Struggling to Think: Reframing the Point of Introductory Psychology to Demand Curiosity, Creativity, and Thinking from My Students

After a decade of teaching introductory psychology, I radically redesigned my freshman course to refocus what I believed the point of this class was: to teach students how to think scientifically. I designed my class to focus on what I felt were deficits in my incoming freshman: curiosity, a willingness to struggle with ambiguity, the ability to design studies that answer questions, and a willingness and ability to think creatively. This led me to abandon tests, memorization, and everything else that was introductory psychology.

I present this session partially to open up dialogue about how education can meet the deficits in often underprepared college freshmen. The audience will be presented with an alternative way to teach psychology. The audience will learn about mastery, computer-adaptive quizzing. The audience will understand the successes and challenges (and even failures) of my approach. The audience will have time to engage in whether thinking of introductory classes as building skills rather than memorizing content might be a more useful approach.