Foundations of Contemporary Psychology (PSYC105) is undoubtedly one of the most popular classes at the University. As of Fall 2021, Wesleyan is home to 266 psychology majors, each of whom has taken this introductory course or placed out of it through an advanced placement credit. The class covers a wide range of topics, including emotion, behavior, sensation, and perception.

For the past several academic years, PSYC105 has been taught as a large lecture-based course with regular exams, quizzes, and credit for participation in psychology studies conducted by department professors. This semester, however, the course looks a little different. With three separate sections, the course is now taught by three different professors: Professor of Psychology Lisa Dierker, David Scott Williams Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Chris Bell, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Damon Tomlin. Though the professors offer the same material as the traditional introductory class, each professor takes a different approach to the course.

“The change in PSYC105 format initially was made as adjustments for sabbaticals and other course commitments,” Psychology Department Chair Jill Morawski wrote in an email to The Argus. “However, that provided an opportunity for faculty to introduce other course formats and structures.”

Personally, I’ve always been very interested in the PSYC105 class, and I am taking Professor Dierker’s section of the course this semester.

Dierker teaches a creative, project-based PSYC105 class where students pace themselves through the work. Dierker explained that the course revolves around five main themes, each of which have their own projects associated with them: investigate for insight, advocate for influence, teach to learn, design for change, and make learning stick. Additionally, the course invites students to work with different software, such as Adobe, iMovie, and Pexels, to feel more comfortable using various technologies, which are increasingly relevant in this day and age.

At the beginning of each new project, the students watch a 30-minute lecture. The lecture introduces them to the material they’ll be focusing on in addition to the project they’ll be doing. Then, students are free to work by themselves or with their table group for the rest of class. The open-ended structure gives students the independence to manage their time while providing the opportunity to put their own spin on each of their projects. 

Dierker designed the curriculum in collaboration with ten students.

“I don’t think [the course] is something that can be designed behind closed doors,” Dierker said. “It’s designed through classroom interactions and an ongoing conversation.”

When asked about the process of collaborating with the students and crafting the course together, Dierker explained that it was important for everyone to feel enthusiastic about the material.

“My process boils down to, ‘If it isn’t going to get me out of the bed in the morning and excited about the work, how am I going to expect it to get my students out of the bed in the morning?’” Dieker said.

As someone in Dierker’s section, I’ve really enjoyed how she relates every single project to our lives. For example, while studying different learning theories, we were asked to think of a transformational learning experience in our lives, and then link it to the one or multiple learning theories. This not only made me think about how I learn, but also how prevalent psychology is in our lives and in ways that we may not realize.

Bell teaches the PSYC105 material in a more traditional manner. His class strives to explain various psychological phenomena to the students by analyzing three main frameworks: evolutionary psychology, cultural-historical psychology, and critical psychology. Bell spoke about thinking of psychology as a human science rather than a natural science.

“[By] approaching psychology as a human science, you’re no longer focused on the dynamics of cause and effect, you’re more focused on personal experience, how a person is experiencing their particular perspective,” Bell said.

One of Bell’s students, Mika Foguel ’25, said she particularly enjoys the evolutionary psychology aspect of the course.

“I personally like evolutionary psychology the most and I think we talk about that quite a bit, it makes what we’re learning easier to understand when we look at where these principles are coming from,” Foguel said.

Therefore, rather than using a project-based approach, Bell focuses on analyzing articles that study aspects of psychology through various theories, equipping students to approach a topic within psychology from multiple viewpoints.

Every Friday in Bell’s class, a group gives a presentation on an article that they have analyzed together. Foguel said she has appreciated this aspect of the course.

“I like [that] it gives you a way to learn more about psychology and to teach the class” Foguel said.

Foguel also remarked that giving these presentations allows students to engage with the material in a deeper way.

Bell explained that thinking about psychology from a human perspective can help students connect to the material in meaningful ways.

“I hope that students come away with a greater appreciation of how their own experiences influence their perception,” Bell said.

Dierker echoed Bell’s sentiments, emphasizing her excitement about how her students come from different backgrounds and carry their own unique experiences with them.

“You can teach the content you’re interested in teaching or need to teach in a way that capitalizes on what students already have, already know, what they’re interested in,” Dierker said. “I believe that has [the] potential to create enduring learning situations.”

The third professor teaching PSYC105, Tomlin, takes a neurobiology and data-collection approach to the curriculum. One of his main goals is addressing and disproving one of the main misconceptions of the mind.

“There’s a common idea that the mind is mysterious and nonphysical, and it has nothing to do with the body or the brain,” Tomlin said.

Ana Ziebarth ’25, a student in Tomlin’s class, appreciates this style.

“For different units, we’ll connect it back to the brain and what parts of the brain each function is for and I think that’s interesting because you start to understand why we think the way we do, at least from a biology perspective,” Ziebarth said.

Additionally, Tomlin spoke about how looking at psychology from a hard-science perspective allows him to show the students concrete evidence for various observations within psychology. For example, when studying the differences between right and wrong, which is normally very qualitative, Tomlin uses quantitative data.

Tomlin requires the students to fill out surveys and later shows the data to the class. The results not only reflect critical findings in the field of psychology, but also how the theories proposed decades ago still apply to life today.

“This is not some abstract event in the past, it’s their data,” Tomlin said.

By studying their own data, students can better grasp how psychology influences their day-to-day lives and relate more to the material being taught.

“Our data puts into perspective the terms that we’ve learned,” Ziebarth said. “You could just say ‘this happens’ or ‘people tend to think this way’ but when he actually shows us our data, it’s like ‘I didn’t realize I thought that way too.’ It makes you more involved, like ‘oh yeah! I guess I do that too!’” 

While these three modes of PSYC105 may seem very different from one other, they have plenty of commonalities. All of the professors emphasized that the smaller sections of the class (roughly 40 students per section rather than 110 students) provide opportunities for students to interact with their peers, and use each other as resources.

This setup of PSYC105 gave students more flexibility, allowing them to choose the lens through which they prefer to approach the material. Next semester, PSYC105 will return to the big lecture-based class in preparation for the self-study that the psychology department will be doing next year. Then, the department will design the curriculum for the 2022–2023 academic year, potentially building on the foundation that the current three teaching models of PSYC105 have established.

Sabrina Ladiwala can be reached at sladiwala@wesleyan.edu.