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.