JISC

Background/Context Project Final Report is now available

Psychology at Heythrop (PSYCHE) is a project of the Psychology Group at Heythrop College, University of London to develop two technology assisted 15 credit modules “Research Methods and Statistics for Psychology 1 & 2” with at least 50% of the material coming from pre-existing content external to Heythrop College. The project will also develop guidelines and case studies, as appropriate, to disseminate the lessons learned both within the University and to the wider HE community.

Heythrop College is embracing e-learning as a part of its strategy for learning, teaching and assessment, having recently completed an e-learning trial across psychology, theology, and philosophy departments, developing blended learning courses, and committed to develop the University of London external BD online.

Psychology is taught at undergraduate level to a mixture of entrants with or without A2 Psychology, and with a range of levels of mathematical and statistical experience. Research methods teaching must therefore provide resources for a diversity of students to become proficient to the appropriate standard. Furthermore, the focus on research methods teaching in psychology can be surprising for many students beginning a degree in the discipline, and engagement with the topic can be challenging. A goal within research methods teaching, therefore, is to facilitate rich student engagement with the subject, by providing a learning experience that facilitates rich and enthusiastic interaction with learning materials, peers and academics.

There are a wide range of freely available online resources which may be drawn together and utilised for research methods teaching, along with a range of interactive activities, commercially published materials and real world data sets. Some of this material could be made more engaging for a wider range of learning styles by using multi-media based presentation. The PSYCHE project thus engages with the college’s developing integration of e-learning, and the particular needs of psychology teaching at Heythrop. The project will have a substantial encouragement and influence on future activity in this area.

Aims and Objectives

The broad aim of the PSYCHE project is to create two qualitay assured 15 credit technology-enhanced courses reusing and repurposing as much external content as possible, and collaborating with the support project CASPER and other projects to improve out understanding of the reuse of content in HE. The projects objectives include to:

• Meet and hopefully exceed the 50% guideline for repurposed external content, negotiating use with content providers during the lifetime of the project in order to encourage open sharing of resources. To include ~25% institutional content which will itself be repurposed for e-learning, and ~25% new content
• Explore course design using Pedagogic Planner Tools, such as LPP and Phoebe, and to reflect on and document these experiences
• Comply with Heythrop QA processes, and report on compliance
• Enhance the Heythrop Strategy for Assessment, Teaching & Learning which will be under review during the lifetime of the project, and to contribute to the Heythrop Strategy for E-Learning and VLE integration which will be under construction during that period
• Research and reflect on the product – exploring the responses of students to the learning materials, and assessing ways in which the project might enhance their learning experience
• Make the course openly available to other HEIs through the use of appropriate digital repositories including, but not limited to JORUM (using RELOAD to prepare and package the data), and APA ‘online psychology laboratory’

Project Methodology

The PSYCHE project will be undertaken in the following broad stages:

• Prepare Project Write project plan, appoint project researcher, purchase equipment, create project website (wiki) and blog
• Course Design Subject matter expert specifies full course using TALL standard online course specification process. Rework as required prior to sign-off by Academic Director and Learning Technologist. Start initial licensing enquiries
• Resource Gathering To discover and list appropriate resources, contact holders of copyright and IPR and negotiate use
• Integration & Course Creation The process of assembling/writing the course – including writing any additional materials, and re-working materials in appropriate multi-media formats. Materials reviewed and signed off by Project Director
• Implementation and Evaluation To teach the first module in its entirety over a full term, evaluating the effectiveness of the technology enhanced materials for students, and for dissemination (e.g. through a published article on pedagogy in psychology)
• Dissemination Prepare case study for final report, disseminate within Heythrop College (pedagogy group & report), Psychology heads of department and HEA subject group
• Exit/Sustainability Write reports as required by JISC. Place all packaged materials into JORUM and make available on website. Generate additional documentation

Deliverables

• Specifications Details of the course that has been designed will be fed back to JISC, along with a copy of both the learning design and the course itself.
• Content The modules will be packaged using SCORM where possible, and primarily intended for use in Moodle, being made available to the wider community both through external repositories such as JORUM, and also through a commitment to making the material available from the project server for at least three years.
• Case Study A case study assessing the effectiveness of the learning objects will be published as part of the final report.
• Report The project will produce a final evaluation report analysing the process of acquiring, reusing and repurposing materials for use in these modules, and including an evaluation of learner’s experiences of using these materials.
• Report An ongoing reflective log will be published as a weblog

Stakeholders

• Heythrop College Management, Psychology Students, Technical Staff, Teaching Staff & Administrators
• UK Psychology departments
• Other JISC-REProduce projects