MEASURING SKILLS

No matter what the destination, our students are ultimately successful if they are able to make the college-to-career transition.

Knowledge and skills are both necessary and sufficient for success in the world.  I tend to focus of the development and measurement of skills, because I believe that when we can accurately measure the skills that our students possess, students are able to tell their story better after graduation, and faculty members (and departments) can tell their success stories with more veracity to external constituencies, including parents, legislators, Idaho citizens, and accreditation agencies.

ESSENCE OF ASSESSMENT

The essence of assessment is the ability to use current data to gain insights for faculty and departments to improve in the future.

I may have a different definition of assessment compared to the rest of the world.  For me, grading is about providing information to students so that they can improve their future performance. However, for me, assessment is about gathering information/data about my teaching so that I can improve my own performance.  Departments can utilize program learning outcome data to make program-wide improvements as well. When carefully collected, grade data with rubrics can provide assessment data with opportunities for continuous improvement.

SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING

I believe that the primary role of a college teacher is no longer content delivery, but to serve as a designer of student experiences.

The study of teaching and learning from an academic, scholarly perspective has yielded important information about active learning and how to design classroom experiences so that students can retain information better and attain and hone the requisite skills for success.  I am proud to have served as one of the inaugural co-editors, along with Regan A. R. Gurung of Oregon State University, of the APA journal Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology.

Fall 2023 semester

PSYC101 Introduction to Psychology (3-0-3) (F,S,SU) (FS). Investigation of mental processes and behavior through the lens of the scientific method. This survey course draws from topics within the American Psychological Association's five pillars of psychology: Pillar 1 Biological (Neuroscience, Sensation, Consciousness, Motivation); Pillar 2 Cognitive (Cognition, Memory, Perception); Pillar 3 Development (Learning, Life Span Development, Language); Pillar 4 Social and Personality (Social, Personality, Intelligence, Emotion, Multicultural, Gender); and Pillar 5 Mental and Physical Health (Abnormal, Health, Therapies).