From ‘Psychology 101’ to ‘Understanding People and Behaviour’: Blending introductory psychology to case-based approaches to create an authentic applied psychology in context learning experience

The teaching of first year psychology has been heavily critiqued in three ways, namely; ineffective at reducing widely held misconceptions about psychology; not aiding retention of psychological knowledge long term; and not inspiring students or showing the connected nature of psychology sub-disciplines due to norms of teaching through a textbook from discipline history through a sequence of unconnected topics. Despite such critiques, it is argued students in psychology require foundational knowledge in order to progress through their course. In Australia introductory psychology is commonly taught chapter by chapter through an introductory textbook with little attention given to applying psychological research to understand real world problems or applying scientific theory to examine solutions. In 2018, “Understanding People and Behaviour” was developed and represents a new concept to teaching first-year psychology. The challenge in development was to create a unit delivering vital foundational psychological knowledge in a stimulating manner. In the design we blended the teaching of foundational knowledge to case-based learning (CBL) approaches. Further, this unit would be delivered to a multidisciplinary cohort of students meaning the content needed to be applicable and enjoyable for psychology and non-psychology students. We envisioned this psychology in context unit to be stimulating, engaging, and demonstrate the ability to dispel widely held misconceptions about psychology. In this presentation we discuss the unit design, case studies, case study assessments, as well as some of the preliminary findings from the unit evaluation that looked at whether CBL approaches in first-year can impact student engagement, enthusiasm and learning.