Honor Students Serve as Peer-Teachers to Implement the Introductory Psychology Initiative

Abstract

Our department has developed a unique way to support APA’s Introductory Psychology Initiative (IPI) (Rudmann et al., 2022). Advanced students, all Psi Beta honor students, train and deliver supplemental instruction to introductory psychology students. Supplemental instruction includes lessons covering evidence-based study skills and applications of basic scientific concepts to topics of interest to students. The scientific concepts align with material presented in most introductory psychology courses (Becker-Blease et al., 2021; Stevens et al., 2016). Several forms of instructional delivery are used: In class presentations, live presentations via Zoom, or on-demand interactive web presentations using the PlayPosit platform. A comprehensive assessment plan gauges the supplemental instruction’s impact on student outcomes: Course SLOs, a pre- and post-presentation assessment battery, and longitudinal tracking of the academic progress of the introductory psychology students. In addition, our Psi Beta student presenters benefit from participating in a combined service and research project. Preliminary results indicate improved learning, but more comprehensive evaluation research is planned to overcome limitations of the current study.