Using a self-administered Visual Basic Software tool to teach psychological concepts.

This article introduces LearningLinks, a Visual Basic software tool that allows teachers to create highly individualized learning modules that embrace powerful constructivist and behavioral learning principles. A sample of 35 undergraduate students participated in the field testing of a module that had been designed to improve understanding of the psychological concepts, reinforcement and punishment. Results suggest that students quickly learned to tap the module's instructional features to increase their understanding of both concept definitions and applications. Students rated instructions as easy to follow and the module as an effective instructional tool. Future research and development efforts will focus on expanding the pool of content modules and on assessing the tool's long-term instructional benefits.

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In 1996-1997, a team of faculty and students at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education developed and field tested a software tool called LearningLinks. This set of linked programs allows teachers to blend text and graphics into highly individualized learning modules that can be self-administered by students (Strang & Schoeny, 1997). LearningLinks' pedagogical foundations represent the melding of powerful constructivist and behavioral learning principles. While using the LearningLinks authoring program to create an instructional module, the teacher designates the degree of self-direction, discovery, feedback, reinforcement, and practice through a series of simple menu selections. This article discusses the field testing of a module specifically designed to teach types of reinforcement and punishment--psychological concepts that perennially confuse undergraduate students.

Module construction consists of using the authoring program to build a series of instructional frames that include components displayed in Figure 1.

First, each frame is assigned a graphical template that defines its basic content and potential hot spot locations. Authoring tools are then used to create, position, and size as many as 12 individual click-sensitive zones, or hot spots, on any part of the template. Next, a short descriptor (level 1 text) is assigned to each hot spot zone. During instruction, this rtext appears adjacent to the template whenever its respective hot spot is clicked. Finally, a more comprehensive multi-line source of information (level 2 text) is developed for each zone. During instruction, level 2 text appears beneath the template in a scrollable text box whenever its predefined level 1 text box is clicked.

Another phase in module development concerns defining the options that students will use during instruction. These options appear as an array of click-sensitive command buttons beneath each frame's graphical template. Navigation options can be preset to allow the student to:

* move forward or backwards through the frame sequence in a linear fashion;

* enable a multi-view window that offers free access to any frame;

* display simultaneously or erase all the current frame's text boxes;

* call up a note pad for generating a permanent record of personal notes concerning each instructional frame; and

* end the instruction.

Tracking the student's use of the options in this array provides valuable insights about the learning strategies employed during the lesson.

THE PSYCHOLOGY MODULE

Using a Windows-based personal computer, each student navigated the psychology module through a mouse and occasional keyboard entries. This module included one frame containing navigation directions and four frames offering variations of textual and graphical depictions of the following learning concepts: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment. Figures 2-5 display the module's two definition-based and two matrix-based instructional frames with '?' zones within each frame designating click-sensitive hot spots.

Navigation options were preset so that students could move freely from any one frame to another, create printable notes on their learning progress, and complete their participation whenever they chose. In learning the four concepts, students could either follow an unsystematic approach defined by free movement both within and across frames or could develop a more systematic strategy. One strategy involved moving sequentially through a frame's text, stopping at each hot spot to contemplate a "fill-in" answer, and then clicking the hot spot to display the correct answer. Students employing this approach experienced the content sequencing advantages and the immediate feedback/correction of a typical linear program. A second strategy employed by students not valuing the click-intensive sequencing feature involved a single navigation button click that produced the simultaneous display of level 1 text for all of the current frame's hot spots. As the students studied the frame contents, another navigation button co uld be clicked at any time to "turn off' all hot spot-linked text, thus affording them the opportunity for immediate self-assessment of their learning.

Clicking a predefINed hot-spot zone on the frame template produced level 1 rtext that helped to complete the definition of a learning concept such as positive reinforcement. This text could be clicked to yield a longer segment of text information which appeared in the level 2 text box shown in Figure 1. In the current study, level 2 text consisted of a real-world illustration of the learning concept tied to the previously activated level 1 text. For example in instructional frame 1, after clicking a hot spot to clarify that "positive reinforcement is an increase in the strength of a behavior," a student could click the level 1 text to immediately display the following illustrative level 2 vignette: "SHARING TREATS WITH OTHER CHILDREN INCREASES in 4-year-old Ashley after her teacher smiles each time the child emits this behavior."

A note-taking option (Figure 1) was included in the psychology module to provide students with a source of relevant information that would help them to establish long-term retention of the reinforcement and punishment concepts. The text in this record was organized under the four instructional frames in chronological order and printed immediately following each student's completion of the learning activity.

FIELD TESTING RESULTS

The participants in this study were 35 undergraduate students enrolled in an Introduction to Child Development course. Volunteering yielded a small number of points for a laboratory participation component in the course. The study addressed three major questions: (a) how the module impacted student learning; (b) how students used the module; and (c) how students evaluated the experience.

Module Impact on Student Learning

Students completed a 16-item paper-and-pencil multiple-choice pretest immediately preceding their interaction with the psychology module. Each of the four psychological concepts was represented on this test by two questions focusing on the behavior and stimulus change components in the definitions, and another two questions that required the interpretation of illustrative vignettes. Immediately following their interaction with the psychology module, students completed a structurally identical posttest whose definition items were exactly like those included on the pretest but whose interpretative items contained vignettes differing from those found on the pretest.

Test results revealed that 34 of the 35 students answered more items correctly on the posttest than they had on the pretest. The remaining student achieved a perfect score (16) on both tests. Figure 6 displays the universal improvement for definition-related questions. When t-tests were applied to these data, significant improvement for each of the four learning concepts (p > .01) resulted.

Figure 7 displays the powerful results obtained for vignette-related test items. Significant improvement was observed for three of the four concepts, and a ceiling effect appeared to contribute to the lack of improvement for the fourth, positive reinforcement.

Student Use of the Psychology Module

Students averaged 1.9 minutes in acquiring the skills needed to navigate the psychology module, and they completed the subsequent learning phase in an average of 16.5 minutes. Interacting with the module was generally characterized by active exploration punctuated by high rates of information retrieval. For example, 33 of the 35 students accessed each of the four instructional frames at least once. Preference for working with the first instructional frame (Figure 2) was clearly demonstrated, with 71 % of the students devoting the greatest amount of their time to activities within this frame. The contribution to this effect of the frame's placement within the module remains to be determined.

Students tapped an average of 46.8 information sources during their interaction with the psychology module. Sixty percent of this activity focused on level 1 definition checks. Students viewed an average of 17.1 vignettes but used the simultaneous information display option an average of only 1.6 times. While 66% of the students elected to use the module's note pad feature, the note length for these 23 students averaged a modest 8.5 lines of text.

Student Evaluations

Results from a paper-and-pencil questionnaire administered at the close of participation revealed strong student endorsement of the psychology module. Ninety-seven percent rated the instructions as easy to follow, 97% rated the module as an effective instructional tool, and 94% indicated that future students should have the opportunity to use the module.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

The field-testing results indicated that the LearningLinks psychology module was easy to use, efficient in helping students acquire the reinforcement and punishment concepts, and endorsed by student users. Future research will be directed toward evaluating the training efficacy of the individual instructional frames and toward assessing the module's impact on long-term student learning.

On a more global level, the encouraging results of this study paralleled those obtained from an earlier study in which a Learning Links module was used in a graduate-level audiology course to help students learn the anatomy of the human ear (Strang & Schoeny, 1997). Additional content areas will be selected, and new modules developed and assimilated into the fieldtesting process. Current efforts are focusing on areas ranging from statistics to technology training.

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Reference

Strang, H.R., & Schoeny, Z.G. (1997). LearningLinks: A Visual Basic tool for developing hypermedia learning experiences. In J. Willis, J.D. Price, S. McNeil, B. Robin, & D.A. Willis (Eds.), Technology and teacher education annual: 1997 (pp. 664-666). Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.