This comprehensive, ready-to-adopt Introduction to Psychology course provides thorough coverage of all topics covered in a typical introductory course, including biological psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, social and personality psychology, and mental and physical health.

The course is organized around the recently recommended model from the American Psychological Association, which encompasses the five psychological domains, or pillars: biological psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, social and personality psychology, and mental and physical health psychology (see “Strengthening Introductory Psychology: A New Model for Teaching the Introductory Course”).

With the OpenStax Psychology textbook as a foundation, this contains other material curated by Lumen Learning and created by Patrick Carroll of the University of Texas at Austin. Other significant contributions were made by Jessica Traylor (Gordon State College).

The course enriches learning with frequent application, curated videos, selected NOBA content, and interactive learning activities to foster practical skills. Engaging “Psychology in Real Life” features use recent research to help students think critically about experimental design.

Course Improvements

We believe in making continual improvements to the course in order to enhance and facilitate student learning. This newest version of the course includes additional Psych in Real Life pages, which provide learners with the opportunity to think deeply about relevant psychological research. These 2019 additions include:

• Psych in Real Life: Brain Imaging and Messy Science
  • Dive into a psychological research article (McCabe and Castel) and learn more about the replication crisis
• Psych in Real Life: Consciousness and Blindsight
  • Describe unconscious perception as it relates to blindsight
• Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness
  • Understand decision-making processes and choice blindness, based on research done by Johannson and Hall
• Psych in Real Life: Love and Pain
  • Look at two studies (Sarah Master and Jarred Younger) related to romantic love and the experience of pain
• Psych in Real Life: Blirtatiousness, Questionnaires, and Validity
  • Understand how personality tests are created, then examine how validity is measured
• Psych in Real Life: Growth Mindsets
  • Dive into Dweck’s research on growth mindsets
• Psych in Real Life: Reconsolidation
  • Understand how memory reconsolidation can be used as a therapy technique
• Psych in Real Life: Habits
  • Look at research on habitual behavior and popcorn eating by Wendy Wood and David Neal

In addition to these new pages, there are also several new assignments options. We have also used data to find areas in the course in need of further clarification or interactives, such as this interactive about reliability and validity.

Additional interactives, added in Summer 2020, include the following:

• States of Consciousness – Drugs
• Memory – Forgetting
• Learning – Classical conditioning
• Learning – Operant conditioning
• Lifespan Development – Signs of aging
• Motivation and Emotion – Hunger
• Motivation and Emotion – Emotion and catching liars
• Psychological Disorders – Review of Psych Disorders
• Therapy and Treatment – Mystery Therapist:

Psych in Real Life

These new additions complement the interactives and other “Psych in Real Life” features and interactives previously included in the course:

• Psych in Real Life: Illusions. Apply the Ebbinghaus illusion to Jessica Witt’s research about the perceived size of golf ball holes while putting
• Psych in Real Life: Latent Learning. Work through each of the trials in Edward Tolman’s experiment to see evidence of latent learning
• Psych in Real Life: The Bobo Doll Experiment. Step through the research process of Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment
• Psych in Real Life: Moral Reasoning. Watch videos and think deeply about Hamlin and Winn’s research on moral development in infants, specifically in the puppet experiments with givers and takers
• Psych in Real Life: Behavior Therapy. Work through a treatment plan for a fictional patient who is afraid of public speaking

Additional Interactives

• Psychological Foundations – Biopsychology or Evolutionary Psychology?
• Biopsychology – Brain Review
• Psychological Foundations – Other Psych Subfields
• Psychological Research  Experiments

Contributors

This course was developed by Lumen Learning with significant contributions by:

Primary Content Authors
Patrick Carroll, University of Texas at Austin
Jessica Traylor, Gordon State College

Acknowledgements
This book has benefited from the contributions of many people, including Elann Allison, Grace Adegoke, Andrew Alamo, Stephen Alexander, Madison Barnett, Emmanuelle Benard, Manny Benard, Emily Bettridge, Julia Bisnett, Peter Blackburn, Mike Bonham, Will Bradford, Ethan Bramhall, Tito Breedlove, Ian Bronstein, Rachael Brown, Bryannon Burnham, Linda Butts, Zachary R. Campbell, Alisha Cassani, Daphny Chen, Caeli Cheow, Savannah Cheshire, Hailey Cooke, Adrianna Cluff, Amy Corry, Sarah Coulson, Karissa Cox, Billy Davis, Maren Daines, Kayla Dixon, Charlie Dornbach, Arlene Eck, Troy Edwards, Clark Elieson, Justin Engbrecht, Stacie Fowle, Elizabeth Gaudino-Goering, Katie Gibson, Amanda Gill, David Ginsburg, Cynthia Golledge, Marissa Green, Karl Gunston, Jake Hamilton, Kevyn Handojo, Randolph Harrison, Kayden Hawkins, Ammon Heinzen, Heidi Henderson, Narel Hernandez, Timothy Heyward, Jasmine Holder, Alex Hunter, Michelle Kelley, Dedra Kenney, Scott King, Tyler King, Joy Kinser, Mikki Krause, Maya Landgraf, William James Lane, Jacob Johnson, Katalin Lax-Wright, Trish LeBaron, Adara Lee, Julianna Lizcano, Kirstin Ruth Lovely, Xi Liu, Sameerah McQueen, Kristy Madsen, Danae Mahecic, Mariana Manriquez, Forbes March, Josh Marshall, Stefani Martinez, Donna Martini, Jared McCormick, Jonathan McKinney, Maziwa Milca, Tori Mize, Nina Moyal, Christopher Mullin, Mika Munger, Jessica Oram, Trillium Ost, Michael Panasyuk, Emily Parks, Michael Patterson, Cecelia Peden, Madelin Pepper, Luke Phillips, Anakin Purser, Tom Rawle, Blake Rawlings, Ethan Rico, Elizabeth Joi Rifkin, Susana Rivera, Ida Roberson, Katrina Rosner, Grace Rountree, Leshan Ruan, Julia Savage, Matthew Scarbrough, Naomi Scarpari, Celia Scott, Erica Seawright, Jaiya Seibert, Shayla Selon, Frank Shen, Shonda Shondakaye, Antonio Silva, Katie Soh, Anthony St. Lawrence, Liz Stika, Shelby Stokich, Alison Suttles, Laura Jean Stypka, Ann Thodos, Bailey Thomas, Camille Thompson, Sarah Thompson, Sandy Thomson, Catherine Turk, Nick Ungson, Paul Vargas Jr, Samantha Wendell, Josh Wessler, Ellen Williams, Eleanor Winston, Bridget Wyall, Troy Edwards, Mayrim Vega, and Ying Zhang.

About Lumen

Lumen Learning courseware is based on open educational resources (OER). When we can find well-designed, effective OER that are appropriately licensed, we use them in our courseware. When we can’t find pre-existing OER, we create original content and license it as OER (under a Creative Commons Attribution license).

Lumen’s authoring process doesn’t end when our courseware is released. Our choice to adopt open educational resources means that we have the copyright permissions necessary to engage in continuous improvement of our learning content. Consequently, our courses are continually being revised and updated. Errata reported for our courseware are fixed in a matter of days, as opposed to the traditional model in which errors persist until the next “edition” is printed (often a year or more). Students and faculty can suggest improvements to our courses directly from within the courseware as they use it. And we conduct regular analyses to determine where students are struggling the most in our courseware, and make improvements that specifically target these areas.

Given our unique approach, our list of authors and other contributors may look different than the lists you are used to seeing. We provide both a list of the primary content authors (the people involved in the initial creation of the course) and a list of everyone who has contributed suggestions and other improvements to the course since it was first released. We invite you to join us as we create courseware that supports student learning more effectively each semester.

If you’d like to connect with us to learn more about adopting this course, please Contact Us.

You can also make an appointment for OER Office Hours to connect virtually with a live Lumen expert about any question you may have.