Title III Report
Philip Watkins
Eastern Washington University
This document represents the report for the Title II project conducted by Philip
Watkins. The general goal of my project was to incorporate technology into the course
Happiness and Positive Psychology (Psyc 440). My subsidiary goals for the students of
this class were to become more familiar with technology in research, and to become more
familiar with technology related to presentations. In general, I believe that I was
successful in this integration. Student evaluations of the course in general were quite
positive. Mean course evaluation for the course as a whole was 4.0 (“very good”), course
content mean evaluations=4.33, instructor’s contribution=4.89, and instructors
effectiveness was 4.78. For the instructor effectiveness and instructor contribution
categories the modal evaluation was 5 (“excellent”).
First, I will discuss the goal of students becoming more familiar with technology
in research in psychology, specifically with the use of the net. In this course I had
students monitor various types of memories (either general emotional memories or
grateful memories), and record their experiences using Blackboard. Students filled out
electronic forms and submitted them via the drop box for a site I had set up specifically
for this study. In general, I found that this was an excellent way for students to
participate in prospective research, and a convenient way to collect large amounts of data.
However, I found that some students struggled with having to use technology in this way.
Many would rather have simply filled out paper-and-pencil measures. As seen in the
graph below, most students completed most of the project. However, it is clear that there
is a bimodal distribution; either students did the project, or they struggled with it.
Percent of Students Completing
35
30
25
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15
10
5
0
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90% 100%
Percent of Project Completed
This result suggests that the technology required for this project was not overly difficult
for most students. I had hoped that this project would also provide students with
increased comfort using the Internet, and specifically using BlackBoard. In general,
students reported increased comfort in suing BlackBoard, but perhaps not as much as I
had hoped. The graph below illustrates the distribution of student ratings regarding their
comfort using BlackBoard.
Percent of Students
35
30
25
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15
10
5
0
1
2
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4
5
6
7
Increased Comfort
I was somewhat disappointed in the result regarding how likely students would be
to participate in an online experiment in the future. The results of this distribution are
shown below. Although about 50% of students said that they would be more likely to
participate in the future, almost 50% said that they would be no more likely, or even less
45
40
Percent of Students
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Future Likelihood of Participation
7
likely to participate in online research. I found this to be a disappointing result. It could
be argued that these students would be less likely to engage in future research simply
because they don’t want to take the time to do more research at all, but my assessment
methodology did not allow me to evaluate this possibility. Whatever the case, I had
hoped that this project would increase student interest in online research, but my results
were mixed at best.
However, my next assessment result was quite encouraging to me. Another goal
of this project was to give students a good “inside look” at what psychology experiments
were really like. In this regard the assessment results were quite positive. I asked
students to what extent they were more familiar now with “what really happens in a
psychology experiment.” As seen below, most students reported much more familiarity.
On the scale below 1=”no more familiar”, 4=”somewhat more familiar”, and 7=”a lot
more familiar.”
Percent of Students
25
20
15
10
5
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Increased Familiarity with "what really happens
in a psychology experiment"
My second major goal in this project was to increase my own familiarity and use
of technology in this course. I set up a course site on Blackboard and used this
extensively for developing and distributing student notes, various figures and graphs used
in lecture, as well as general communication with students. I also converted my lectures
into PowerPoint. For me personally, this was one of the most fruitful products of this
project. I feel quite comfortable now with creating and using PowerPoint (PP)
presentations in my classes. As a result of this project, not only have I been able to
develop PP slides for this course, but for my Abnormal Psychology course, and my
workshop Psychology of Religion, as well. I have found that if used correctly, PP
provides a great medium for clearly communicating the course content. One consistent
comment from my students (and this observation was justified by their test scores), was
that students really get the points that I am trying to get across to them. I found PP very
useful in at least two ways. First, when I must communicate difficult and complex
material to my students, use of PP animations provides a way to incrementally build up
the points I wish to communicate (rather than overwhelming students with extensive and
complex information). Second, PP has allowed me to clearly communicate the results of
psychological research. What excites me most about psychology is the clever ways that
researchers choose to investigate various psychological questions, and their interesting
results. Animation of PP graphs provides an excellent way to present experimental
results in a way that is both entertaining, and clear. In this way, incorporating PP into my
courses has really invigorated my teaching. I will email to you the PP slides I have
developed from my courses (mailed to Larry Kaiser). If you would prefer to receive a
hard copy of my slides, I would be happy to print them out for you. I have also included
with this report a copy of Dr. Stern’s evaluation of my PP slides.
One comment that I received from some students in this class was quite helpful to
me. Positive psychology relies for the most part on correlational research designs. Many
students did not have a thorough understanding of this type of research, and so felt a bit
lost when I was describing research that used correlational designs throughout the course.
Thus, I felt that one important way the course could be improved would be to add a
section on correlational designs. This actually provides me another opportunity to
integrate technology into the course, as various individuals have used technology to
demonstrate the nature of correlations to students. Following the course, I designed a set
of lectures along with PP slides that I think should improve the course. I will also email
these slides to you. Preliminary testing of these slides indicates that students feel much
more familiar with correlation methodology and analysis after participating in these PP
enhanced lecture/discussions.
I have also included my revised syllabus with this document. I believe that this
project has been a great encouragement to my teaching at Eastern, and I hope that my
students receive the benefit that I feel I have received from this project.