The Experience of a Virtual Campus: Evaluation of Psychology Students´ Use of Internet
Abstract
This paper discusses the integration of a virtual learning procedure into a Social
Psychology course. This resource is available through the Virtual Campus at the
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile (www.ucv-cv.cl).
The site, designed for second year psychology students enrolled in the course,
included topics not covered in the regular course and a methodology that fosters
the development of a learning community.
Content and methods were sought to integrate various disciplinary perspectives
addressing psychosocial problems. More specifically, the virtual classroom
complemented regular classroom instruction by providing a number of
communication resources such as: discussion forums, opinion polls of controversial topics covered in class, and a chat room. Additionally, it included support texts, electronic materials, as well as instructions to search psychology-related databasis (i.e., PsychFirst, PsychINFO, and Econlit).
Through a survey designed to assess the students’ use of Internet, pre (at the
beginning of the academic year) and post (at the end of the year-long course) measures were obtained to examine the impact of this virtual learning procedure. Results show that students searched for information not covered in class and there was a significant change in the results assessed on the use of Internet as a learning procedure.
The use of a teaching-learning methodology that includes a virtual tool improves
the quality of teaching, by developing life long learning skills related to information management and knowledge of information and communication technologies (TICs).
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