Using Open-Source Solutions to Teach Computing Skills to Psychology

Using Open-Source Solutions to Teach Computing Skills to Psychology Students David Allbritton DePaul University http://www.depaul.edu/ dallbrit

Computing for Behavioral Scientists Course for graduate and advanced undergraduate psychology students (novice or non-programmers) Teaches basic programming and web development skills applicable to psychological research Implemented with open-source software

Why Teach Programming to Psychology Students? Need for specialized software for psychological research beyond what is commercially available Gives students more options for doing their research Develop general problem skills and strategies

Learning Goals Develop problem-solving strategies that could be applied to a variety of computing tasks Develop students’ confidence in their abilities to learn any new computing skills that they might need for specific projects Apply skills to a project related to psychological research

Pedagogical Strategy Reinforce student efforts with observable results Encourage experimentation Encourage finding answers and developing skills for themselves Brief coverage of a wide range of topics to give a range of tools to choose from

Specific Programming Topics Unix commands XHTML JavaScript (basic programming concepts) Server-side scripting (Perl, PHP) Databases (MySQL) Web database applications

Text and Resources Internet & World Wide Web: How to Program (Dietel, Dietel, and Nieto, 2002) – Useful reference for numerous topics related to web development – JavaScript used to teach basic programming Web resources linked from course web site Unix “man” pages Web search engines to find prototypes

Weekly Lab Sessions Computer classroom with networked Windows PC for each student Brief introduction of topic and concepts by instructor Working examples of web pages or programs provided to students on course web server Assignment requiring modification of examples on course server to accomplish a specific task

Examples of Assignments Use Unix commands to produce a word frequency list for a given text file Use XHTML forms to implement a survey Use JavaScript and XHTML forms to implement a simple experiment Use server-side scripting and databases to implement an experiment and store data

Course Implementation with Open-Source Software Course server: Pentium desktop (http://sheu-hp.psy.depaul.edu) RedHat Linux 7.1 (later upgraded to 7.2) SSH, ftp, telnet access for students Apache 1.3.22 web server MySQL 3.23.41 database server Perl 5.6 PHP 4.0.6

Learning Outcomes Student comments and evaluations Continued use of course server Course final projects

Examples of Projects XHTML image maps for FACS tutorial XHTML forms to collect survey data and deliver data to researcher via email XHTML with Perl CGI to store survey data JavaScript statistics teaching demonstration PHP scripting with MySQL databases to – Implement an experiment on consumer decision making – Implement an on-line appointment scheduling system Web-based collection of ordinal rankings (Arnott & Allbritton, SCiP 2002)

Advantages of Using Open-Source Software Control for the instructor Freedom and accessibility for the instructor Flexibility for the instructor Freedom and accessibility for the students Increased learning opportunities for the students Price

Potential Disadvantages The instructor is also the system administrator. Training students to use commercial software could be more immediately applicable to their work as psychologists, if the commercial software is more widely used.

Conclusions Students developed technical and problemsolving skills that they were then able to apply to their own work and research. Open-source software contributed to the success of the course both in its implementation and in its pedagogy. For colleges and universities, the opensource philosophy is a “good fit.”