Foundational Scientific Reasoning

Dear Colleagues,

Please join us this Friday, April 21st at 3 pm. in the Hatfield Room for our ninth Faculty Colloquium of this semester. Treats will be provided.

Courtney Stevens and Melissa Witkow, Associate Professors of Psychology,
 

Title:  Promoting foundational scientific reasoning skills in Introductory Psychology: Findings from an NSF-IUSE curriculum grant

In this talk, we will describe our collaborative work over the past 5 years to develop and assess new materials to improve the training of scientific reasoning skills in introductory psychology.  This work was initially inspired by changes to the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) to include psychology-focused questions. These questions highlighted the potential for introductory psychology to move beyond traditional content coverage to include stronger training of scientific reasoning skills, including data interpretation and research design. Our talk will cover a series of studies, moving from initial efforts in our own classes at Willamette to broader efforts involving other instructors at WU, as well as Chemeketa Community College and Oregon State University. The talk will highlight the course modules and assessment results, as well our design process. This work was funded by a Keck grant (iScience; PIs: Mark Stewart and Stas Stavrianeas) and an NSF-IUSE grant (PIs: Courtney Stevens, Melissa Witkow, and Kathy Becker-Blease).

Students are welcome.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Doreen Simonsen and Daniel Rouslin
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators