3 Building Relationships, Finding a Balance

Fulfilling my role as a professor begins by establishing positive interpersonal relationships with and among my students. With this foundation, I create an open, comfortable environment in which I foster active engagement in course material using a variety of instructional methods that help increase students’ intellectual curiosity by helping them question assumptions and seek supporting evidence for such claims. However, these and other skills must be practiced.

Consequently, I provide opportunities for students to engage in experiential activities that cultivate critical thinking skills, which will benefit students’ future endeavors.

Building A Foundation

The first step toward establishing interpersonal relationships and a welcoming environment begins with sharing my enthusiasm and passion for what I do and what I teach while remaining open-minded and honest. This attitude allows students to feel comfortable voicing their opinions or asking questions when challenged by the material or task at hand. For example, students entering Statistics and Research Methods II (PSY-225) are often apprehensive, viewing the material as difficult and/or “boring”. By confronting this common sentiment, sharing their feelings and my reassurance at the outset, we establish a candor during discussions that lasts throughout the semester. The success of this approach is evident: “She is very in tune and aware to what the class is feeling”; “Lauren is super passionate about what she does … but she also seems passionate about engaging with the students to enhance our interest in the subject. She is a great listener and also a great role model.” Overall, students appreciate my efforts in building a relationship with them, saying it “… drove me to invest more deeply than I otherwise would have, and as a result I feel like I learned far more than I expected.”

The next step, especially in the classroom, involves engaging students with one another, which they do immediately. For example, we take time on Day 1 to get to know one another (e.g., discussing something that makes us unique, answering random questions from a deck of index cards that students and I have created), and we continue doing so throughout the course. As students interact with one another more regularly, I carefully choose the times I contribute to conversation, which helps sustain students’ interest in the topic, allows shy students to emerge in the discussion, and encourages students to form their own arguments and viewpoints. Students find this valuable: “Lauren is very calm and sets the class at ease. This is primarily a course focused on discussion, so a comfortable atmosphere is necessary and Dr. Hecht does a great job at getting everyone involved in discussion. …”

Outside the classroom, I regularly support students’ decision-making regarding class, career, and other life concerns. In Fall 2016, I will be the academic advisor for 31 students (3 majors; 28 undeclared)[1]. Advisees regularly take advantage of my open door policy; however, a nearly equivalent number of non-advisees will drop by my office to seek advice or simply to “catch up” after taking one of my classes or interacting at another campus activity (e.g., Majors/Minors Fair). Additionally, I regularly advise students during summer registration, where I meet individually with students and help them select suitable classes for their first semester at Gustavus. In all of these interactions, I have wonderful conversations and get to know students personally, and, in the case of summer registration or my first-term seminar (FTS) students (i.e., undeclared advisees), I welcome them to campus and to the academic community.

Question Assumptions & Seek Evidence

The value of building relationships within the classroom is immediately recognizable in my FTS course[2] on Animal Minds (FTS-100)[3], where I encounter first-semester, undeclared, college students. To promote later success in college, students begin developing their own voice and sharing their viewpoint within a discussion-based approach that is often unfamiliar to them but is, as one student said, “…an excellent method for understanding, developing, and exploring complex ideas in ways I would not be able to by myself.”

In our discussion following a viewing of Blackfish[4] – a documentary that advocates against keeping killer whales in captivity, students share their reactions to the film during discussion; they are typically compelled by the documentary’s arguments. Afterward, I ask Kim Clayton (‘13) to share her experiences working directly with animals in captive settings: zoos and aquariums. Purposefully, students only know at the outset that Kim is a biology and psychological science alumna and former advisee who is interested in the topic. She welcomes their opinions before challenging them, asking students to consider the documentary’s sources – a skill she learned in our program and continues using. Students are shocked to realize the lack of citation, especially when Kim provides another perspective while describing the rules/regulations she upheld firsthand when working with captive animals.

Through these conversations, students share their beliefs and engage in meaningful discussion, coming to understand the value of rational, intellectual debate. They have “… learned about how difficult it is to discern my own thoughts…[Lauren] allowed us to freely discuss our thoughts and to come up with our own conclusions, and also provided new ideas or different ways to think about a particular topic.” In fact, I now encounter moments where students will say, “I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t agree”, followed by their rationale. Even though students’ beliefs may not change by the end of the semester, they listen to and meaningfully consider opposing viewpoints.

Another example of students questioning assumptions and supporting arguments with evidence comes from a PsychBusters[5] assignment in General Psychology (PSY-100)6. Small groups gather evidence informing their conclusion that a myth is true, false, or plausible (i.e., the evidence is inconclusive). Their work culminates in a presentation given during the lecture related to their myth. Students indicate that the assignment “… [was] informative and helped to engage the class because students were teaching students”, and “… up-started our research abilities and how to go about researching a subject. I loved doing it because her feedback also helped me to learn what to do better on my public speaking skills, or lack there-of.”

Experiential Activities

As early as PSY-100, students complete lab activities that require engagement in scientific research, helping them understand psychology as a science[6]. For example, I recently developed a Taste Lab where students conduct and participate in a taste experiment in order to use common methodology employed by perception psychologists while experiencing both the sensations and perceptions discussed in text and in class. During this lab, students gain insights on the research process, and some have noted design flaws or limitations in their written assignments. Interestingly, several students also offered modifications to the design that I already intended to make for future courses.

These, and other, modifications will be implemented in Fall 2016 with the support of an individual mini-grant[7] that I received from Gustavus’ John S. Kendall Center for Engaged Learning[8]. The main goal is to administer a large-scale lab through Fall 2017 in order to develop two sustainable labs: one for use in large sections (PSY-100) and another for smaller, more advanced sections (PSY-240: Sensation & Perception). A recent PSY-100 student, who participated in the Taste Lab, is working in my research lab to help modify and implement this revised Taste Lab. Ideally, our efforts will bridge teaching and scholarship, leading to publication in a journal that shares teaching practices within psychology. Additionally, the full lab conducted under the grant will generate a data set which may allow my research students and me to answer interesting questions regarding taste perception, possibly leading to conference presentations and/or publication.

These experiments, whether in General Psychology or in other classes[9], are a critical step in showing students the rigor psychologists demand of one another. Regardless of whether or not they continue on in the major, students learn valuable skills. As one student said:

“… I was expecting a very boring class. However, the science behind psychology that Lauren has revealed calls to me. Because of this, I have a better perspective on all doctors in the psychological field. I have also learned a lot about how to conduct experiments. I am a BioChem major, so experiments are going to be a huge part of my education, and some may involve live participants. This class has given a lot of insight about how it feels to be in experiments, how best to conduct them, and what the best way to approach experiments is. Lauren has contributed to this learning by holding me accountable – in this class, and in others (as my advisor) – for my actions as well as supporting me to make good, healthy choices. …”

One drawback to emphasizing in-class, experiential activities is that they run the risk of taking more time than anticipated. Thus, I continually work to find a balance between conveying class information and completing these application-based exercises. By focusing on designing activities that better integrate information and application, I have significantly improved in achieving this equilibrium.

Teaching Effectiveness

In addition to the evidence provided above, other student comments[10] attest to my overall effectiveness as a teacher:

“…[In some classes] I try to retain the information because I’m going to need it to get a good grade, then I forget it once I dump it on the test, but in this class, I learned more because I wanted to and it was interesting so I retained it.”

“… [What] I learned throughout this course is how to better read research articles and also how to conduct research experiments. … I learned some other skills that will be useful in completing my major in Psychology and also useful for when I go to grad school. …”

“I just wanted to drop you a note saying a big thank you for introducing me to the world of psychology! … Your intro course sparked a fascination with human behavior, cognition, and function that inspired me to pursue the discipline.”

To continue pursuing excellence in teaching, I regularly improve my courses and teaching skills by refining ideas gained while conversing with colleagues, both individually and at faculty development events (e.g., Teachers Talking, reading groups, workshops).  I am especially excited to employ skills recently developed during a Course (Re)Design workshop that introduced me to an unfamiliar course redesign method that was incredibly useful in revising a course I will offer again in the near future (PSY-240: Sensation and Perception). Although the pursuit of teaching excellence requires a great deal of time and energy, I am constantly rewarded for these efforts, especially when seeing the positive influence it has on my students: “She [said] in the very first week of class that she puts a lot of effort into this course and therefore she expects us to put a lot of effort in. I feel like that accurately sums up what has happened … I put in a lot of effort because she puts in a lot of effort.”