you and each other.

Bio: Matt Patton is Professor of Psychology at Anne Arundel Community College. Trained as a social psychologist, he primarily teaches social psychology, personality psychology, and psychological statistics. His interests include political psychology, organizational measurement, and social dimensions of psychopathology.

WEIRD Predictions: Examining Cross-Cultural Results in Introductory Psychology

Description: In this activity, students are asked to examine research synopses from multiple cross-cultural studies. They are asked to predict whether the researchers will find evidence in support of cross-cultural differences or cross-cultural similarities. This activity helps to showcase the increasing focus on diversity in the field of psychology, while also exposing students to the breadth of research in our field. While the activity is still a work in progress, it has led to some fruitful early discussions during the opening weeks of semester.

Bio: Jarred Jenkins, Ph.D. is an associate professor of psychology at Anne Arundel Community College. Trained in animal behavior and experimental psychology, Jarred focuses most of his current efforts on teaching the introductory course. He’s particularly passionate about integrating research into the curriculum and reminding students that psychologists don’t just study humans.   

Dana S. Dunn is Professor of Psychology and Director of Academic Assessment at Moravian University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he writes about the social psychology of disability and the teaching of psychology. He is the editor of the journal Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, and (co-)author or (co-)editor of over 38 books and over 200 articles, chapters, and book reviews, including The Positive Psychology of Personal Factors: Implications for Understanding Disability and the textbook Psychology Applied to Modern Life: Human Adjustment in the 21st Century. A fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Psychological Science (APS), Dunn is former president of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (APA Division 2), Rehabilitation Psychology (APA Division 22), and the Eastern Psychological Association. He is also a 2013 recipient of the APA’s Charles L. Brewer Award for Distinguished Teaching.