APS Member Turns ‘nagging frustration’ into a valuable on-line resource for anyone who teaches a laboratory class

Since 1982 when APS Member Kenneth McGraw of the University of Mississippi began teaching an undergraduate lab, the laboratory software he has used in his lab classes has always frustrated him.

"The problem," he said, "is that I would run an experiment in class and I wouldn’t have control over it. I would often say, ‘well, I’d love to change the timing on the experiment, add trials, reposition the stimuli, or modify the experiment in another way,’ but since I did not have access to the source there was no way I could make any changes."

Over the years, the lack of control became more of a nagging frustration. He shared these feelings with others in the field, and found that they too felt the same. He tried everything to change the experiment that were available. He even had computer science students volunteer to write certain programs for him.

And then something happened.

About four years ago, the University of Mississippi started a faculty technology development center where faculty from different disciplines were brought together for workshops on using new technology. It was at one of these workshops where he began to brainstorm with engineer Mark Toe.

"We began looking at the different multi-media packages that were available for creating programs. Mark learned that one of these packages, Authorware™, was not only good for running programs we had created locally, but that we were also able to run them on the Internet using Shockwave technology developed by Macromedia," said McGraw.

Onward and Upward

Soon, McGraw and Tew had received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education that enabled them to develop PsychExps, a web site for conducting for conducting interactive cognitive psychology experiments on line. They also hired APS Student Affiliate John Williams as a third team member.

The University of Mississippi PsychExps team from the left: Ken McGraw, John Williams, and Mark Tew.

What makes PsychExps so valuable is the interactive nature of the site—experiments respond to user input—and the fact that users can collect data at the site. "To the best of our knowledge," McGraw said, "PsychExps is the only site that shares its data archive."

Located at http://psychexps.olemiss.edu/, the experiments found on PsychExps were created using Authorware Professional by Macromedia. Experiments are run by using the free Shockwave plug-in that can be downloaded directly from Macromedia using links at the PsychExps web site. Student users can gather data on themselves and add their data to an archive. Instructors can then download the data generated by their own students or any others in the archive for laboratory use. Future experiments will be added by both the developers of this site and the users. This site will enable psychology departments to eliminate many of the expenses associated with providing undergraduate laboratory students the space, hardware, and software needed to conduct laboratory experiments.

Your Department Has No Money? No Problem!

"Our first goal in putting experiments on the Web was merely to have this technology available for our own classes," said McGraw. In preparing their grant, however, McGraw and Tew emphasized the benefit that this technology would provide to the many schools with psychology majors who do not have the resources to offer lab classes. McGraw hopes PsychExps will allow those schools that did not have lab classes before to now be able to offer lab classes in their curriculum.

"If there are any web-connected computers available to students on campus, they can collect data on our experiments, and their classroom instructor can bet back the data for the entire class," said McGraw. "there is no need for space in the psychology department, no need for the psychology department to buy software or buy a computer. They can simply log on from the library and collect their data just as they would in a more tradition lab-based class."

Currently there are six interactive cognitive psychology experiments up and running on the site with many more to come. McGraw has used some of them in his own lab classes. ""have used them and they work great. The students like them because they are so convenient," said McGraw. By the time school begins this fall, more experiments will be added and the site will have enough experiments to serve lab classes.

One of the good things about running interactive experiments over the Internet is that participants from anywhere in the world can add to the outcomes of the experiments. McGraw explained that it is possible for users to contact lab instructors at other schools and have them have their students run, for example, the Word Recognition Study in the same week. The instructors can then combine the data sets. "So now instead of just having 15-20 students for an experiment, you have 80 students. With 80 students for an experiment you have a very, very powerful design for detecting effects. So, students in lab classes can study effects that they could otherwise not be able to study. So, this is an advantage," said McGraw.

Currently McGraw and Tew are looking to get the site established as a valuable resource for the teaching of basic behavioral science in lab classes. They want to build up a user base. And more than that, they would like to get users to see the site as a resource and hopefully the users will want to contribute back and become developers.

WANTED: User-Developers

"In the second and third year of the web site, we are going to have workshops here at the University of Mississippi for those who have expressed interest in PsychExps or for those who would like to contribute experiments to the site," said McGraw. "We will work with them to allow them to modify existing experiments and add their own experiments," he said.

Ultimately, what McGraw and Tew would like to see happen is have a professional organization take over the site. The organization could then appoint a web master who would serve as a journal editor. Individuals would then submit experiments to the journal editor web master, and the editor would decide to post them or not post them. "I think it could be worth the equivalent of a publication credit if you had an experiment posted at PsychExps," said McGraw. "I think it would generate a lot of interest and the site would wind up with potentially thousands of experiments that could run over the internet," he added.

How Do I Get My Classes Started?

"We think this can be made into a very user friendly program. The toughest thing to do is getting the plug-in installed and this is only because most folks have not yet installed plug-ins. Once you install the plug-in, the rest of the work is a piece of cake because you are all set," said McGraw.

Kristen Bourke