To understand undergraduate perceptions of academic dishonesty and honor codes, our participants estimated the likelihood that they, their friends, and the average college student would plagiarize or cheat on tests. Undergraduates reported that the average college student was most likely to cheat, their friends would be less likely to cheat, and they themselves would be the least likely to cheat. They did not believe that an honor code would have a large effect on their cheating behaviors, but it would reduce the cheating behaviors of their friends and the average student. We discuss these results in the context of social norms research.

This article discusses an application of the Lewinian/Kolb experiential learning model in the context of undergraduate participation in the Missouri Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS) program. CAPS is designed to simulate common, everyday experiences among people living in poverty as participants take on the roles of family members working to make ends meet. The creators of CAPS emphasize that “CAPS is not a game” but “a unique tool that community action agencies are able to use to educate everyone, from policy makers to community leaders, about the day to day realities of life with a shortage of money and an abundance of stress.” The authors facilitated the CAPS program with two large groups of undergraduate students enrolled in sociology, gerontology, and psychology courses at a medium-sized private college in south-central Pennsylvania. The analysis examines the experiential learning outcomes of the students as they reflect on their participation in the simulation. Following participation in CAPS, the students demonstrated an increased awareness of the material conditions of everyday life among families living in poverty.

To understand undergraduate perceptions of academic dish onesty and honor codes, our participants estimated the likelihood that they, their friends, and the average college student would plagiarize or cheat on tests. Undergraduates reported that the average college student was most likely to cheat, their friends would be less likely to cheat, and they themselves would be the least likely to cheat. They did not believe that an honor code would have a large effect on their cheating behaviors, but it would reduce the cheating behavĩ ors of their friends and the average student. We discuss these results in the context of social norms research.

Psychologists have a responsibility to be advocates for the individuals they serve within public service settings, and there is a need to identify or develop training strategies to support these efforts. Low-income families are a subset of consumers who frequently require services within these settings yet also may face providers who are not optimally supportive. One factor that interferes with providers' ability to engage in empathic, well-informed, and effective advocacy is their underlying attributions about causes of poverty that overemphasize personal responsibility. The current studies examined whether a poverty simulation training would be sufficient to modify participants' poverty attributions. Undergraduate participants in Study 1 (N ϭ 126, Mean age ϭ 21.6, SD ϭ 5.6) were significantly more likely to emphasize external causes of poverty following the simulation. In Study 2, social service providers (N ϭ 98, Mean age ϭ 38.58, SD ϭ 11.56) reported lower internal beliefs following participation in a poverty simulation but did not shift to a predominantly external belief index. The results of these studies demonstrate that causal attributions of poverty within both student and professional samples can be modified by participation in a poverty simulation. Because these attributions have important implications for advocacy work with consumers and efforts to address poverty, the poverty simulation experience has the potential to be an effective training tool that could yield real-world impact.

Open Educational Resources (OER) remove barriers to access instructional material. In light of their increased availability and use, a body of research has emerged to examine the impact of OER on college student success. While many of these studies have broadly examined efficacy across a variety of disciplines, the current study specifically examined the impact of the type of textbook (commercial vs. OER) on course content mastery within an undergraduate sample of introductory psychology students (N ¼ 63) while controlling for instructor and student differences. Results indicated that there were no significant differences in content mastery between those students in introductory psychology courses who were assigned a traditional commercial textbook and those who were assigned an OER textbook. These results support that OER can be equally effective as traditional, commercial textbooks and have implications for course material selections that help ensure access for all students.