The Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP; APA Div. 2) promotes excellence in the teaching and learning of psychology. As you’ve read in my earlier column, STP provides information and resources on three wikis that can help you to enhance your classes, and many free e-books that can help you both in the classroom and with your professional development. In this column, let’s explore more of STP’s resources and opportunities.
Online resources
STP offers peer-reviewed, evidence-based teaching and advising resources. Instructors share classroom activities, lab manuals, interactive assignments, writing assignments, advising aids, textbook compendiums, open educational resources, annotated bibliographies, film guides, curricular suggestions and much more. These are organized into over a dozen categories. Some are the usual subject areas such as child development, learning and memory, positive psychology and social psychology. Other categories are concerned with tools and information to help you with academic advising, ethical issues, conference hosting and setting objectives in your classes. Yet others deal with particular teaching techniques, including a collection of videos that show master teachers in action.
Need help designing a syllabus? Project Syllabus provides over 300 top-notch, peer-reviewed syllabi in nearly 40 categories. For example, there are 30 variations on syllabi just for Introductory Psychology. Other categories include more specialized courses, and there’s a collection of syllabi specifically written for various online courses. Project Syllabus also provides information about handling field placements for your students. But wait, there’s more. You’ll even find a set of best-practices-based guidelines (PDF, 9.52KB) for designing great syllabi, and a rubric (PDF, 623KB) that you can use to prepare, evaluate or improve your syllabus. In fact, we encourage you to submit your own syllabus to the project, to share with your colleagues.
Communication
Sometimes, the best help is a direct answer to your questions or providing access to things you may not know about or may not know how to find. To serve this purpose, STP maintains four discussion lists: DIV2PSYCHTEACHER for psychology teachers at all levels; DIVERSITY-TEACH, which infuses diversity and international perspectives into psychology teaching; DIV2ECP for early career teachers, and DIV2GSTA for graduate students. You can get more information about these lists and can join them if you like, on our Listserv webpage.
You can also learn a lot about our colleagues and how they teach by looking through our blog, This is How I Teach. Drawing on material from colleagues teaching psychology at many different types of institutions, it gives you a peek inside STP members’ classrooms, offices and approaches to teaching. For example, many write about their favorite activities, assignments and technology tools.
Conferences and workshops
I often learn best by working directly with others. For me, conferences and workshops are ideal venues, not only for learning new skills and improving my existing abilities, but also for networking and developing lasting professional relationships with colleagues. For this reason, STP sponsors an Annual Conference on Teaching, as well as provides workshops and programming for many other conferences.
The Annual Conference on Teaching (ACT) takes place each October, and convenes college and secondary educators for two days of keynotes, symposia, posters and demonstrations on effective teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning. In addition, if you’re interested in doing your own research in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, we offer a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Workshop at ACT. Small groups of three to four participants are paired with experienced mentors, and can consult with experts in research methods, statistical analysis and publishing. The SoTL Workshop’s goal is to help you move from whatever stage of the process you’re in, to the production of a complete, publishable manuscript. To make ACT more easily accessible to people with limited travel budgets, it’s held in a different city every year. The 2019 conference will be held in Denver, and in 2020 we’ll be convening in Pittsburgh.
STP provides a tremendous amount of programming throughout the APA annual convention: symposia, skill-building sessions, conversation hours, poster sessions, and collaborative and cross-divisional sessions. We also host a presidential address and social hour. You can see the programs for past conventions, and learn about STP programming at upcoming APA conventions at our APA programming website.
You may be interested in attending our preconference Teaching Institute at the APS annual convention. We also provide three invited speakers during the convention. For example, this year’s speakers were Nadine J. Kaslow, PhD, talking about "Translating Psychological Science for the Public," David Dunning, speaking on "False Belief and Self-Belief in a Post-Truth World" and Nora Newcomb, who spoke about "The Science of Learning: What Have We Learned?" Visit our website to find out about next year’s STP-APS Teaching Institute.
We offer a similar teaching preconference at the annual SPSP convention, featuring invited addresses, presentations and discussions aimed at sharing innovative teaching activities, and a workshop at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology. To round things out, STP offers support to several major regional teaching conferences, one of which is sure to be near you, and to international conferences that focus on the teaching of psychology, such as the APS International Conference on Psychological Science.
I invite you to learn more about STP and all of the resources we provide on our website. Membership in STP includes the journal, Teaching of Psychology, access to our Professional Development Mentoring Service, online access to the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly (thanks to a reciprocal agreement with the Society for the Psychology of Women, APA Div. 35), access to our searchable membership directory, special publications for members only, and a host of other benefits. The cost of membership is just $25 per year for faculty, and only $15 for students, and you don’t need to be a member of APA to join us. Learn more about joining STP on our website.
About the author
William S. Altman, PhD, is a professor in the psychology and human services department at SUNY Broome Community College. He earned PhD and MS degrees in educational psychology and measurement, and an MPS in communication arts from Cornell University, as well as a BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania. He studies effective teaching and learning strategies. The Society for the Teaching of Psychology honored him with the Wayne Weiten Teaching Excellence Award in 2018.
Altman currently serves as STP’s vice president for resources. He’s been a consulting editor and reviewer for Teaching of Psychology, coordinator of STP Programming for the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, co-editor for "E-xcellence in Teaching" essay series, a contributor to the Teaching of Psychology Idea Exchange and has written and edited a number of academic and non-scholarly publications. He also spent over a decade on local radio, was a professional photographer, and performed in theater and as a standup comic (ostensibly to work on classroom presentation skills, but mostly because it's fun).
He’s driven by a wide and unpredictable curiosity, an almost pathological and sometimes annoying need to solve problems of nearly any sort, and a sense that it all ought to be fun.
