Dr. Todd Eller: How to Help a Student Think Better

I was teaching a psychology class to undergraduate medical tech students who also were working eight hours a day in the hospital. I found these students to be quite dedicated, smart and a joy to teach. The students wanted to discuss the latest presidential election. One student claimed that millions of illegal immigrants voted in the election through voter fraud. Other students disagreed. I asked the student who believed that many illegal immigrants voted: Where did you get that information? He replied: Statistics. I asked him: What statistics? He replied: Just statistics. I then asked the students who disagreed with him: Why do you do you disagree with him? One student said: The statistics say differently. I said: What statistics? The student said: I don’t know. I then replied to the students as a group and said the following:

First of all, I want to thank you for being so mature about a very emotional and controversial topic. As we have discussed, politics can be an extremely emotional subject and sometimes people get angry with each other and therefore an intelligent conversation ceases to exist. Your calm approach to the subject is encouraging. It does seem that we have a disagreement here. Some of you believe that millions of illegal immigrants did not vote in the last presidential election. One of you believes that it did happen. I asked all of you where you’re getting your facts. You mentioned “statistics.” However, none of you seem to be able to tell me where the statistics come from. A great deal of us get information from TV commentators and social media. I challenge all of you to think about one thing. Don’t let people lie to you. We’ve already discussed how to attempt to get some valid information about certain subjects such as journal articles, US government agencies, accredited universities and respected international institutions like the World Health Organization. So, I want us to go ahead and engage in an exercise right now. I want you to go ahead and take out your cell phones or computers, and find me some valid and empirical evidence on the following question: Did millions of illegal immigrants vote in the last presidential election?

Now, I am not going to tell you what the students discovered. What I can tell you is that I found that several students actually changed their facial expression and their overall demeanor when I said: Don’t let people lie to you. The Student Success Calculator also provides an explanation of the references of each category. I find that students look at these references and have what many call an “aha moment.” Because the references specifically pertain to their potential increase in success, the students actually see the value of research and journal articles. Many students have expressed to me that they find certain self-help gurus and psychologists to be, for lack of a better term, “full of shit.” This is why I always try to provide my students with empirical evidence as to why I’m teaching them the subjects, principles and ideas that I present. If you take a few days to create your own student calculator, and backup your categories with specific pieces of evidence as to the validity of these principles, I guarantee you that your students will be impressed and more engaged. The following is an article that I wrote for California International University in the student newspaper. It gives a very specific example of the calculator that once again you are more than welcome to use. It is my hope that you will create your own.