As a teacher of psychology, I believe that it is my duty to encourage students to take an active approach to their learning. My belief in active learning stems from my view that students choose to pursue a college education, and in doing so, choose what they wish to study. For this reason, I feel that students need to take responsibility for their education. As an instructor, it is my role to teach the key concepts in psychology, to clarify these concepts by providing examples, to highlight important issues, and to ensure that my students are informed. My students, in return, are expected to put effort into mastering the material in my class/lab. My belief is that upon entering the classroom, I form a contract with my students, which indicates that I will guide their instruction but that I also expect that in return, they will take an active approach in their learning by working on becoming independent, critical thinkers.

My primary goal as an instructor of Research Methods is to guide my students into becoming good consumers and producers of research. To do so, I teach my students about the various sampling procedures and research designs used in psychological inquiry as well as their advantages and disadvantages. I also demonstrate how to use the relevant databases to find articles related to a research topic they are interested in. I then help them integrate these articles with their own ideas so that they can develop a rationale for their own research study. I also elaborate on how, as psychologists, we use the scientific method as a tool for discovery. My students are then expected to design original experiments and analyze data. Finally, I help my students communicate what they have learned in APA-style paper or poster format.

To this end, my course assignments and tests are geared toward aiding students in becoming consumers and producers of research. For example, one assignment teaches students to extract relevant information from research articles and summarize this information in lay terms. Another assignment uses popular media such as magazines and television shows to bring key concepts to life and to show how the knowledge they are acquiring in the classroom applies in the real world. I find that by using this technique, students are engaged in the learning process. This, in turn, motivates them to think critically and helps them apply the concepts they are learning. Although most of my teaching experience has been in Research Methods, I apply the same principles to any course I teach. My goal for my students is to teach them how to think critically, to master the material relevant to the course, and apply the material I am teaching.

In the research lab, I continue to encourage my undergraduate research assistants to ask the questions that interest them to individualize their own learning experiences. My ideal is that they see how what they learn in courses comes alive in the lab. I try to spend extra time so that they understand the rigor of the study at hand, master the theory, and learn to interpret relevant analyses. I believe that the time spent one-on-one or in small groups enhances their undergraduate education.