Broadly, the RISE Lab utilizes principles in cognitive psychology to investigate effective teaching practices that support memory, learning, and well-being in higher education classrooms.
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Our scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research focuses on identifying and implementing evidence-based teaching practices that enhance student learning outcomes. With particular attention to high-enrollment courses such as Introduction to Psychology, we investigate pedagogical approaches that effectively scale to large student populations while maintaining educational quality.
Publications:
Cross, V. L., Alea Albada, N., Ditta, A. S., Geller, E. H., Hendley, H. S., Paquette-Smith, M., Pilegard, C., & Woods, V. E. (2025). Scaling up APA Guidelines 3.0 for large-enrollment classes. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 11(1), 113–121. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000426
Arteaga Alvarez, D., & Schill Hendley, H. (2025). Enhancing Career Readiness in Introduction to Psychology. UC Riverside Undergraduate Research Journal, 19(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.5070/RJ5.47159 Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xp709tg
Cognitive Mechanisms of Expertise
How does prior knowledge influence perception and memory? This research line examines how experts process and remember information. We primarily study expert populations such as radiologists and medical physicists, but also investigate perception and memory for complex images, like face perception.
Publications:
Schill, H. M., Gray, S. M., & Brady, T. F. (2023). Visual hindsight bias for abnormal mammograms in radiologists. Journal of Medical Imaging, 10(S1). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.10.S1.S11910
Schill, H. M., Wolfe, J. M., & Brady, T. F. (2021). Relationships between expertise and distinctiveness: Abnormal medical images lead to enhanced memory performance only in experts. Memory & Cognition, 49(6), 1067–1081. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-021-01160-7
Wolfe, J. M., Alaoui Soce, A., &Schill, H. M. (2017). How did I miss that? Developing mixed hybrid visual search as a ‘model system’ for incidental finding errors in radiology. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 2(1), 35. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-017-0072-5
Community-Engaged Learning and Climate Pedagogy
Our third research avenue explores high-impact pedagogical practices like community-engaged teaching and learning, particularly for complex topics such as climate change. We investigate how connecting material to the local community and other experiential learning opportunities enhances student memory, engagement, and the development of transferable skills.