21st Century Statistical Tools for the 21st Century Psychology Trade: Web & Computer Methods for Teaching Statistics to University Psychology Students

Kornbrot, Diana
University of Hertfrodshire,
UK

This paper is based on the experience of teaching a 1 semester elective module on Advanced Psychological Model Building and Evaluation to final year B.Sc. Hons) psychology students in the UK. The course makes use of a Managed Learning Environment called StudyNET. All registered students have access via the WWW and a personal password form the University or from their own home or Internet café. The facilities provided include lecture notes and files in any format including statistical or excel data files, movies etc; WWW resources; discussion forum where any student can post items and responses to previous items; and course news. Students can also submit coursework electronically that instructors can mark and return electronically. The lecturer uses POWERPOINT or WORD files on line to demonstrate concepts. These concepts are interspersed with live demonstrations using EXCEL, SPSS or other packages. Students then have a practical session in a computer lab to practice the concepts and techniques, and submit weekly assignments. The curriculum includes modern ways of presenting traditional topics, e.g. ANOVA using graphic representation of results in terms of confidence levels as well as mean. Inferential methods are extended by an emphasis on power and effect size. Finally, logit methods are introduced as an extension of GLM methods to count data. The approach is evaluated in terms of student feedback and student performance on exams and projects.