Using email for teaching
An account is given of a three-year study of the use of email for teaching purposes within two courses forming part of a psychology degree, in order to compare course delivery via email with delivery via 'traditional' lectures. The courses were a first year 'Psychology and IT' course, which was taught entirely via email and a second year 'Cognitive Psychology' course, parts of which were taught by email and part by lectures, some of which were supported by emailed summaries. Although there were drawbacks to the use of email for teaching, the email method was felt to have been successful, as was confirmed by generally positive student feedback. The examination performance of two successive student cohorts on an multiple-choice question (MCQ) paper was studied. In one cohort the poorest part-time students performed better on material taught by email than by lectures, while in the other cohort there was some evidence for lectures supported by emailed 1000-word summaries producing better performance. However, in this second cohort MCQ performance deriving from emailed lectures was worse than that deriving from other delivery formats. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
email psychology teaching learning styles