Project Description

The Psychology Electronic Warehouse Project (EW)

The Psychology Electronic Warehouse (EW) is a substantial resource developed for all students in the introductory psychology course at Deakin University. It exemplifies the use of integrated technologies to help solve educational problems relating to the learning of difficult concepts. In particular, it was designed to encourage students to make conceptual links between the discipline's fundamental knowledge base and the methodology used in psychological research.

Deakin students have experienced difficulties with the research methodology component of the course because its presentation was largely limited to statistical analysis. They therefore had problems understanding and contextualising statistics. The EW was designed to address this problem. It consists of 20 laboratory workshops based on a seven-stage research model and is being used by approximately 1000 first year students studying on three campuses and in off-campus mode.

The evaluation, to be carried out in second semester 2000, will focus on aspects of the implementation stage of the framework and in particular will investigate learning processes and outcomes.