CyberPsychology and Teaching Psychology

Dr Jane GuillerLecturer in Psychology

Glasgow Caledonian Universityj.guiller@gcu.ac.uk

Cyberpsychology

• Human mind and behaviour in the context of human-technology interaction

• Areas of health, social, developmental, mental health, education, forensic...

• Experiential and blended learning approach to teaching psychology with a strong focus on peer interaction, critical thinking and relevance to students’ lives

Blended learning design

• Harness the affordances of technology

• Don’t let the technology drive the pedagogy!

• Strategic design – not an ‘add on’

• Can technology facilitate the learning principles that you wish to embed and student achievement of the learning outcomes?

Principles of good learning

• Motivation and engagement

• Self-assessment/reflection

• Active learning

• Immediate feedback

• Peer interaction

• Peer assessment

• Student-generated content

• Experiential learning

Lectures and technology

• What’s the point in lectures?

• Powerpoint!

• What are students doing in lectures?

• Using technology in F2F lectures

• Camtasia screen-capture software to create vidcasts

• Students creating vidcasts as content or assessments

Online and F2F lectures: Student feedback

• Enjoyed having both F2F and online lectures• Valued being able to control the pace of online

lectures and access from home and in own time• Found it easier to procrastinate, get distracted

and missed presence of lecturer, peers and informal learning

• Still just one-way information delivery• Students want more debates and clicker

sessions in place of traditional F2F lectures

Clickers and mobile phones in lectures

• Audience participation

• Immediate feedback

• Contingent teaching approach (Draper & Brown, 2004)

• Voting in debates and decision-making activities

• Students asking questions using TextWall– Rent a ‘text wall’ to display student messages

in lectures

Online discussions

• Structured and unstructured; synchronous and asynchronous

• Need for clear guidelines and expectations• Discussion around discourse styles and the

language of argumentation• Marking criteria and examples• Need for moderation• Students find them worthwhile yet can be

demanding and competitive

Assessment 1

Critical appraisal• Students put into small groups based on article• F2F discussion followed by online discussion

(Guiller et al., 2008)• Creating feedback dialogue through Reciprocal

Peer Critiquing (Draper, 2010)• Roundtable F2F discussion versus web-based

peer review tool, e.g. Aropä

Peer critiquing

“The peer critique was great to get a different pair of eyes to

examine work. I think a different way to go about this would be

for the 2 people marking each others work to give feedback

only to each other just in pairs as opposed to with the class as

I think a more personal discussion for each others work would

be more valuable than just hearing the outlines of what was

good/bad. I understand that hearing someone give feedback on

someone else's work can also be helpful but I think 20 minutes

of in depth conversation with your peer marker could be more

efficient for some.”

Assessment 2

Online contributions• Small groups in private discussion areas

– Critical appraisal groups– Debating “For” & “ Against” teams

• Online seminars (whole class)– Questions and activities from lectures/seminars, e.g.

• “Gender genie”• “Analysis of self-presentation strategies in Facebook”

– Students are free to start new threads on any cyberpsychology sub-topic

What the students said...“I really enjoyed interacting and debating ideas with peers on the

online seminars, it made me think of things in a different light and i enjoyed then hunting for research to support my opinions.”

“ I found the online contributions a great way to get involved with the whole class and hear different views about certain topics.”

“The main aspect of the module which i found really difficult to keep on top of was the online seminars, there were so many online posts that i felt that whenever i remembered to log on i just didnt know where to start with my contributions.”

“I feel that to contribute to the level other students were doing was extremely difficult and caused stress worrying if my contributions was as good as others in the class.”

Second Life

• Students’ preferred option for online chat

• Presence and immersion

• Time sink

• Make use of existing resources and communities

• Field trips, role playing activities, collaborative teaching, simulations

• Ethical issues and duty of care

Virtual Field Trip

Our private area on GCU island

Discussion area in Second Life

• Created by Paul Denny at University of Auckland (see http://peerwise.auckland.ac.nz)

• Online repository created, shared, answered, rated and discussed by students

• Scaffolding F2F activity then online• Formative assessment provided by students• Marked using supplied criteria• Badges and leaderboard

Second Life activities

• Instructions to register and create avatar• F2F orientation session• Value of familiar location in a strange new

world..• Version of “Turing Test”• “Adventures in Second Life” blog• Elearning field trips followed by discussion

– Virtual Hallucinations Project– Autism Awareness Center

• End of module discussion

Student quotes“The journey into Second Life was very educational and really

broadened my view on online societies. ”

“I enjoyed Second Life as it was something I had never done before and it put theory into practice with cross gender.”

“I did not enjoy using Second Life.”

“The schizophrenia experience was fascinating.”

“I also enjoyed the second life experience where i could get a deeper understanding of the psychological effects of avatars - rape, bullying, beforehand i couldn’t really imagine the effects of say cyberrape, but after creating my avatar i realised how defensive I became of her.”

Facebook and Twitter

• Informal/formal learning

• Students’ use of social networks

• Friending in Facebook

• Twitter in lectures

• Dangerous territory?

• Need for policy

Final quote“Unlike some other, more traditional, modules which can be quite

homogenous, largely focusing on the same traditional

psychologists and theories; cyberpsychology was a novel and

exciting change of scenery, looking at topics that are especially

relevant to today's increasingly computerised social context... I

especially liked the online element of the course, using both GCU

Learn and Second Life.  I think this allowed for a more 'hands-on'

experience with the subject matter and really helped 'bring the

theory to life', beyond the textbook.  I also liked how the use of

Second Life brought people out of their comfort zones and

stimulated debate among the students.”