FRS 002FF — Sec. 001 — (2 units) — CRN 55901 — W 9:00-10:50pm — 157 Young
The Pros and Cons of Online Learning

Instructor: Beth Post, Department of Psychology, College of Letters and Science

Description: In this course, students will research the pedagogical strengths and weaknesses of “distance-” or "online-" based, hybrid, and traditional classroom/lecture learning. Students will conduct literature searches using both "in-person" and on-line resources, as well as develop and conduct a survey of UCD students to examine the pedagogical, social, and personality aspects of using online resources for learning in the undergraduate context. There are two main skill-learning goals of this course: mastery of online resources for information gathering (e.g. electronic library resources), and introduction to data collection and management. In addition, I hope that this seminar will increase the students’ awareness of their own approach to and use of online resources in their courses (e.g. assessing web-based information, using textbook ancillary resources for effective study and self-assessment, communicating with teachers and peers via online discussions, e-mail lists, etc.).

Format: Required activities will include a visit to a library, live search of stacks, search of internet-based electronic databases, distribution & collection of surveys (in-person & online). Grading: Students will be required to attend the seminar at the scheduled time, and will be expected to contribute to discussion and development of a survey (20%). Students will be required to turn in a brief summary of their literature search (20%). Students will be required to sign up for data collection either in person or online, and will be assigned to teams according to their collection method. Research teams will turn in data summary reports prior to final write-up (30%). Students will be required to write a 3-5 page paper summarizing their literature research and presenting their data in summary form (graphs and statistics as appropriate; 30%).

About the Instructor: I am a lecturer and academic coordinator in the psychology department. Since 2002, my sole teaching responsibility has been PSC 41, Research Methods in Psychology. This is a gateway course, has a giant enrollment (300+/quarter) and is taught as a hybrid (3 hours lecture, 1 hour lab). I co-developed and maintain a set of online tutorials that serve as “labs;” recently, I restructured the course to include a series of research activities centered around a set of online experiments students run themselves on, then prepare the data from for final presentation in paper form. As I continue to upgrade and teach this course, and connect with other people using online resources in their teaching, I continue to wonder about the nature of online learning. Is it different in any way from traditional person-to-large-group-of-people learning? Does it require a different type of personality, different motivation strategies? Is there a difference in the efficacy of these strategies? Are some personality or learning types differentially served by online vs. traditional learning? What does the literature have to say about this, and how should we be shaping our uses of online resources to match the research findings? These are the questions I hope personally to begin to answer with the proposed seminar. In addition, I hope that students will become aware of their own learning strategies, and learn how best to use tradition, online, and hybrid settings to foster their own learning styles and optimize their learning.