Introduction: There is a history of overlap between art and science education, particularly in anatomy and other related medical specialties. Technological advances have increased exposure to visual images and creation and sharing of image-based content is commonplace. Statement of the Problem: The use of visual content and activities in education…

This study describes the pedagogical use of an online digital tool designed to support students' writing of research reports. The tool, "Manuscript Builder," provides a structure and a set of prompts to support students' writing. Participants included students enrolled in an undergraduate psychology course (N = 22) who were randomly…

Interteaching (IT) has demonstrated more effective and durable learning than traditional lecture-style teaching. Whereas IT's effectiveness has been established in traditional face-to-face courses, there is a need to extend the evaluation of IT to increasingly common course delivery modalities such as online courses. The purpose of the present…

Background: Animations of scientific concepts may improve comprehension by explaining and visualizing the steps of complex processes, but unless they engage student interest in meaningful ways, their effectiveness as teaching tools is limited. We achieve this through a novel approach to animation design that includes the target audience…

The present article describes four free or inexpensive Internet-based activities that can be used to supplement statistics/research methods/general psychology classes. Each activity and subsequent homework assessment is described, as well as homework performance outcome and student opinion data for each activity. (Contains 1 table.)

To investigate undergraduate students' perceptions of the role of the textbook in psychology courses, the authors surveyed 311 psychology students. Using an online survey, students answered questions about textbook importance, usage, and preferences and about scenarios that described a textbook as a resource or central course element. If an…

The Monty Hall dilemma (MHD) is a remarkably difficult probability problem with a counterintuitive solution. Undergraduate students used an interactive digital learning object that provided a set-based, animated explanation of the solution to the MHD and let them play games designed to increase understanding of the solution. More than 60% of users…

Student response systems have received much attention over the past few years. This easy-to-use technology has been marketed as a great way to enhance the student experience in the classroom through increased engagement and improved course performance. This aim of this study was to demonstrate that the simple addition of a student response system…

A theoretical approach to the design and implementation of a web-enhanced course template for Introduction to Psychology is reviewed. Links between psychological constructs and pedagogical principles of learning that are pertinent to a web-based course and the self-determination theory literature are discussed in relation to the design and…

This study addressed how trait levels of classroom shyness can influence conformity when students answer opinion questions in different ways. "We recruited 128 introductory psychology students to indicate their opinion on 50 controversial questions by raising their hand or anonymously pressing a button on a keypad ("clicker")". Compared to…

This study examined three methods of responding to in-class multiple-choice concept questions in an Introduction to Psychology course. Specifically, this study compared exam performance and student reactions using three methods of responding to concept questions: (a) a technology-based network system, (b) hand-held flashcards, and (c) hand…

The online virtual world Second Life (www.secondlife.com) has multiple potential uses in teaching. In Second Life (SL), users create avatars that represent them in the virtual world. Within SL, avatars can interact with each other and with objects and environments. SL offers tremendous creative potential in that users can create content within the…

This article presents student and faculty ratings of electronic editing (EE) functions (i.e., track changes, insert comments, highlighting) as used for "e-feedback" on written assignments. Students reported increased convenience, clarity of expectations, amount of feedback, and writing ability as well as substantial improvement in EE skills…

In recent years, national policy experts have questioned the overall quality of educational research, and they have suggested that researchers strengthen their scientific methods by maximizing the use of experimental designs. To promote more rigorous methodology, we discuss several new and often-overlooked opportunities for incorporating…

We evaluated the effectiveness of the use of an electronic personal response system (or "clickers") during an introductory psychology lecture on perceptual constancy. We graphed and projected student responses to questions during the lecture onto a large-screen display in Microsoft PowerPoint. The distributions of answers corresponded…