Building on prior work, St. Olaf College and Itasca Community College are conducting a two-year project with two main objectives. The first is to help teachers integrate a set of investigative psychophysiology lab experiences with their syllabi and introductory psychology textbooks. The second is to develop a replicable national workshop model to train community college teachers to incorporate such experiences into their courses. The initial project workshop, including 10 participant teachers, introduces faculty to scientific psychophysiological research in the community college context. Based on formative evaluation of the initial workshop results, the workshop materials are revised and forty new community college teachers, representative of colleges from five regions of the country, participate in a second two-day workshop. Using the revised activities from the first workshop, the ten participants from the first workshop act as mentor-coaches for the forty new teachers. During the second year of the project all fifty community college teachers will make use of the workshop materials in their classrooms. Data on teacher and student outcomes are collected from these classrooms, as well as from matched control classes, taught by instructors who did not participate in the workshops.
In terms of broad impact, the project will develop a national workshop model for teachers to introduce psychophysiology investigative laboratory activities that should be useful not only in community colleges, but also in other higher education institutions. The workshops will assist teachers to engage their students with the scientific approach, think critically about their work, and develop competence to do scientific research. The project will lead to a new pool of researchers who will contribute to new research, and expand the research base.
