A Web-Based 'Book' for Introductory Psychology

Gabriel P. Frommer
Professor
Dept. of Psychology
Indiana University
Bloomington IN 47405
812-855-1279
frommer@indiana.edu

Introduction

Even a casual exploration of Web-based courses reveals diverse approaches to instructional methods. Some courses are intended as distance education courses; others are supplements to classroom-based instruction. Some simply provide course information and communication with instructors and/or other class participants, with some supplementary materials; others provide a rich variety of hypertext links, which may be an integral part of the instructional program; still others supplement or replace classroom lectures and activities. The diversity of approaches parallels the wide range of courses for which Web-based material is used. Some have been developed for introductory-level classes, but my casual browsing suggests that more are for more specialized upper-level classes.

But in my unsystematic browsing I have found very few sites that replace class texts (as opposed to readings) for Web-based classes. This is what I have evolved over the past several years for P101, the first semester of our department's introductory psychology sequence. This class meets in a lecture hall seating about 250 people and has no associated discussion or lab sections. Instruction thus depends on a fairly conventional mix of lectures, class demonstrations, videos, a text, hour examinations, and, for most sections, quizzes. This is a recipe for creating passive students. My main motive in creating this Web-based text has been to combat this passivity.

I am making extensive revisions on a site that does not allow guests, but you can find the version I used for the fall semester of 1997 at this URL:

http://www,indiana.edu/~p1013447/p101.html

It opens the class home page, which has, among other things, a menu with eight choices. The first menu choice explains the Web site to visitors and gives instructions for visiting the "Required Exercises ..., " a series of 95 assignments I call "exercises." The fifth menu choice connects to a menu for the weekly outlines I use in class. Some include (most of) the graphics I use in class, as well as the outline. The eighth choice gives a summary of student evaluations of the exercises (and a few other matters, including questions on how much cheating people knew about).

The "Web Book" and Its Use

The 95 exercises form the Web book. Each exercise is like a section of a chapter, which has quiz questions after every few paragraph, as well as a growing list of links. The questions come in several forms: multiple choice (about half of which have alternatives like "A and B are both correct"), multiple True-False, Matching, and fill-in with digits or a word. The computer grades the exercise and tells the student which ones s/he got correct. Students may repeat exercises as often as they wish to get to the level of 80% correct, which earns credit toward the final grade. The exercises all together are roughly equivalent to one of the tests.

A paper version appears to be almost necessary. It is certainly convenient. A few students cannot get to computers easily because they commute and do not have computers at home. Also, many students do not like to work on the computer, especially for the long periods which become necessary if people wait until the last minute to do the assigned exercises. Many expect instant access whenever they want to do the exercises and complain about the long lines and noisy conditions in the computer clusters in the residence halls. They are unwilling to try less popular times or locations. Many also point out that a paper version is much easier to use when preparing for a test. As a result I now prepare a paper version, but I encourage people to use it as a supplement to, rather than a replacement for, the Web-based material.

I encourage students to take notes as they do the exercises, pointing out that they can use a word processing program at the same time as they work on the exercises. They have a strong incentive to do so, because I allow them to take a page of notes into the examinations. This is a somewhat controversial procedure. I have several justifications:

The final grade distribution is higher because about 15-20% of the class do not finish the semester and because the grades from the exercises and extra credit options boost the final grade.

Origins

The Web-based textbook evolved from computerized quizzes that I started using in 1992. One of my colleagues, Jim Craig, got a DOS-based computer program for delivering and scoring quizzes, called QuestionMark (this program is now available in a Windows and a Web-based version). I had been using "pop quizzes" in class for one or two years, and I welcomed the opportunity to make delivering and grading quizzes easier. I assigned weekly, open book quizzes using this program, and it seemed to get most people in the class to keep up with their reading and to pay some attention to what they were reading. I know well how easy it is to move one's eyes over a page and then realize that very little registered. The quiz questions were intended to discourage that.

Then I decided to try to develop a little exercise to show people in the class how to take notes. Most instructors know that many people take very poor notes. But for reasons I no longer recall, I decided to create a mini-lecture in the quiz program and use quiz questions within the lecture to guide people toward improved note-taking skills. As I developed the exercise, it dawned on me that the quiz program could incorporate much more material, both text and graphics, than it was intended to do.

So I started to develop "exercises" to supplement the material in the text. The idea was to present one or more screens of text and graphics, followed by a question about that material. The idea is not particularly novel. Most introductory texts include questions at the end of chapters or sections and in associated workbooks. But I am unaware of any that put them directly into the body of the text.

The idea of putting questions into the body of a text stems from Skinner's much more radical "teaching machine" concept, which put questions (usually blanks to fill in) in most lines of the text material. This plan enjoyed a flurry of interest in the early 60s but did not go very far. The development of the "courseware" was very time consuming, and the technology for delivering the material was rather primitive.

At first I intended the exercises to replace lectures. I wanted to spend more class time on other activities: videos; class demonstrations; brief, small-group discussions to encourage class members to figure out answers to questions the current topic raised, etc. I soon found out that many people in the class expected and wanted lectures, so I extended the exercises to supplement and then eventually to replace the conventional text. I shifted to a local Web-based quiz program called QuizSite, which BEST (Indiana University’s Bureau of Evaluative Studies and Testing) had started developing. It opened a wide range of ways to enrich the material with links to supplementary material such as the following:

I have only started to add this kind of supplementary material. The possibilities are endless. Of course, only a few students will use many of these supplementary materials, ("Will this be on the test?"). So I need to find ways of encouraging them to explore. For example, some courses offer credit for reports on the content of links. Perhaps using the links will become self-reinforcing: as students become acquainted with the vast range in information on the Web, they may begin to explore on their own.

Evaluations

The eighth choice from the menu on the class home page opens a summary of students' evaluations of the exercises, including the 80 written comments I got. On average, the respondents (almost everyone who took the required comprehensive final exam) agreed that the exercises helped them prepare for tests and were neutral about the difficulty of the exercises (though several complained in their written comments that there were too many exercises and that they were too long). They reported spending four hours of preparation per week, on average, which means that they spent more than average time preparing for this class. (This interpretation is based on the results of a survey of students' study habits, which the Dean of Faculties Office at IU Bloomington recently reported [How Students Study]. According to this survey, students spend on the average about 10 hours a week studying.)

On a separate sheet of paper, with no other questions, students reported the number of people (including themselves) they were aware of who cheated. About 40% reported knowing about at least one person cheating on the exercises (that is, getting answers from someone else). An optimistic interpretation of these data is that several people reported knowing about the same people who cheated. But even 20% cheating is too much.

I have tried other ways of evaluating the exercises. Unfortunately, they are difficult to do, and the results are problematic. When I first had a fairly comprehensive set of exercises but was still using the text, I taught two sections for two semesters, one using the exercises and the other using the quizzes without the text and graphics. In one semester, the section that used the exercises did somewhat better than the section that used the quizzes. In the other semester, the class that used the exercises did, if anything, a bit worse. However, based on the students' estimated semester grade paint averages, the section that used the exercises was academically weaker than the section that used the quizzes. I am looking into the possibility of soliciting evaluations from former students two years after they took the class.

Problems

The biggest problem an instructor will face is to get people to use the materials as they were intended to be used. The introduction to the sample test questions I provide and the first exercise explain the strategy I want users to adopt and why. I encourage users to follow the steps summarized in the diagram below:

A second problem is the difficulty and physical discomfort some people feel using computers. "Computer phobia" can be dealt with by some "hand-holding" to get people over the first humps. But some people find it physically distressing to spend more than a few minutes reading from a computer screen. I have prepared some suggestions on ways of setting the computer screen to make reading from it less distressing; these can be reached from the first exercise.

A third problem is the attractiveness (or lack of it) of the site. It is Spartan: I prefer simpler to more elaborate, because the elaborate often interferes with communication; I want the material to load quickly; and I haven't taken the time to learn some of the ways to make it visually more appealing. But some elements need to be added to make the site more pleasing to the eye and perhaps easier to navigate, without adversely affecting clarity or slowing loading down much. I give this task lower priority, though.

A final note

Is a project like this worth doing? I believe it is, although of course I cannot be very objective about it. This project has taken almost all of my time for the last several years (I am in the fortunate position of being able to dedicate my time to this project). I have done almost everything for myself, and other people who are better at commanding and getting people to work with and for them can, perhaps, do this sort of project much more efficiently.

I believe these exercises make an effective tool for improving study and preparation, if students use them properly. This is the important problem to solve, and I look forward to introducing the "recitation" sections in Spring 1999. Unfortunately, my classes have acquired the reputation of being "hard," and students tend to avoid them, especially in the second semester. I am sure my sections require more time and effort than other sections do, but the time and effort earn respectable grades. My two sections of P101 had both the highest mean grades and the most withdrawals and incompletes of the nine sections offered in Fall 1997. More importantly, the exercises do seem to help students develop study strategies that work in other classes, as a former student told me a few days ago without prompting.

Most of the people to whom I show the exercises appear quite enthusiastic about the idea, though my colleagues are not rushing to adopt it. On the other hand, I am negotiating with two publishers to make the paper version and the Web-based material available commercially. They see it is a possible future development in their business and are offering a fairly generous development grant as an advance against sales over the next two years. Because the material is Web-based and the paper version is produced from a slightly edited, camera-ready copy of the material on the Web, it is very easy to change. Instructors who adopt this material will be able to use the material as is, select only those exercises they want, modify exercises to their own needs, and/or add new material of their own. Some instructors may find this flexibility especially attractive.

Please send comments and inquiries to frommer@indiana.edu