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APEC module: specification 2008-9

Applying psychology to education and computers

by
Stephen W. Draper,   Department of Psychology,   University of Glasgow.

Outline Lecture spec for handbook

This final plan for the level 4 APEC course replaces the handbook The lecture summaries and objectives for the APEC module.

[For each lecture I give a) the lecture summary b) the learning objectives.]

1-2a Introduction to HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and applying psychology to design. An introduction to the concepts of user centered design and the prototyping approach, and the contribution psychology can make.
1-2b Students will be able to discuss critically issues of how psychology may be applied to design, and to problems requiring redesign as a solution. Students should be able to discuss what user centered design may mean, and to describe the prototyping cycle.

3a Thinkaloud protocols
3b Students should be able to administer a thinkaloud protocol, and to discuss its strengths and weaknesses as in instrument.

4a Incident diaries
4b Students should be able to design and administer an incident diary, and to discuss its strengths and weaknesses as in instrument.

5a Feature checklists. How to compare different instruments related to questionnaires; and the full set of instruments.
5b Students should be able to design and administer the ramge of seven instruments, and to discuss their strengths and weaknesses.

6-8a Minimal manuals: a user-centered approach to designing computer documentation. One of the few outcomes of direct commercial value from HCI research is the minimalist technique, derived by a psychologist in the course of a long series of studies.
6-8b Students should be able both to describe the technique, and to apply it.

Lecture 9a:
The nature of learning in Higher Education (HE).
Learning as a problem-solving activity.
Learning as a social activity.
Learning and teaching as a social transaction.

9b: Students will be able to discuss the extent to which learning in HE is:

Lecture 10a:
Student and teacher attitudes to educational learning: a) Deep & shallow learning. b) Perry, W.G. (1970) "Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years"
Perry's developmental stage model of views of the nature of knowledge, learning and teaching: from passive reception of absolute truth to active choice between justifiable alternative views.

10b: Students will be able to:
* Describe the concept of Deep vs. shallow learning
* Discuss its problems and limitations
* Describe Perry's stage model
* Discuss its problems and limitations

Lectures 11a & 12a:
The Laurillard model of the learning and teaching process. Laurillard (1993) "Rethinking University Teaching"
Mathemagenic (learning-promoting) activities.
Laurillard's 12 activity model. Its 3 underlying principles: equal focus on teachers and learners, repetition and convergence (the conversation model), the two levels of knowledge: public description and personal experience.

11b & 12b: Students will be able to:
* Describe and illustrate with examples the 12 activity model
* Describe and illustrate with examples its three generating principles
* Critique the notion of mathemagenic activity
* Critique Laurillard's 12 activity model

13-16a Beyond Laurillard and towards a complete model. The relationship of Laurillard to the other models of teaching and learning, and issues that may not be covered by any of them but require further theory development. These include: peer interaction (addressed later), social theories such as Tinto and Lave, and how learners self-regulate their effort, internalisation, constructivism, metacognition, the "Dr. Fox" experiments; the management layer (extending the Laurillard model to describe how activities are agreed and organised by learners and teachers), proactiveness, Self-regulation as a feedback loop, Lifelong learning, reflection.
13-16b Students will be able to discuss the extent to which any of the theories is complete, the challenges offered by the various other issues covered, and the prospects for an eventual complete, unified theory of learning and teaching in HE.
Students will be able to: Describe and illustrate with examples how learning is managed by interaction between learner and teacher.

17-18a Peer interaction. The work of Howe, Miyake; the concept of metacognition, and social perspectives on learning.
17-18b Students will be able to discuss the importance of peer interaction, and social interaction generally, for learning; and how the Laurillard model really doesn't address it.

19a Technoscepticism: the argument (by Clark) that technology never causes learning, only changes to the teaching approach have ever been shown to do that.
19b Students should be able to discuss both sides of this debate, and the positions that might be taken today e.g. that technology can make good practice so much easier and cheaper that it is influential in this way.

20a The relationship of Perry, Laurillard, and Deep&Shallow learning. Applying psychology, and the relationship of educational and HCI applications.
20b Students should be able to discuss the similarity and differences of these areas.

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