Having an Impact: Supporting Your Students’ Skills for Success in Introductory Psychology

As teachers, we know that our students face many challenges that make it difficult for them to succeed in school, and even more so during a pandemic. Our students’ academic challenges are often most obvious, for example underdeveloped skills in reading and critical thinking. However, students come from diverse backgrounds and have varying experiences, for example with stress, mental health, self-efficacy, collaboration, self-regulation, and time-management, all of which indirectly affect their academic success. Student success courses can help students develop many skills they need to be successful in college and beyond. However, not all institutions offer such a course, and even when they do, not all students enroll in it. Importantly, many of the skills that are developed in student success courses align well with content taught in introductory psychology. And because more than a million students take introductory psychology each year, we have a unique opportunity to help many students learn about psychology while also developing skills that will help them succeed. Accordingly, the goals of this interactive workshop are to: 1. Describe six strategies we can teach our students that will have a broad positive IMPACT on their success: Improving, Monitoring, Practicing, Attending, Connecting, and Thinking Deeply, 2. Discuss how we can create pedagogical approaches in our introductory psychology classes to help our students learn and practice these IMPACT strategies, and 3. Explain how these IMPACT strategies align with the recommendations from the APA Introductory Psychology Initiative. By the end of the workshop, teachers will come away with concrete ideas for creating and implementing new pedagogies in their introductory psychology classes that will help their students succeed educationally, in their chosen professions, and to flourish personally.