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 Topics  Non-Psychology Topics  Specific 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 o the printers was a problem. o 37% wanted assistance o with using the library. o 13% had trouble o understanding the class o timetable.

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 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 4 th 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 Flash o Recording and editing audio o 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.

References Mayer, 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.