Newbies! How to get your new students engaged with Psychology over the summer

I’m sure you’re at the stage where you are starting to hear how many students you are expecting in September? Hopefully it is a healthy amount without you being inundated. They will all need chairs after all!If you have time and resources I have found that it works to contact the ‘newbies’ prior to their arrival. I often send out a leaflet to them with department contacts, twitter account details, information on the text book they will be getting and a bit of summer reading too. I also set a small summer task for them to do during the holidays.

The task does not need to be to time intensive or difficult but it should stimulate their interest in the subject. The most successful one I have found is an example of a behaviour from the current news or a television programme. They then have to list as many different reasons as to why they think the person did what he/she did. Examples could be a crime or a celebrity who has hit the headlines for some reason ( trashy magazines are a great source for those!). Ask them to list as many explanations for the behaviour as possible and then pick the top three reasons. They need to justify why they think those three are the best. This provides their first introduction to AO2. Reassure them there is no right answer and ask them to bring the list to the first lesson they have with you in September.

You will be pleasantly surprised at how well they engage with the task. It also gives them a flavour of what Psychology is about.. Use it as discussion for your first lesson, and I often also prepare a second one to use after the discussion so they get used to thinking on their feet.It also gets them talking to each other.

Of course there’s the ones who ‘forget’ or ‘never received the leaflet’. I do hate labelling but it’s a pretty good way of finding out who to watch for in the month’s ahead….hopefully that’s not going to be an issue for you.... as all your students next year will be perfect! Fingers crossed eh?