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In: 08. Memory & Cognition, Intro to Psych, Teaching Thoughts

It must have been in my first year of full-time teaching. I was sitting in the faculty break room feeling nervous about seeing my student evaluations of teaching when I heard from down the hall, “I found it!” My colleague Larry came into the break room holding a piece of paper in the air. Gamely, I asked, “What did you find?” A negative evaluation. He found a negative evaluation. One of his core teaching goals was to challenge his students to think differently. He didn’t ask students to adopt his view of the world, but he did want them to see the world from differentRead More →

Black cube

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In: Teaching Thoughts, Technology for Academics

  Like everybody else, I’ve been thinking about AI. I use Google NotebookLM to pull information from a finite set of documents. I use Perplexity to answer questions I used to ask of search engines. For example, I use macros with some of my spreadsheets. Where I used to search for code and reconfigure it for my specific situation, I can tell Perplexity (or a host of other AI tools) what I want the code to do, and it generates the code for me. Very handy. No question. When my affiliate university (New Mexico State University) offered me a free Grammarly account, I was willingRead More →

teacher giving the test results to his students

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In: Intro to Psych, Teaching Thoughts

  For my books, my wife reads every chapter I write before I send it to my editor. We’ve been together for over 25 years. I’ve had occasion to mention a little something every so often about psychology. Let’s just say that she has learned a lot of psychology. Occasionally, she will ask me some version of this: “What’s that thing called where [perfect description of that thing]?” And then I’ll name the thing, e.g., counterfactual thinking, variable ratio schedule of reinforcement, source amnesia. However, sometimes I struggle to come up with the term. I know that I know it. I’ve taught the dang conceptRead More →

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In: Intro to Psych, Principles of Social Psych, Teaching Thoughts

As we witness the proliferation of AI, faculty are returning to in-class assessments. Faculty chatter on social media and the sudden increase in blue book sales provide the supporting data (Shirky, 2025). I have been a long-time fan of a modified interteaching model (Frantz, 2019). Students would be given a list of essay questions based on the chapter to be read for the coming week. They would answer the questions and bring their answers to class. Students would then work in small groups to identify the questions that gave them the most difficulty, and that’s what I would lecture on. Students would then revise theirRead More →

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In: Intro to Psych, Principles of Social Psych, Teaching Thoughts

On the right side of this blog site is an area called Psych-Related News. Scroll down for the most recent news. In my own news feed, I scroll through a few hundred articles (and 30+ comic strips) every day. When I see an interesting article (or comic strip) that may be appropriate for one of my book chapters or for this blog, I tag it. It’s the most recent 15 of those tagged articles (or comic strips) that appear in the Psych-Related News area. If you have your own news feed reader (I use Inoreader) and would like read the Psych-Related News at your leisure,Read More →

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In: Teaching Thoughts, Technology for Academics

Not infrequently I am asked about my thoughts on AI and the future of technology more generally. Here are some thoughts. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh was 25 years old when he flew solo across the Atlantic. It took him 33.5 hours to fly The Spirit of St. Louis from New York City to Paris. When he returned to the United States, he spent a year travelling the country promoting the wonders of flight. He said that he could envision a time when as many as 15 people could fly on a plane. In 1968 and at the age of 66, he met with the ApolloRead More →

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In: Teaching Thoughts, Technology for Academics

There is a lot of confusion around copyright. What can you use? What can’t you use? How much can you use? A few years ago, I participated in an excellent Educause course on copyright hosted by Thomas Tobin (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and what I learned has been a tremendous help to me. I hope this helps you, too! (Disclaimer: I am not an intellectual property attorney. If I were an intellectual property attorney, well, you’d probably already know that.) To determine whether you can use something without violating copyright, you need to answer four questions. Keep in mind that all four answers are on aRead More →