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Historical Changes in Introductory Psychology Lectures, Readings, and Assessments: Lessons Learned

Psychology instructors face decisions about adopting new approaches to lectures, readings, and assessment in their courses. These choices about course structure can be both intimidating and confusing in terms of the costs and benefits for different options. As framed by anecdotal and empirical evidence from personal experience in teaching introductory psychology, this article reviews research on impactful pedagogy. The goal is to provide useful encouragement and cautionary notes on these different options. Based on 18 classes, taught over a dozen years, the authors provide concrete tips for how to navigate decision points and implement these teaching changes, as supported by student performance and course evaluation data. Though unable to make causal conclusions from this limited data, it is worthwhile to discuss the tradeoffs of choices surrounding lectures, readings, and assessments in introductory psychology.