Jennie Brown, Ph.D.

Teaching Philosophy

I teach because I have fun doing it; I love teaching and interacting with students and getting them excited about psychology. Teaching is a powerful way for me to have a positive influence in the world. Consequently, I have two goals in teaching. The first is to help students develop the thinking, communication, and interpersonal skills they will need to change the world. These include the ability to think analytically and logically; to make reasoned decisions and defend them; to effectively communicate their thoughts to others, particularly in writing; and to successfully work with others in group settings. My second goal is for students to critically evaluate what they learn so that they can apply psychological concepts to improve their own lives by making better decisions that keep themselves and their loved ones safer and to better understand others so that they will be more tolerant and open-minded as result.

Students learn more and have more fun when they interact with information and with each other. My job as an instructor is to design and teach courses so students can actively engage the material and their peers. I employ a combination of the more traditional lecture method and Team-Based Learning (TBL) developed by Larry Michaelsen at the University of Oklahoma (Michaelsen, Knight, & Fink, 2003). Combining these two methods gives students greater variety in the way that they learn new information, by receiving it in an interactive lecture and by working with their fellow classmates.

In TBL students are organized into permanent teams of four to six students. The course is designed around a set of behavioral objectives that require students to become active participants in their own learning. Students are held responsible for learning the foundational knowledge from reading assignments and by short quizzes given at the beginning of each unit. Some class time is spent on activities that require students to apply their knowledge, critically analyze information, and work together successfully with others on common tasks. Course grades are based on students’ individual performance, their team’s performance, and their peers’ evaluation of their performance as team members. As a result, TBL teams are effective learning teams, with very little of the social loafing and related problems that plague traditional, ad hoc student groups.

My lectures reinforce the information that students learn in their group activities. Lectures consist of interactive discussions of past and current psychological findings and issues, their implications, how they can be applied to students’ lives, as well as occasional video clips demonstrating psychological concepts and research methods.

The combination of these two methods allows me to share new findings and it allows students to use what they have learned to tackle important, provocative issues. Students clearly enjoy assignments, activities and lectures that require them to think about and discuss important issues. They also practice the analytical and communication skills they will need to tackle the big issues they will face as part of an educated citizenry.

I also greatly enjoy working with individual students on their own research ideas and encourage them to get involved in research with myself and other professors. I have worked on research individually with more than 20 undergraduate and graduate students. When students get involved in research with me, they are involved in every stage – from designing the study and submitting it to be reviewed by a human participants board to deciding which analyses to perform and writing it up.

Additionally, I have helped students formulate experiments for their own ideas for their research methods projects and senior theses, analyze their data and write up their results (and create poster presentations). Lastly, I have advised undergraduates and high school seniors who are considering careers in psychology by describing the many different areas of psychology and the types of experiences (classes and research) they will need depending on the area of psychology they would like to enter.

The trademark of an educated person is the ability and the desire to think logically, critically, and creatively, and to effectively communicate and work with others. I emphasize these skills in my teaching and interactions with students so that they can take action in the world. I also emphasize fun because these abilities are meaningless unless students want to pursue them.