UTOPSS Conference

Presenter

Dr. R. Eric Landrum (Boise State University)

About the Presenter

R. Eric Landrum is a Professor in the Department of Psychological Science at Boise State University, receiving his PhD in cognitive psychology from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. He is a research generalist, broadly addressing improving teaching and learning, including skills assessment, improving help-seeking behavior, working to understand postbaccalaureate student success such as entering the psychology workforce, effective graduate school applications, and more.

Eric has 450+ presentations, more than 25 books/textbooks, and has published 95 peer-reviewed journal articles in his career. He has collaborated with 325+ research assistants and taught 16,000+ students over 30 years at Boise State. With the 2015 launch of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology journal, he served as inaugural co-editor until 2020. He is a member of APA, a fellow of Division One (General Psychology) and Division Two (Society for the Teaching of Psychology/STP), and served as STP Secretary (2009-2011) and STP President (2014). During 2016-2017, Eric was President of the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association, and from 2017-2018, he served as President of Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology. In August 2019, he received the American Psychological Foundation’s Charles L. Brewer Distinguished Teaching of Psychology Award, arguably the highest award for psychology teachers in America. In April 2024, Eric was named a Distinguished Professor at Boise State, the highest award for tenured faculty at the university.

Teaching Skills in Introductory Psychology: The Necessity for Multiple Crosswalks

With the newly minted APA TOPSS National Standards, AP Psychology curriculum revisions, and the APA Introductory Psychology Initiative recommendations, psychology teachers are flooded with advice and recommendations. How do we reconcile these expectations and help students achieve meaningful, measurable outcomes in our courses? Two approaches are demonstrated during this session. First, developing crosswalks between these national efforts may help simplify the multiple “asks” of teaching the introductory psychology course. Second, I will demonstrate skills-based assignments used in large courses (75-150 students), sharing assignment instructions and grading rubrics.

Presenter

Dr. David Rockwood 

About the Presenter

Dr. David Rockwood began teaching high school psychology in 2003 and began attending UTOPSS in 2007. He taught high school psychology for 14 years, including intro, AP, sport psych, and concurrent enrollment psychology. He also taught philosophy, Spanish, and world religions. In addition, he has been an adjunct instructor at UVU, BYU-Idaho, and SUU for psychology courses and education courses from 2008 to the present. David earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology teaching with a minor in Spanish teaching from BYU in 2003, a master’s degree in educational psychology (the science of teaching and learning) from the University of Utah in 2008, and a doctorate degree in educational leadership and policy from the U in 2018. He wrote and published the first sport psychology textbook for high school students and pioneered the teaching of sport psych in high schools across the country. He has also published peer-reviewed academic articles in the field of leadership studies and presented on teaching topics at conferences and trainings across the country. After teaching in the classroom, David served as a school administrator for six years. He is currently in his second year as the director of data and assessment for the Nebo School District where he is equal parts psychometrician, data scientist, communicator, data coach, leader, and data detective.

The Learning Formula: How Learning Happens

How does learning happen? As teachers of psychology, we are to have expertise in two overlapping areas: the field of psychological science and the field of educational theory and pedagogy. Thankfully, psychology has been giving education its marching orders for over a century. So, we stand at the intersection of both. Of all people, we should be our schools’ leading experts on the science of how learning happens. In this session, Dr. Rockwood will guide you through a learning model that incorporates the major breakthroughs from the science of learning into one simple formula: the learning formula. It’s basically a master’s degree worth of research distilled down into 1 hour.