Who’s your audience? Expanding I-O teaching to non-I-O students

Abstract

The focal article by Kath et al. (2021) presents a clear and laudable argument for why and how industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology instructors should be demonstrating best practices of teaching in the classroom. Though they mention the importance of having non-I-O students benefit from I-O classes, implicit in their body of helpful resources and advice is the assumption that instructors will be focused on teaching I-O students (or at least, psychology majors). In our response, we extend the I-O content described in the focal article beyond simply that of informing our teaching practices; instead, the content of what is taught in an I-O course can and should be presented in a way that is applicable to students from all fields and educational backgrounds. Taken a step further, we daresay that an "Introduction to I-O Psychology" course should be a foundational general studies course for all undergraduate students regardless of major. Too often, I-O instructors seem to be stuck in the idea that they are teaching future I-O graduate students, researchers, consultants, or HR professionals (Ones et al., 2017; Weathington et al., 2014). As a result, I-O content tends to be presented with such an audience in mind: diversity and inclusion is taught from the perspective of test bias and predictive validity in selection, leadership is taught from the perspective of training leaders within organizations, and teamwork is taught from the perspective of managing teams or assessing team performance. However, the reality is that the field of I-O psychology has much to offer to students who are planning to become professional musicians, medical doctors, or restaurant managers or even those who have no clue about what they want to do after graduation. The popularization of an I-O course for non-psychology students falls in line with The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology's (SIOP) strategic goals in advancing public knowledge of our field, and we argue that this is a worthy goal of any I-O instructor. Kath et al. (2021) acknowledge this in their focal article, but their recommendations remain focused on how each of the four content areas (training and development, diversity and inclusion, groups and teams, and leadership) informs best practices in teaching. Following their four-part structure, we demonstrate how each of these content areas not only informs best practices in teaching but also potentially serves as content that is applicable to any undergraduate student who enters our classroom. Training and development Whereas the focal article focuses on the application of what we know about effective training programs to teaching in the classroom (e.g., needs assessments, goal-setting, and delivery modem), the same content could be used to provide any undergraduate with the skills to succeed in their college and future careers regardless of their major. Goal setting in particular has a demonstrated We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Spreading the word: Equipping I-O students to use descriptive statistics for effective data visualization

“…As scientists, we should be striving to improve public understanding and awareness of how to use data visualization and when it can go wrong. One way this can be accomplished is to continue to broaden inclusivity in our field and cater to students from all types of educational and backgrounds (see Zhou & Ahmad, 2020) so that they can leverage I-O knowledge in their respective workplaces. In short, Murphy (2021) is correct to point out the underappreciated nature of descriptive statistics and their importance to scientific research.…”