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Psychology 201 Web Resources (and two innovations) Survey from the last midterm
Charles Slem Psychology and Human Development |
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Abstract
In order to monitor the use and effectiveness of the Psy 201 web resources, a number of questions concerning the web resources have been routinely added to the end of the third examination for the course. In addition to the convenience of having almost all students available for testing, the end of the last midterm was selected because it represented a point in time when almost all the course requirements had been completed. Psychology 201 has been redesigned to take advantage of the multimedia capabilities of the large lecture hall in Business 213. In addition to having text and lecture resources available on a Cal Poly server, text and lecture web resources have been integrated into the classroom presentation format. The lecture outline on the web resources is the outline that is projected on the screen in lieu of the overhead transparencies. The course uses many brief video clips (average about 3 minutes in length) which become available to students through the web resources for review after the lecture has been given. Note aides describing the main points of the video clips are also made available after the lecture and integrated into the lecture web outline for further review. The text book component includes chapter outlines, concept synopses, graphs and figures, definitions of key terms, glossary, links to related concepts in other chapters, sample test questions with links back to the appropriate text material, internet sites that pertained to specific topics, access points to web based tutorials, and additional commentary. Students could seamlessly navigate from the instructor developed lecture resources to the supporting textbook resources. A particular topic covered in the lecture portion of the course was linked to the web resources developed to support the textbook's treatment of the same topic. Supporting resources, e.g. sample test questions, learning objectives, etc., were also conveniently linked to both the text and lecture components. The use of the web resources was voluntary for all students, i.e. they were not required to use the resources as a supplement for studying or exploring psychological topics in greater depth. Students were told at the first class meeting that they could do well if they simply read the text, completed the study guide questions attached to the syllabus, came to class, and took good notes. Two new features were explored this quarter. The first was to see if power point presentations would enhance the classroom presentation aspect of the lecture material. The current procedure is to use the web resource lecture outline as the presentation outline (much like an overhead transparency). Power point would allow the author to integrate charts, pictures, and graphs in more dramatic ways. The introduction to the depression lecture and the lecture on the psychology of terrorism were ideal candidates for conversion. When the power point presentations were used in class, students could still print out the original lecture outline before lecture, and they could review the power point presentation online after the lecture had been given in the lecture hall. The second feature was CPsychology in the News".
Several times a week, the author would scan major news sites (e.g. msnbc.com
and cnn.com) and psychology sites (e.g. psychology newsletter and APA9s psychport.com).
If a news item pertained to lecture material that had already been covered
in the class, a link was made to the item and placed on the interactive schedule
under a new section, "Psychology in the News".
The material was entirely supplemental and chosen because of its interest
and relevance to the course information.
Method Following the last question on the last midterm test booklet, students were asked to evaluate the web resources. Nine questions were asked: (1) How much did you use the Web Resources ("A lot", "Some", "A Little", or "Not at All"); (2) Rate the usefulness of the Web Resources for the class ("Very Useful", "Somewhat Useful", or "Not at all Useful"); (3) "How often did you check the 8Psychology in the News9 links"? (4) Class level; (5) Anticipated Grade; (6) Powerpoint versus web outline; (7) "Compared to other large GE courses, I believe that the content and presentations in Psy 201 have been; (8) Web Competency Rating; and (9) Comments. Test booklets were collected separately and responses were anonymous. Results Of the 111 test booklets returned, 105 contained responses to the use and rating evaluation items. Table 1 summarizes the reported frequency of use. Of the students who filled out the questionnaire, approximately 65% reported that they were heavy users, and 97.1% used the web resources in some way. Only 2.9% reported not using the web resources at all. Table
1 Frequency of Use
Table 2 summarizes student ratings of the usefulness of the web resources. 89% rated the web resources as very useful, and no one rated the web resources as not useful at all.
Table
2 Usefulness ratings
Fewer students made use of the new feature, "Psychology in the News" (See Table 3). Table
3 "Psychology
in the News"
Table 4 reveals that unlike most quarters when the majority of students were frosh, 85% of these students were sophomores, juniors and seniors. Table
4 Class
Level
Few students saw themselves as complete novices in using the internet (3%), and over 90% of the students considered themselves as least competent (Table 5).
Table
5 Web
Competence
In comparing the power point class presentation mode with using the web resource outline (projected like an overhead transparency), two-thirds of the students preferred the web outline and a quarter preferred the power point presentation (Table 6). Ease at taking notes and following the outline/overview of the material were frequently mentioned positive qualities of the web resource outline. Table
6 Preference
Between Power Point Presentation and Web Resource Outline
Almost 60% of these generally experienced students reported that Psy 201 was the best large GE course they have taken, with almost 98% rating Psy 201 as "Better" or "The Best" (Table 7). Table
7 Psy
201 Compared to Other Large GE Classes (content and presentation)
Discussion Consistent with previous quarters, Psychology 201 students continue to use the web resources and find them useful. Since the use of the web resources was entirely voluntary, the continued high rate of use indicates that these extensive integrated course resources are helpful. The course appears to be meeting student expectations with 98% of these primarily experienced students rating the course as "better" or "the best" large GE course they have taken.
While almost every student used the web resources, and 89% rated the resources as extremely helpful, the two new features received more modest evaluations. Approximately 60% of the students looked at "Psychology in the News" links, but almost all of those students did so either only "some" or "a little". Over a third did not look at all. It may be possible that the five week structure of course made it difficult to look at simply supplemental material, but unreported data from Winter quarter, 2003, shows the same trend in a 10 week course, with over half the students not looking at a single news item. It is more likely that goal oriented students are focused on material that they believe will help them master the material for the exam. As with the early evaluations of the utility of having streaming video copies of video clips used in lecture (Slem, 2000)[1], students may appreciate having the resource available even though a small percentage use it. With a large course like introductory psychology, enrollments of up to 500 per classroom, a significant number of students are making use of the resource even though the percentages are modest. This allows these motivated students additional psychological information, and the large class size justifies the effort of creating information that will be routinely used my less than half of the students. However, this is a time intensive activity and could be cut out with little impact on the performance of students in the course. Substituting power point presentations for the web resource lecture outline in classroom presentations met with mixed evaluations. Only a quarter of the students preferred the power point presentation even though it was quite dramatic. It appears that even with great care (the terrorism presentation had been revised every quarter for two years to be as "note taker friendly" as possible), the traditional overhead transparency with an outline appears to give students more confidence in note taking and understanding the organization of a lecture. Even in a course that emphasizes multimedia and online technologies, it appears that students are evaluating course tools based on their utility rather than the "glitz" of the technology.
[1]
Slem, C., 2000. Fall Quarter
2000 Streaming Video and Final Class Ratings for the Fully Integrated Introductory
Psychology Web Resources Psychology 201. Unpublished
Technical Report. Psychology Department,
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo |
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