As you may recall from earlier weeks, not all students will come into your course ready and excited to learn. There may be times when you teach a required course for non-majors who may not understand nor appreciate the need for a psychology course. How can you help students relate the course material to their own lives? Are there activities that would help you bridge the gap between their lives and the material?

In addition, you might encounter students who are working through personal circumstances or issues that influenced their interest in psychology and affect how they respond to the course material. How could you accommodate and reduce the stress of students with real or imagined psychological issues?

For this Discussion, review and study this week’s Learning Resources and the Key Elements of Effective Course Design media piece as well as the Stallman article from Week 1. Then consider what you believe are the most important elements in designing an introductory psychology course. Finally, think about how these elements relate to the students you might encounter in psychology courses (e.g., beginning college students both psychology majors and non-psychology majors, those who have experiences they wish to explore from a psychological perspective, those at risk for elevated mental distress, those experiencing physical illness, and those who believe they have the problems studied in a psychology class).

With these thoughts in mind:

Post by Day 4 a brief description of three key elements in course design from among those identified in this week’s Learning Resources, and explain why they are important. Then relate the elements you identified to the design of an introductory psychology course. Finally, explain one challenge you might encounter when designing an introductory psychology course for psychology majors and a different challenge you might encounter when designing an introductory psychology course for non-psychology majors.

Be sure to support your post with specific references to the Learning Resources. If you are using additional articles, be sure to provide full, APA-formatted citations for your references.