Using Technology to Teach Cognitive Psychology
Karen Yu
University of the South
kyu@sewanee.edu

Project Background

Undergraduate students often struggle with the rather abstract concepts of Cognitive Psychology. In my experience, active engagement with the material as well as numerous concrete examples and applications to real-world situations greatly help beginning students grasp the key concepts in this course. This seemingly is not only a direct effect of these factors on learning itself, but also an indirect effect through the increased interest, enthusiasm, and motivation that students gain from seeing the relevance of course concepts to their lives.

Research in cognitive psychology has demonstrated the critical role that an organizational framework plays in enhancing memory and learning. Moreover, the more connections that students can make between the course concepts and personally (and societally) important and relevant issues, the better they will remember, understand, and be able to apply the course concepts to new situations. Students rarely engage in such active inquiry without prodding. One goal of this proposed project is to incorporate web-based materials that encourage students to view the issues from different and more varied perspectives.

This project also aims to foster inquiry and exploration. Students can better understand cognitive psychology and the scientific process in general by participating in that process. Given the relative youth of cognitive psychology and the complexity of its subject matter, many basic questions remain unanswered. Students can become a part of the endeavor to better understand how people perceive, remember, reason, make decisions, and solve problems. Because the knowledge in any scientific discipline is always subject to revision, acquiring the skills for critically thinking about and investigating issues is ultimately more useful than memorizing the currently prevailing theories.

In addition, it is important for students to follow ongoing progress in cognitive psychology. This helps them to realize our knowledge about psychology is constantly being fine-tuned, revised, and expanded. Moreover, student interest is often captured by "late-breaking news" about recent developments and discoveries. Web-based course materials can be quickly updated to include such items.

During the Summer of 2000 I would like to redesign my Cognitive Psychology course to incorporate more active and integrated use of technology to further the above goals. In its current form, the course uses technology to a limited extent (e.g., http://yucraft.sewanee.edu/Psyc208/ and http://forum1.sewanee.edu:835/webx —log in as a Guest and navigate to the Psychology discussions), but would benefit substantially from a broader selection of carefully integrated course materials. For this purpose, I request a Mellon Teaching with Technology Fellowship from the Associated Colleges of the South for the Summer of 2000.

Proposed Project

Web-based Materials
I plan to develop a coherent set of web-based materials that encourages students to take a more active role in learning the concepts while at the same time providing numerous concrete examples of real-life situations where cognitive psychology is relevant. This will involve substantial time searching for relevant sites and materials. Because of their accessibility to students, web-based materials will be very suitable as illustrations of real-life applications of cognitive psychology principles and as items for class discussion. Students can study these materials outside of class in preparation for class discussions and activities. For example, an article from an on-line newspaper or discussion forum about hate crimes could be used to illustrate various issues associated with the cognitive processes of categorization, memory, and inductive reasoning, to name just a few.

Laboratory Materials
Students also need a better understanding of the methods used by cognitive psychologists to answer questions about human thought processes. By actually designing, conducting, and participating in studies, they not only gain this knowledge but also become actively involved in finding ways to answer questions of interest to them. Hence, this component of the proposed project will involve collecting and/or developing a coherent set of laboratory-type activities that encourage exploration while illustrating scientific approaches to answering questions about cognition. Initially, I will begin by assessing some on-line data-gathering techniques already in use by colleagues at other institutions. If time permits, I will also work on developing some more flexible inquiry-based activities (e.g., activities that allow students more options in terms of the number of variables examined and more flexibility in terms of the overall design of a study).

Technical Requirements
The hardware and software that are currently available to me at the University of the South should be sufficient for this project.

Integration into Curriculum
The revised version of the course that develops from this project will first be offered in the Fall Semester of 2000 at the University of the South.

Assessment
Assessing the effectiveness of the aforementioned materials and activities is complicated by the fact that only one section of this course is taught in a given year and by the difficulty of actually controlling all of the factors that one should if one is to reach a clear conclusion about the effectiveness of the materials per se. Nonetheless, I will attempt to assess the value of the materials and activities based on student participation, student performance, and student and peer evaluations. Informally, I will assess the overall level of student participation during class (e.g., level and quality of participation in discussions, number and quality of questions asked) and outside of class (e.g., level and quality of participation in on-line discussions). Student performance on exams and other evaluative activities will be compared with that of previous semesters (in preparation for this assessment, I plan to retain copies of some student work from the present semester for eventual comparison). Students will also be asked to complete evaluations of the technology-based activities of the course as the semester progresses. Feedback from colleagues at other institutions (especially ACS institutions) is most welcome.

Dissemination of Results
The materials will be available on the course web site and as such, they will be accessible to ACS colleagues as well as other interested individuals. If feasible, ACS colleagues will be notified by e-mail once the site is operational.