Mark O’Reilly & Hayley Smith
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Transcript of Mark O’Reilly & Hayley Smith
Mark O’Reilly & Hayley Smith
What is Psych Apprentice?
• A fully functional website that will host a variety of animated tutorials.
• Animated tutorials are based on psychology topics.
• The tutorials give a brief, scientific overview of a given topic.
• The website will also give suggestions for extra resources for further research.
Who is it aimed at?
• Anyone with a new interest in the field of psychology.Primarily beginner psychology students.
• Tutorials are scientific but manageable and understandable for a novice in the area.
History
• This idea stemmed from a multimedia project we completed in second year.
• Animated tutorials briefly explaining famous psychological experiments.
Multimedia Learning
• Sweller (2005) suggests that more information can be processed by the brain if it is delivered through different modalities simultaneously.
• Still a risk of cognitive overload leading to greater need for user testing to maintain effectiveness.
Development
• Using the well-known software process model, waterfall model, we can develop Psych Apprentice in a systematic, and therefore, more reliable approach.
Requirements Gathering
• Methods used include two informal focus groups directed towards the two streams; psychology & practice and psychology & technology.
• Participants were current second year Applied Psychology students.
• The aim was to discover which modules these participants had most difficulty with last year.
• We could then focus on the troublesome areas and create genuinely helpful tutorials.
Analysis of Results
• Topics that emerged as ‘problem topics’ for students were analysed and divided into three groups;
Psychology TopicsNon-Psychology TopicsSpecific to IADT
Course Topics
Non-Course Topics
Topics Specific to IADT
• Of the people who mentioned problems that were relating only to IADT:
o 50% said the use of othe printers was a problem. o 37% wanted assistanceowith using the library.o 13% had trouble ounderstanding the classotimetable.
Decisions…
• After this, it had to be decided which topics to focus on for the tutorials
• ‘Psychology Topics’ will take the main focus, including statistics, concepts of psychology and the brain.
• ‘Non-Psychology Topics’ may feature depending on time constraints.
• ‘Topics Specific to IADT’ will not be included.
Who is the user?
• A vital piece of information to have when designing software is knowing who the user is.
• This information is valuable in terms of layout, navigation and overall style of the software.
• To display our user’s information, a user persona was created.
• This is a simple, fictional bio of a user.
Design Phase - Logo
• A logo can make a brand instantly recognisable and can draw people closer to the brand at a first glance.
Design Phase – Logo
• Several different designs were created and tested, all designed around the concepts of psychology and learning.
User Testing
• User Testing was carried out on the wire frame and the logo.
• Wire frame – No problems• Logo – ‘too plain, difficult to read’.
Design Phase – Wire Frame
• A wire frame design is a very basic diagram of the layout of a piece of software.
• It allows for users to visualise the design and give their feedback i.e. Is the design intuitive?
Research into Topics
• Research into the topics has been carried out to ensure that the tutorials will be informative and reliable.
• As the research is carried out, a specific script for the tutorials is created.
• Due to the typical user demographic, language is kept scientific yet interesting and emotive.
Research into Topics
• What is psychology• Psychology as a science• Perception• Memory• The Brain• T-tests• Ergonomics
Tracking Progress
• Our progress is documented online www.psychapprentice.wordpress.com
• Advantages of online portfolio-• Accessible, reliable, modern, tracked
chronologically.
Skills Learned
• Project/ contingency planning, research skills, multimedia, team work.
• Essentially every practical skill learned throughout our course to date has been applied to the project.
• One of the core learning experiences to date has been the importance of project management (Weiss & Wysocki, 1992; O’Connell, 1996)
Future opportunities
• Psychapprentice represents real world experience which is sought after from any employer.
• These skills can be applied to increase the potential of later projects, including our 4th year research.
Future of Psych Apprentice 2012
• January and February will represent our primary development phase.
• During these months the main technical challenges will be dealt with.
o Creating the animations in Flasho Recording and editing audioo Create website and host online
• March draws us near to the end of the production cycle and is where largest degree of our user testing will take place.
• This will be done through focus groups, surveys and one on one task analysis with users to identify possible issues or faults with the website itself.
Reflection
• We experienced difficulties with having to prioritise other assignments due to their immediate deadline.
• It is only upon reflection that we realise the volume of work we have achieved to date.
• This has mostly been research based, but we have created a strong foundation.
• We are enthusiastic about moving forward.
ReferencesMayer, R.E. (2005) Introduction to multimedia learning. in R. E. Mayer (Ed.).
The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.
O'Connell, F. (1996). How to run successful projects ii. London: TJ Press.Sweller, J. (2005) Implications of cognitive load theory for multimedia
learning. in R. E. Mayer (Ed.). The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Weiss, J. W., & Wysocki, R. K. (1993). 5-phase project management, a practical planning & implementation guide. Cambridge: Basic Books.