Intro Psych Course Empowers Students with Digital Skills
Introduction to Psychology is among the most popular college-level courses taken at Wesleyan and across the country. The American Psychological Association estimates that 1.2 to 1.6 million undergraduate students take a version of this course each year.
Recognizing the reach of introductory psychology and its potential to engage a diverse mix of students, Walter Crowell University Professor of Social Sciences Lisa Dierker set out to integrate digital skills into the course experience. Diverse students in these classes—especially women and those from groups underrepresented in STEM—often gravitate toward the social sciences, creating an ideal opportunity to broaden participation in digital learning, she said.
Through the Digital Intro initiative, Dierker is redesigning her curriculum to make this foundational psychology course more active, creative, and focused on building skills. The initiative emphasizes project-based experiences that help students develop digital fluency while exploring core psychological concepts. In her PSYC 105: Foundations of Contemporary Psychology class, students learn through digital storytelling, data visualization, programming, and science communication projects. The work is supported by a nearly $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
“The goal is to transform large general education courses into spaces where students not only learn about psychology but also gain tools that make them confident creators in a digital world,” said Dierker. She noted that many students are hesitant to enroll in technology-focused courses and that introductory psychology offers an accessible path for building these skills early in college. “Instead of expecting students to seek out technical or digitally focused courses on their own, we’re meeting them where they already are,” she said.
To bring this idea to life, she designed a sequence of hands-on projects and invited guest experts who demonstrate how digital skills connect to real-world problems. Last spring, for example, students created science communication posters about mental disorders, then met one-on-one with graphic designer and Wesleyan alumna Heather Corcoran ’92 to refine their visual design and messaging. In another unit, students visited the Patricelli ’92 Theater for a lighting design workshop with Chelsie McPhilimy, assistant professor of the practice in dance, to explore how perception and sensory experience shape audience understanding.
“I want these projects to wake students up, to spark curiosity and a sense of capability,” Dierker said. “When they realize they can learn a new digital skill quickly and apply it meaningfully, that changes how they see themselves as learners.” Another goal of the course is to have students begin considering their future in the workforce, which often requires digital and technical skills. In the first week of the class, Dierker brought in Sharon Belden Castonguay, executive director of the Gordon Career Center (GCC), to talk about the GCC as a resource. Then Dierker guided students through a Python script, teaching them how to scrape the web for job postings aligned with their interests, an exercise that is often their first hands-on experience with editing and running code. Students are also given time to build personal portfolios through OpenLab—a project-based learning platform Dierker created through the NSF grant.
Dierker has taught this course on four occasions—each in different permutations—and will teach it again in the spring semester. She continues to refine the curriculum based on student feedback and new opportunities for collaboration. Future plans include projects that apply psychological principles to everyday learning, such as partnering with a dog trainer to practice the principles of operant conditioning, a learning method where behavior is modified by its consequences. This initiative is still in its early stages, but once it's complete, she hopes to turn the curriculum into a model for other Introduction to Psychology courses around the country.
“The future of education, in my mind, is not about the teacher as chief, cook, and bottle washer,” Dierker said. “It’s about creating empowering structures that let students explore, make discoveries, and take genuine ownership of their learning.”
