Interesting history about the internet and web
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This page was created and is maintained by Dr. Timothy A.
Pychyl.
Please send comments or questions to
tpychyl@ccs.carleton.ca
Last updated April 6, 2000.
I want to congratulate you all on an awesome year. I have been impressed throughout the course with your efforts and successes. Thomas, you have to admit, "we saw the learning!" ;)
I wish you continued success in the exams ahead and in all of your studies in the future. My door will always be open to you (but, it's best to email ahead first!). I hope you will keep in touch, even if you're moving on.
All the best!
Past Notices
This week our focus is on two things:
We will go to the computer lab after the presentation on Wednesday, and we will meet there again on Friday.
Our last class is on Wednesday, April 5th. We will review all of the group projects on the web, and then we will hold an informal gathering after class (to be determined by the class) to celebrate our year together. Please contact Curtis if you have suggestions for our get together.
At David's request, I'm posting the requirements for your research paper revisions. If you meet the following requirements, your grade will be raised one grade point. For example, a B will become a B+ or a B+ will be moved up to an A-.
A reminder that there is no class on Friday, March 24th as we are presenting at the high school that morning.
The week of March 27-31, we will be meeting in the computer lab, A509 SA.
Each day in class between March 13th and March 22nd (inclusive), we will use any time available after the presentations to work on the group web projects. Classes on March 29th and 31st will be held in the computer lab. The final class for the year is on Wednesday, April 5th at which time we will review all of the group projects and discuss your web sites.
Our oral presentations continue until the end of March (please check the schedule for your date).
After the presentations are complete on each day, we will go to the computer lab to continue work on the group web site project (the last assignment for the year!). See you in class.
Below is something that may interest you from the Chronicle in Higher Education. I subscribe to the online version and this is one of their "free" articles (available to anyone who visits their site at:http://chronicle.com/free/
Mount Holyoke Finds That Web Publishing Improves Class Instruction
By FLORENCE OLSEN
South Hadley, Mass.
Using the World Wide Web in a classroom course won't make a boring class interesting, but it can make a good course even better, especially when the Web can be used for sharing lab results with classmates, says Katie Sandretto, a junior at Mount Holyoke College. "It allows us to see how biology is a creative process, and not something where you put in a given number of things, and you always get the same result."
Ms. Sandretto was one of several students and faculty members who spoke at a recent conference here on information technology. Mount Holyoke faculty members and their students said that students learn more when they use Web technology to publish their class research on the campus computer network, where others besides the professor can see their work.
Rachel Fink, an associate professor of biological sciences at Mount Holyoke, said cellular biologists have developed new insights by watching living cells in time-lapse movies produced with a video camera attached to a microscope. Last fall, she started making her cell videos available to her students, via Mount Holyoke's internal computer network.
"I wanted the students to be able to sit in their PJ's in the dorm room with their cocoa and watch the movies -- again and again -- that we had shown in class," Ms. Fink said. "I knew they would be as fascinated by them as I was." The next logical step was to have the students make their own time-lapse movies as they were learning "how a cell crawls," she said.
Although she still draws on a blackboard, and her students still read a textbook, the time-lapse videos are now part of the mix. When students are able to make such movies, the line between research and learning becomes less distinct, which is how it should be, she said.
Indeed, the possibility of using new information technology -- such as modeling programs -- has led to a complete overhaul of the way some science courses are taught. "It's very frightening and exciting," said Marcia C. Linn, a professor of education at the University of California at Berkeley, at the Mount Holyoke conference.
Even such general-purpose devices as the Palm Pilot electronic organizer have affected how some biology instructors teach subjects like water quality. "When you can go out in the field and leave your Palm Pilot for 24 hours to gather data, that's a very different situation from having a field trip once a year," she said.
Several humanities professors at Mount Holyoke also spoke about exploring teaching uses for the Web. The act of creating hyperlinks in a text document seems to enhance students' ability to think about connections, "one of the perhaps unforeseen but certainly positive benefits of this kind of technology," said Robert Shwartz, a professor of history.
Vincent Ferraro, a professor of international relations at the college, said the Internet had increased the diversity of resources available to students. For his courses, he now supplements government publications with information that was never available before. "All sorts of people have their voices on the Net that were never heard," he said.
Mr. Ferraro publishes all of his foreign-policy course readings on the Web, and students create Web pages that he critiques as he would written papers. To improve their understanding of what they read, he encourages students to copy and paste important passages from their readings into a word processor, and then to annotate the text.
"It's extraordinary what happens when the students do the readings this way," Mr. Ferraro said. "They are conducting a dialogue with the author, which is what you want," rather than skimming and highlighting passages to remind themselves to read later, he said.
Gabriele Wittig Davis, a professor and chairman of the German-studies department at Mount Holyoke, said she uses the Web extensively for teaching and research, but she said many people are still skeptical of its benefits for teaching and learning. "We try to find ways for using the media correctly for the kind of project we're doing," she said.
However, the time to learn about the new media is not when starting out in a college-teaching career, she said. "I wouldn't dare tell any of my junior faculty to invest much time in it before tenure."
In the week ahead, we will do two things:
During the Reading Week your focus should be on your research papers. Although there will not be office hours during Reading Week, you can email Tim with your questions as necessary.
Finally, the High School presentations have been confirmed for Friday, March 24th at 9:55 a.m. Please email your presentation topic and title to Tim asap! so that we can plan the groups for this session.
There are a number of things you need to focus on over the next few weeks:
On Wednesday, we will meet in the computer lab. Our focus will be on creating a list of attributes for effective web sites. This will form the foundation for your group project, and we will use your list to create the marking scheme for this project. On Wednesday, we will look for web resources in this regard, and on Friday you will create the first part of your group project by creating a group web page that outlines what your group will design and why.
Finally, all of you should have received feedback on your annotated bibliographies by midnight on Friday. Please email Tim or email Anita if you have an questions or concerns.
This week, we will use both of our class sessions to further discuss writing in psychology.
Please see the note below for our class activities on Friday. Anita has finished marking her share of the annotated bibliographies, but I have not. Feedback and marks will be provided early next week.
What to expect this week . . .
Please be sure to post your introduction to your research essay on your
web site by midnight, Monday, January 24th. On Wednesday, we will discuss
this writing in class, so please bring a hard copy of ths writing to class
as well.
On Friday, January 28th we will hear Cynthia's presentation and we will use class time organize research groups (a task we began at the beginning of the month).
Many thanks to Chelsa for posting her presentation on her web site for discussion last week!
This past Friday (i.e., January 7th), each student briefly presented his or her research topic as well as the titles for some of the articles that you have been reading. It was very interesting! (Thanks to Curtis, Jon and Heather for posting their research topics on the newsgroup in their absence from class.)
Our next step is to organize research groups based on common interests. There were certainly some obvious connections in the class including: motivation in sports, education issues, depression and motivation, procrastination, the role of the unconscious, parental influences on children, etc. We will organize these groups formally sometime during the last two weeks of January. (Note: If you begin to organize a group based on themes presented on Friday, please email Tim your group members' names and group thesis statement.)
As explained in class, given the extension on the due date for the annotated bibliography, a thesis statement is now required as an introduction to your bibliography. See sample from last year as an example. Please feel free to discuss these with Anita or me during office hours or via email.
Yesterday, I spent time in class looking ahead at the term to organize our efforts. The focus is on the research paper and group project. I certainly emphasized the importance of thorough, relevant research now. And, in that regard, I extended the due date on the Annotated Bibliography to Monday, January 17th in order to ensure that the research gets the attention it deserves.
I would encourage those of you who were unable to attend class to contact a classmate to discuss Wednesday's class and/or to attend office hours.
On Friday, we will continue our informal presentations on research topics and readings to date. I will also discuss research strategies with PsychLIT. Next week, on Wednesday, we will split the class in half to work in the library and computer lab. (Please email me if you have any questions.)
I've certainly enjoyed this term. You've done a great job on all of our learning activities. I've enjoyed your presentations, and learned a great deal from them. I'm looking forward to hearing about your research and annotated bibliographies in the new year.
Speaking of these bibliographies, Jon made a proposal on the course newsgroup. You should check that out, as I responded by saying I agree (and it results in an extension of the due date for the web posting of the annotated bibliography to Monday, January 10, 2000.) As noted in the newsgroup posting, however, you must bring a printed version of your bibliography to class on the Monday (what you have complete) as each of you will be presenting your research topic briefly to the class on Wednesday, January 5th so that we can begin creating research teams.
p.s. Marks will be
posted
December 6, 1999. Email Tim for
your password.
Past Notices
Each of you will have received feedback on your course web sites now. Please feel free to discuss this with me during office hours or via email. In a word, your websites are wonderful! These electronic portfolios of your work will serve you well for your annotated bibliographies, research papers and group work next term.
Speaking of the annotated bibliographies, I have provided an extension as requested for this portion of your work. It is now due on the web for the first class in January (January 5th). Please note that due to the Y2K computer problem, our university computers will not be accessible December 31st to January 5th.
As I'm looking ahead to January, I would like to announce that for the first class in January, we will be presenting a very brief summary of our research area so that we can organize into small groups. Please be prepared to give a 2-minute overview of your research topic on January 5th.
I encourage all of you to check out various student web sites. They are all unique and interesting! See you Wednesday (yikes, it's almost December)
Pychyl, T.A., Lee, J.M., Thibodeau, R., & Blunt, A. (1999). Five days of emotion: An experience sampling study of undergraduate student procrastination. In J.R. Ferrari & T.A. Pychyl (Eds.) Procrastination: Current Issues and New Directions. [Special Issue]. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 14, 16-32.
What are the emotions that accompany procrastination?
Paged 8 times daily for 5 days (9 a.m.-10 p.m.)
Used series of t tests and found that task when procrastinating was more pleasant, less confusing, less difficult, less important and less stressful than avoided activity.
Correlation coefficients calculated
Procrastination at time of experience not correlated with PA or NA
Correlated with guilt (r = .42) and motivation (r = -.32)
Academic Procrastination Scale correlate with NA (r = .35)
On Friday, we discussed the course web sites and my expectations for these websites. These will be evaluated the weekend of November 20th, so please complete your work on your site before this date. Tim also presented a guide to effective presentations.
Next week, we'll be focusing on three things:
On Wednesday, you can choose to work in 506SA with Anita on your summary, or go to the computer lab (509SA) to work on your web site. On Friday, Tim will be presenting a research paper as a model of the oral presentations. On Wednesday, November 10th, we will use class time to discuss the individual papers that people are reading and oral presentation preparation.
Oral presentations begin on Friday, November 12th. See the schedule for your assigned date. Please note that in addition to the presentations, each presenter will have a CHAT Newsgroup reviewer. The assigned reviewer will post an answer to the following three questions on the newsgroup within 24 hours of the presentation (required for class participation mark).
The presenter is expected to respond to this posting, particularly in terms of question #3.
Two things to note for the week ahead:
See you Wednesday!
The summary itself will consist of four paragraphs (minimum structure).
These are the four paragraphs (follows structure of paper):
That's the structure, these are the due dates:
I hope this clarifies things for everyone. Email Tim or Anita if you are confused. Better yet, post your question to the newsgroup!
p.s. October 20th (Wednesday) go to the Career Services Centre in the Unicentre.
Here's the note I sent to everyone in the class who uses a CHAT email account. In case you're not checking your CHAT account (I would ask that you do regularly, or forward your mail from CHAT to your own ISP), I'm posting the content as an update below.
Greetings
Just a short note to say that you made a very good start
on your course web sites. If you don't understand everything,
that's ok! We'll have more time on Friday to get the basics
straight. I encourage you to go to a computer lab and work
with Netscape Composer to become more familiar with it. This
will be an important tool for the communication of your
learning throughout the course.
On Friday, we'll return to the computer lab. If your web site is complete at that time, you should use the lab time to create a new page on your site where you can post your explanation of the figures found on page 640 of the reading. What are the relationships described in the diagrams?
If you have questions about the reading, try emailing your question to the course newsgroup. Anita monitors the newsgroup regularly and other students may be able to help out as well.
Again, please don't be upset if you feel a little lost with
the computers so far. We've only just begun (pardon the
song lyric please), and you're doing very well.
see you Friday!
tim
On Friday, we'll be discussing the various sections of the paper, our confusions related to these sections, and we'll begin a discussion of your areas of concern (this will take a couple of weeks).
Next Wednesday, September 29th, please go to the computer lab, 509SA as we will begin work on our course home pages. The first assignment you will post on your web site will be the summary of the Elliot and McGregor article.
See you in 506 Southam!