Student Response, Hampshire College

What are your learning and research needs as defined by course assignments?
Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds
of resources you encounter and need.

My learning and research needs as a psychology student in the
social sciences are fairly straightforward. For courses such as Social
Psychology, I needed access to different studies on the topic of whatever
I chose to focus on.

Online search engines and access to the five college catalog
were crucial to first finding applicable articles and then physically locating
them. For my Statistics course work I needed access to data that had been
collected online as well as access to computers with statistics software
inside and outside of class. For Cognitive Psychology the professor set
up a part of her web site for us to submit reaction papers on. We were
responsible for submitting them and subsequently critiquing our classmates'
papers online. We also were required to be subjects in two experiments
related to our class material. Half of the experiments that were options
were online and the other half were associated with the UMASS psychology
department. This is about the range of variety my coursework and research
has encompassed thus far.

What goals do you have for collaboration in this area?

I would like to see more social science classrooms involve the
internet as a tool for simplified communication. Submitting papers and
critiquing others' papers was much easier online than if my Cognitive Psychology
class as a whole had to deal with first turning papers in and then switching
off twice. Using the internet as a resource expedites parts of the learning
process so class time can be used for learning the material. Also, educational
measures about the technology that is available to aid research are effective
but perhaps not widespread enough. A fair amount of students aren't aware
of ways they can access tools like the search engines from convienient
places such as their rooms or the computer labs. Increased integration
of technology and education about said integration seem to be worthwhile
goals for this forum.

mmf98@hampshire.edu