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Abstract

The field of applied cognitive psychology is new - so new that courses on the topic have emerged in only the last decade. The goal of Psychology 322 (PSY 322) Cognition in Everyday Life is to impart knowledge of the fundamental principles of cognitive psychology in a way that students can take this knowledge and apply it to their lives. PSY 322 will be designed for General Education credit for upper division students regardless of background, and it will not have any prerequisites. It will also help fill a need for more General Education courses for the DegreeLink program, a partnership between Indiana State University and Vincennes University and Ivy Tech State College that provides access to baccalaureate degree-completion programs via distance technologies. The course will present the fundamental principles of cognitive processes of perception, comprehension, learning, remembering, reasoning, and problem solving. Case studies from everyday life in the areas of the law, medicine, industry, and education will be included. The course will culminate in a scientific examination of studying and an examination of how cognitive psychology can be applied to a person's daily life and future career. The proposed project requests funding from the Indiana Partnership for Statewide Education (IPSE).

Project Narrative

This course, PSY 322, will address the need to provide asynchronous general education courses for the DegreeLink Program. DegreeLink is a partnership between Indiana State University (ISU), and Vincennes University and Ivy Tech State College that provides statewide baccalaureate degree-completion programs to Indiana residents who wish to complete their college degrees at a distance.

This course will also help students discover why they need cognitive skills, to perform

better in the courses remaining to them before they get their degree, and to use the skills they have learned. An understanding of how intellectual functioning is enhanced also provides insight into the knowledge and skills the students have obtained in other parts of their education. I believe, as do many of my colleagues in cognitive psychology, that courses like Cognition in Everyday Life will someday become a core requirement at most colleges and universities because the modern worker frequently will need to learn new knowledge and skills throughout a career.

Traditionally underserved students who seek to complete their Bachelor's degree at a distance in the DegreeLink program will be able to complete their General Education requirements with this course. However, because psychology courses are relevant to nearly all occupations, another goal for this course is to serve as an elective for other programs.

A course on everyday cognition is, in my view, the best way to impart to students the knowledge essential to guide lifelong learning. Such a course necessarily presents the basic knowledge and skills to be used by students in their lives, and it illustrates the application of this knowledge in a variety of situations that they know about. These experiences will give students a good appreciation for how to use this knowledge they have acquired. It, therefore, is an excellent choice for a General Education course for the DegreeLink students, many of whom are now working for a living and can directly apply the knowledge learned in this course to their lives.

The use of the Internet as the primary technology is based mainly on the decision to make this course accessible to as many people as possible. Using the Web allows students to take this course asynchronously at a time and place of their choosing. Because there will be many opportunities for communicating experiences, ideas, and questions about the application of cognitive psychology to everyday life, asynchronous conferencing, email, and synchronous chat rooms will be made available. This will allow the greatest range of communication possible at a distance.

This course will use a web-based courseware called Interactive Learning Network (ILN) created by the company CourseInfo. A floppy disk called Psychology on a Disk will also be purchased by students (approximately $15 each) and used to demonstrate different kinds of cognitive tasks. I currently have a course site using ILN, and I have received training in its use.

The Associate Dean for Arts and Sciences, Dr. Tom Sauer, and the Director of General Education, Dr. Robert Levy, has indicated that this course would serve a valuable purpose in the General Education curriculum, especially for DegreeLink (See Letter in Appendix). As Department Chair of Psychology, I, as well, believe that this course is needed. ISU is committed to distance education and supports faculty, such as myself, who want to prepare an asynchronous online course. The University presents workshops in Web course design and provides an Instructional Designer (Paula Holder) to advise faculty on the construction of courses. The Faculty Computing Resource Center has a great deal of experience in helping faculty with computing, and the University's Center for Teaching and Learning routinely helps faculty with the kinds of pedagogical problems encountered with education on the Web. I have taken the University's Course Transformation Academy twice to keep current with the latest pedagogy, technology, and instructional design information related to Web-based courses and other distance learning topics.

This course will be offered via the Internet using a Web-based courseware from CourseInfo called the Interactive Learning Network (ILN). The course site will feature 24 lessons comprised of lectures, demonstrations, and case studies. Twelve general lessons will address in detail each of the major cognitive processes: perception, comprehension, learning, retention, remembering, reasoning, and problem solving. These lessons will attempt to impart knowledge about the important findings pertaining to each process. Mini-lectures will be created for the course site as Web pages.

Subsequently, there will be 10 lessons that examine a series of case studies in which understanding of cognitive psychology has been applied to real life problems in the areas of the law, medicine, industry, education, and studying. These case studies will be posted to the course site with links attached to further enrich the students understanding of these issues.

In the final lesson on studying, students conduct a scientific examination of how they study and consider how they will apply what they have learned in college to their future occupation. They will present their findings in online discussions via the course site asynchronous discussion tool.

A mid-term and final comprehensive exam will mailed to CEIS approved proctors for the students to take. Additionally, students will take online self-quizzes for each lesson.

Each student will write a ten page report (double-spaced with references) on how they can use what they have learned about cognitive psychology in their future career. They will submit this report using the upload function of the ILN course site.

The course will be evaluated by ISU course designers and by the students enrolled in the course. Both formative and summative course and instructor evaluations will focus on pedagogical effectiveness, usability of the course site, technology challenges, and overall satisfaction with the course. The course will be Beta tested by on campus students who will be recruited to take the online course in the Fall 1999 semester. These students will be asked periodically to provide anonymous feedback about its ease of use and effectiveness at teaching. Also former students from my classes will be asked to provide a critique of the Beta-tested course. Subsequent revisions will be made before offering the course for full implementation in Spring semester 2000.

Colleagues at ISU and at three other universities will provide feedback about the effectiveness of the course.

Feedback from students' course evaluations, and peer reviews within ISU and by colleagues at other institutions will be used to revise and elaborate on the lessons. All forms of evaluation will be submitted to my Dean, to the Dean of Continuing Education, and the University's Center for Teaching and Learning.

The course will be marketed as an upper-level General Education course as part of ISU's Continuing Education program, for the DegreeLink program, and on ISU's Web site for Online courses. It will also serve as an elective for students who want a major or minor in Psychology.

In addition, the course will be advertised in the newsletter for the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. The subscribers of this newsletter are largely professors who specialize in everyday cognition and who teach at colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Many of these individuals will examine the course and some will probably direct their students to make use of the course.

 

Spring semester 1999: Rough drafts of each lesson will be developed.

Summer semester 1999: Major design and development of the Course.

Fall Semester 1999: Beta-testing of course with evaluations and peer review. This semester also will be used to revise the course to meet the concerns raised in the reviews.

Spring 2000: Full implementation of PSY 322: Cognition in Everyday Life.

Project Director: Dr. Douglas Herrmann is Chairperson of the Department of Psychology and a faculty member at ISU who teaches courses on cognition,

Instructional Designer: Paula Holder is an Instructional Designer with CEIS at ISU. Ms. Holder, will be working with me on all phases of the design, developments, implementation, and evaluation of the course.

 

Proposed Budget and Narrative

The bulk of the budget for the proposed project focuses on providing funding for faculty release time for Dr. Herrmann for the equivalent of two summer courses. Faculty compensation is for a summer course is compensated as 7.5% of the instructor's base salary. Fringe benefits are figured at 11.65% of the summer salary. It is expected that ISU's contribution to the project will be through in-kind services for instructional design and assistance through the Faculty Computing Resource Center (FCRC).

Following is the rationale for the basis for the budget figures related to the Project Director's salary and specific elements of the institutional contribution.

It takes an average of 12 hours of overall design and development work to transform one hour of student learning in a traditional course to an online environment. Some would say this is a very conservative estimate. "The figure of an average of 18 hours for Web development seems to be just about right with this supporting data. Perhaps we could be even more accurate by providing a range of 5-23 hours." (Judith V. Boettcher, How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Distance Learning Course? Syllabus May 1998).

Because a Web-based courseware from CourseInfo called Interactive Learning Network (ILN) will be used for the course site, synchronous and asynchronous class communication, testing, and exchanging of files, the estimate is about half of the upper limit of 23 hours quoted. Because this is a new courseware and because most faculty are inexperienced with the technology of creating materials for the Web, our average is higher than the lowest estimate of 5 hours.

As there are 45 student learning hours (3 credits x 15 weeks) 45 x12= 540 hours average to take an existing course and design and develop it for online Internet delivery. CEIS feels this is a reasonable estimate given that Boettchner reports "an investment of 810 hours to move a course to the Web" and "If we assume some time for startup with learning technology and instruction in teaching and learning in this new environment (and also arranging for any copyright and other issues), we can rapidly approach the 1,000-hour mark for moving a course to the Web"

To teach two summer courses requires 90 hours of in-class time (3 credit hours per week X 15 weeks X 2 courses=90 hours), as well as time for grading tests, reading and evaluating written assignments, and office hours for student conferences. A conservative average for this out of class time would be 1 hour a week for every 3 hours of in class teaching, which would add another 30 hours for a 2 summer course load. This gives us a total of 120 hours release time for two summer courses.

Because Faculty Release Time will only account for 120 hours of the 540 hours estimated, Support Staff must take up the remaining 420 design and development hours for the average course.

These hours of design and development are accounted for in the following tasks. The design work for the instructor and the instructional designer is in identifying and then recreating verbal teaching and learning experiences that take place in the classroom for an asynchronous learning experience. This includes lectures, classroom discussions, in class explanations, in class groupwork, and individual student-teacher conferences. This interactivity must be "reproduced" with highly interactive Internet-based learning materials, activities, and assignments.

Another design activity that takes up considerable time is designing and developing formative and summative evaluations for the online course in order to gain feedback from students to improve the quality of the course for learning and retention purposes.

Much of the development time that the Faculty Computing Resource Center (FCRC) staff will be involved with is in transforming print materials such as handouts, on reserve readings, and study guides into online information or for mailing purposes. Also time consuming for the FCRC staff is transforming tests, quizzes, and surveys into an online environment. A final part of this development time is taken up with editing, proofreading, and revision recommendations performed by the Course Editor.

 

Appendix A: Letters from Appropriate Academic Administrator

Appendix B: Summary of Lead Faculty Member's Experience

Dr. Douglas Herrmann is a full professor and chairperson of the Psychology Department at Indiana State University. He was trained as an engineer at the U.S. Naval Academy (B.S., 1964). He obtained a M.S. (1970) and a Ph.D. (1972) in Experimental Psychology at the University of Delaware. After receiving his Ph.D., he engaged in postdoctoral study on the mathematical modeling of conceptual processes at Stanford University (1972-1973).

Dr. Herrmann has taught full time for 19 years (16 years at Hamilton College and three years at Indiana State University). He was a research psychologist in the Federal Government (National Institute for Mental Health, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the National Center for Health Statistics) for seven and a half years. The bulk of his career has been devoted to understanding human cognition and the improving of human memory. Dr. Herrmann has published fifteen books, over 80 scientific journal articles, and 30 chapters in edited texts. In 1995 he was the first President of the Society for Applied Research on Memory and Cognition. In 1996 he launched the journal, Cognitive Technology. Dr. Herrmann has taught courses on cognitive psychology 12 times and courses on everyday cognition 6 times. He has lectured to the public on aspects of everyday cognition about 100 times and in six countries.

Because of his experience at teaching and his many publications, his expertise on everyday cognition is recognized both nationally and internationally.



Last updated: July 06, 2006