Spreading the Good Word:
Introducing I-O in Introductory Psychology

Debra Major
Old Dominion University

Ask yourself how you discovered the field of I-O psychology. Many of us either stumbled upon it unknowingly or discovered it after some exploring. Although students have begun approaching faculty in growing numbers to find out more about the discipline, awareness of I-O is sorely lacking. About a year ago, the SIOP's Education and Training Committee (E&T), chaired by Debra Major, began to develop a means by which the field of I-O could receive greater attention from college freshmen, and perhaps even by high school students. Very few introductory psychology texts (and consequently even fewer introductory psychology instructors) cover I-O in any systematic fashion. All too often, students hear about I-O psychology for the first time when they leaf through their course catalog looking for an elective for their senior year.

Two major goals of SIOP have been to increase the visibility of I-O and to provide easier access to I-O psychologists and the services they provide. As a result, SIOP's E&T Committee created an online Instructor's Guide that provides introductory psychology instructors easy access to resources that allow them to include I-O psychology in their courses. The final product was a set of lectures, activities, and background materials that are available at the SIOP web site (ww.siop.org). Our intent in this short article is to give you some background on the Instructor's Guide and to ask for your help in spreading the word that this resource is available.

Development of the Guide

Peter Bachiochi chaired the E&T subcommittee responsible for the development of the Instructor's Guide. Subcommittee members included David Day, Kurt Kraiger, Geula Lowenberg, Joan Rentsch, and Jeff Stanton. At the start, the subcommittee faced several challenges: which topics within I-O to cover, how to cover them, how long to take, which goals to achieve. Our primary goal was to create something that would whet the appetites of new college students and perhaps even high school students. We didn't aim to provide a sweeping review of the field of I-O, but to get students to say (or at least think to themselves) "Cool." We really just wanted to pique their curiosity about the field to the extent that they might want to take another class that focused on I-O more specifically. We weren't aiming to convert (just yet).

With a general goal established, we started to discuss topics we might cover and how we might structure the materials. We had to keep in mind that the words "what a great meta-analysis!" or "but what was the selection ratio?" are never uttered by a college freshman. As a result, we decided to cover topics within I-O that would intersect with the worlds of our target audience and generate real interest (without taking a Jerry Springer approach). We picked leadership as a natural topic that students would appreciate as both interesting and relevant. Within leadership, we decided to examine gender stereotyping and Leader-Member Exchange theory. We also decided to cover training, but to cover some of the more current training topics rather than the training process itself. We focused on sexual harassment and diversity as the two topics of interest. Finally, we also decided to cover performance enhancement, again because it allowed us to take some avenues that hit close to home with college freshmen, specifically motivation and performance evaluation. Perhaps our toughest decision was not to cover the topic of selection in detail. After having taught I-O for several semesters and also discussing I-O in Introductory psychology, it had become clear to many of us on the committee that it is very difficult to make selection interesting to a college freshman.

We had some elegant matrices and other structures for our Guide, but we decided to cover our six topic areas and to focus on three key themes: (a) I-O psychologists help employers deal with employees fairly, (b) I-O psychologists help make jobs more interesting and satisfying, and (c) I-O psychologists help workers be more productive. We then decided to take a modular approach to the final structure. We created a brief 10-minute overview of I-O. This mini-module was intended to be a lead-in to any of the specific topics. Slides in PowerPoint were provided for this module, as well as each of the other six. The other modules all include similar components. There are slides to guide a 15_20 minute lecture, exercises or discussion guides to encourage student involvement, and finally supplemental readings and videotapes on the topic. As a final teaching aid, the PowerPoint slides are accompanied by detailed lecture notes that allow someone with relatively little exposure to the topic to provide colorful examples of the topics discussed on the slides.

The key behind all of our decisions was to create a guide that could be used by an instructor with relatively little exposure to the field of I-O. In addition, we wanted to cover topics that could be integrated easily into existing introductory psychology subjects. For instance, the module on leadership and gender stereotyping could be integrated into sections on cognition/thought, social psychology, or cross-cultural psychology. Each of the other modules was designed with the same cross-topic applicability in mind. As a last step to make the Guide as easily accessible as possible, the entire document was made available on the web at SIOP's web site (www.siop.org). With an eye towards continuous improvement, E&T plans to revise, update, and perhaps even add modules on a regular basis.

We Need Your Help

The work of spreading the news about this new instructor's guide is well underway. A conversation hour at the SIOP Conference yielded great ideas for further publicizing of the Guide. A session at APA cosponsored by Division 2 (Teaching of Psychology) has also occurred. A brochure outlining the contents of the Guide was also distributed at both. Now the true disciple work begins. We ask you to check out the SIOP web site (www.siop.org)  and take a look at the Guide. Encourage your graduate teaching assistants to do the same. Whether you're teaching introductory psychology or I-O for undergraduates, you're likely to find the free resources useful. More importantly, please tell your non-I-O colleagues who teach introductory psychology about the Guide. Using the materials, you could offer to provide a guest lecture on I-O, or better yet, ask them to try it themselves.

SIOP has taken this first step to make it easier to teach about I-O when we can really make a difference: when students are first exposed to psychology. Given the number of college freshman who take introductory psychology each year, it may only be a matter of time before I-O is a "household name."

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