Abstract
In this chapter, we review the basic contents and structure of our courses in cognition and cognitive psychology as well as pedagogical approaches to teaching. Topics range from an historical overview of the areas of science that lead up to the formation of cognitive science to detailed discussions of published articles within each of the major subfields of cognition (e.g., perception, attention, short-term working memory, long-term memory, language, and decision-making). Throughout our courses, we also focus extensively on the practical applications to cognitive theory. Furthermore, we emphasize the importance of research design and data analyses and discuss how we guide our students in the practice of using theory to arrive at specific numerical predictions. In addition, we discuss our major learning objectives that we hope our students achieve in completing our courses and highlight ways that we assess student work toward these objectives. We also share some of the best practices for teaching cognition that we have developed ourselves and ones that we acquired from others. In particular, we discuss our style of teaching the course as well as examples of in-class activities and demonstrations. Finally, we share a list of resources that interested readers can review to help in the design of their courses on cognition, or in any courses, in general. This overview can serve as both a good starting point for beginning instructors and a useful resource for more experienced instructors.