The University PowerPoint Template

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Journals contain facts unlike the daily mail
Implementation of an inquiry-based learning task
enabling evaluation of information sources.
Myles Jones1 Pam McKinney2
Department of Psychology1, Centre for
Inquiry-Based learning in the Arts and Social
Sciences2 The University of Sheffield
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Overview

• Background
• Information literacy and group work
• Tutorial Task and implementation
• Examples of Student work
• Student and Tutor Feedback
• Discussion

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Psy 101 Discovering Psychology The Past

• Didactic lectures
• factual knowledge
• MCQ exam
• Post-graduate led MCQ tutorials

Dinosaurus Didacticus
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Issues

• Large numbers of students (300)
• Changes in number of students with A-level
  Psychology
• Ill prepared for psychology as a discursive
  subject

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Skills Sought by Graduate Recruiters (AGR 2006)

• Commitment and Drive
• Motivation and Enthusiasm
• Team working
• Oral Communication
• Flexibility and Adaptability
• Customer Focus
• Commercial Sensitivity

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• Psychology in the popular media

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The Task

• Find BBC internet news articles and newspaper
  articles (Newsbank)
• Work in groups (Collaborative Inquiry)
• Find corresponding scholarly article using WoK
  (Web of knowledge)
• Fill in power point assessment to reflect on
  searching process

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The Implementation 3 Tiers
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The Implementation Web Tools
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The Implementation Web Tools
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BBC online Newspaper Articles

• Search terms used Child Development, Babies
  development, Psychology, Development, Children,
  Babies.

Emily Jones (Post-graduate associate tutor)
George Thomas (undergraduate Student)
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BBC online Newspaper Articles Provide any
information you wish about your articles and
searches (feel free to insert additional pages!)

• Breast fed children handle stress better. Among
  almost 9,000 children that were bottle fed, found
  it harder to deal with stressful events, such as
  parental divorce. Swedish researchers believe
  close physical contact and mother-baby bonding
  during the first few days of life may be
  important factors to the development of the
  ability to cope well with stress.
• Research in children as young as 4 months shows a
  preference for certain colours. Researchers used
  a special camera which was initially designed to
  test RAF fighter pilots and their reactions,
  however in this case it was used to to track the
  babies eye movements when presented with
  different colours. However, a criticism of the
  study already discovered is that the research was
  only conducted on 30 babies.
• Babies are said to be able to remember music that
  they heard after 6 months of pregnancy, when
  still in their mothers womb, more than a year
  after birth. It was previously thought that
  babies could only have a memory span of around a
  month, however the research carried out on 11
  babies which showed preference to specific pieces
  of music and disregard for moderately similar
  music.

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Did you find a journal article relating to your
BBC news online article (if so provide any
information about article)?

• Yes we did. It was called New Evidence for
  Infant Colour Categories by Anna Franklin and
  Ian R. L. Davies at the University of Surrey. It
  was one of the journals which comprised of the
  British Journal of Developmental Psychology 2004.
• It contained experiments carried out by both
  adults and infants to investigate colour
  preferences to novel (new) colours which were
  presented to both sets of participants after
  habituation had been used with a single colour.
• It was shown that contrary to popular belief,
  infants do posses the ability to distinguish
  colour categories at 4 months old and are
  consistent with Bornstein's results of a
  similar experiment.
• The article was in depth and detailed, presenting
  graphical representations of the data, as well as
  the statistical results.

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Did you notice any differences between the BBC
online news article and the journal article?
There were massive differences between the BBC
article and the journal. First of all, the
respective titles of both pieces of research were
totally different, however similar. The BBC was
titled Babies have favourite colours in
comparison to the journal title, New evidence
for infant colour categories. The journal itself
was detailed, containing graphs and reliable
statistics, none of which were mentioned in the
BBC article. The journal also used several
different experiments to ensure the validity of
the initial experiment, of which none was
mentioned in the BBC article. The BBC article
also managed to miss out the fact that adults
were used in the research experiment as a form of
control, to allow the infants results to be
compared to an adults, to see if the presence of
colour categories existed in 4 month old
children. I feel that the BBC article took all
the interesting and easy pieces of information
from the journal article and summarised it into a
readable, public format, which could describe the
results in a round-about way, to keep the public
updated with current infant research, without
providing too much information which may cause
confusion to the reader.
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More Examples of student work
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Student tutorial evaluation
60 agree or agree strongly 20 undecided 20
disagree or disagree strongly
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Student tutorial evaluation
71 agree or agree strongly 19 undecided 10
disagree or disagree strongly
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Student tutorial evaluation
59 agree or agree strongly 28 undecided 13
disagree or disagree strongly
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Future actually measuring information literacy
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Postgraduate tutor focus groupwhat worked well

• Students are already accomplished searchers, just
  need to transfer skills to new medium
• Unfamiliar with term Information literacy but
  it makes sense
• Positive response to open-ended nature of the
  task - ability to pick topics of personal
  interest
• Skills students learn through this activity are
  vital

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Postgraduate tutor focus grouppotential for
development

• Some difficulties in getting students to engage
  with collaborative work
• Both the news articles they picked had no
  original articlethey got quite upset and
  thought they were going to get marked down for
  that
• More helpful to model the full process of the
  task before students start searching for news
  articles

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Postgraduate tutor focus groupoverall

• Positive learning experience for both
  undergraduate and post-graduate students.
• Range of teaching methods
• Greater interaction and even linking teaching and
  research by finding novel research articles of
  interest.

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Tutors 06-07
Kate BartlettRebecca BeekenYael
BennLisa-MarieBerryJoanna BlackburnMaria
ChuBecky CiesielskiTracy EptonJilly
GibsonVictoria HaymanKathryn HoldenClare
HuytonChristopher JonesEmily JonesDaphne
KaklamanouDavid Kelly
Hwan CuiKohThomas McadamsCharlotte
McClellandNils MuhlertKaren NivenElinor
PeggAdriano PeixotoClair PondIona ReadLaura
RennieYvonne-OliviaStockerDrew TarmeyNaira
TaroyanKate ThomasonErin WalkerVictoriaYoung
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Tutors 07-08
Nichlas Stenning Olivia Stocker Drew Tarmey
Catherine Taylor Maria Chu Alexander
Cope Michael Bruyns-Haylett Thomas Bullock
David Cameron Tracey Epton Laura Rennie Alison
Bromley
Mathew Evans Sheng-Yu Fan Daphne Kaklamanou
Hwan Koh Suzannah Laycock Jennifer Lewis
Lynette Madeley Tom McAdams Charlotte
McClelland Abigail Oldfield Barry Orr Joanna
Peterkin Clair Pond
Kate Absolom AmnaAbdalla Almazam Kate Bartlett
Helen Batey Rebecca Beeken Judith Bek Yael
Benn Lisa-Marie Berry Laura Bishop Joanna
Blackburn Rufino Bolado-Gomez
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Reflections

• Large number of tutors and students
• Difficult to manage
• Difficult to know if reported problems are
  general or only affecting a small number of
  students

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Acknowledgements

• Sandra Turkington (Sheffield Library)
• Clare Scott (Sheffield Library)
• Angela Newton (Leeds Library)
• Dr Amanda Harrison (Leeds Psychology)
• Dr Jon May (Sheffield Psychology)
• Dr Richard Rowe (Sheffield Psychology)
• Dr Jackie Andrade (Sheffield Psychology)

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We welcome comments, observations and discussion