USING IPADS AS CREATIVE TOOLS IN TEACHING PSYCHOLOGY AT AN URBAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Azizi Seixas and Kate Wolfe

INTRODUCTION

Educators at the collegiate level, particularly at community colleges, arc faced with the challenge of providing quality education to an increasing number of non-traditional students in a dynamic technological landscape (El Mansour and Mupinga, 2007). To meet this challenge, several innovative tools and strategies have been implemented in traditional pedagogies such as the use of partially online courses called blended or hybrid courses (Gerbic, 2011; El Mansour & Mupinga, 2007). Using mobile devices, such as the iPad, is an excellent step in the right direction, but it is a move that has advantages such as creating opportunities for more creative student-instructor engagement and disadvantages such as the level of comfort an instructor has with the technological tool. The authors participated in the iPad Initiative at Hostos Community College in order to update their teaching tools and add excitement, and creativity to psychology courses.

Our motivation to participate in the iPad Initiative was spurred by our recognition that the current state of affairs in community college education needs co change to meet the growing needs of a diverse and non-traditional student population (El Mansour & Mupinga, 2007). Today 's students are younger and technologically advanced and therefore learning has to be creative, current and flexible. I n our estimation, using innovative cools like the iPad provides a unique opportunity to satisfy these requisites.

However, any attempt to modernize the learning experience has to be squared with the growing academic under-preparedness of students at the college level. As faculty, we see students who possess varying academic challenges. Some students seem co lack appetite to learn and do the bare minimum required to acquire knowledge. Other students have difficulty maintaining an adequate attention span. Underprepared students may also not be able to discern between surface and deep knowledge, such as being fixated on regurgitating definitions as opposed to knowing how to apply knowledge (Biggs, 1999; Entwistle, 1988). Others may experience problems with contextual learning (being able to understand content and context of knowledge) and knowledge transfer, what cognitive psychologist call situated and distributed cognitions (Borko & Putnam, 1998; Brown, 1998; Dirx, Amey, & Haston, 1999; Imel, 2000; Putnam & Borko, 2000). Aliteracy (not having the appetite rouse reading as the gateway to exploring new knowledge but instead using internee search engines to acquire and manipulate new information) may also plague some of our students (Beer, 1996; Ramsey, 2002). Amidst these challenges, today's students are driven, smart, creative, and resilient; they are ready to meet 21st century challenges. If our students are ready to meet these challenges, instructors ought to be ready, as well, by augmenting our customary teaching toolkits meet today's student.

COLLEGE INFORMATION AND AUTHORS' BACKGROUND

Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College is a t wo-year, public, com­ munity college within the City University New York (CUNY). Hostos was founded in order to meet the community demands for an educational institution serving the people of the South Bronx, who traditionally had been excluded from higher education opportunities. This was an historic first in the state, intentionally establishing a community college in one of the country's poorest congressional districts (OIRSA, 2013). Hostos's mission is to "offer access to higher education leading to intellectual growth and socio-economic mobility through the development of linguistic, mathematical, technological, and critical thinking proficiencies needed for lifelong learning and for success in a variety of programs including careers, liberal arts , transfer, and chose professional programs leading to licensure'' (Hostos Mission S1a1emem). Hostos offers degree and certificate program which include technical/career training and transfer programs. Student enrollments have grown dramatically over the past decade and students at Hostos are a diverse, multilingual group. representing 120 countries and 78 languages. Students arc mostly Hispanic and Black and speak languages other than English at home. Our students increasingly represent generation 1.5, that is, children of non-English speaking immigrants. Many Hostos stude111 enter with a GED or a non-U.S. high school diploma (OlRSA, 2013).

The author both reach psychology at Eugenia Maria de Hostos Community College, a two -year, public, open admissions college within the City University New York (CU NY) system. Both instructors are in the Behavioral and Social Science Department and teach a wide range of psychology class chat require technologically advanced tools to meet the dynamic nature of our field, psychology. We were hired two years ago and have been involved with other technological innovations such as teaching hybrid and online courses.

Prof. Wolfe b a social psychologist with over a decade of experience teaching at all collegiate levels. Much of her experience has been acquitted through teaching at urban community colleges. She has taught many psychology courses over the years, most recently focusing on General Psychology, a course geared toward fresh­ man students, and lifespan development, a course which enrolls many nursing and pre-nursing students.

Prof. Seixas is a clinical psychologist with over four years of teaching at the collegiate level in urban settings. He has taught a wide variety of psychology classes over the years, and similar co Prof. Wolfe has recently focused on foundation psychology courses, such as General Psychology, which attracts students from different cultural and academic backgrounds and with diverse career pursuits.

THE IPAD INITIATIVE

The Hostos iPad Pilot Initiative was established in the Fall semester 2012 to provide faculty with the opportunity to explore the use of iPads for reaching across a variety of disciples (C UNY, 2011). The authors participated in this initial pilot and arc again participating in another pilot currently being run to involve students using iPads in the classroom. Selected faculty, working in pairs, are loaned an iPad for the semester to use in their classroom. This arrangement facilitated faculty's ability to collaborate about ideas that enriched the learning experience for students. The iPad served as a conduit and a resource for the instructors and students alike, as it allowed: instructors to teach traditional and extant concepts in creative ways and students to gain a better understanding of difficult concepts and ideas.

We both found many applications (“apps”) on the iPad that were useful in teaching General Psychology. One of the apps we found is called the 3-D Brain; we both used this app to teach an entire chapter on neuroscience. Students were shown a three dimensional picture of the brain, as well as the location and function of important sections of the brain. This could not have done in without the use of the iPad. For the sensation and perception chapter, we found a visual illusions app, Illusions for iPad, and the Stroop Effect apps that we used to demonstrate how our brain organizes perceptual information. These apps made teaching sensation and perception a lot more interesting, fun and interactive for both us and the students. Also, we found an app which illustrates different facial expressions corresponding to different emotions, Emotionx; we used this to have students identify a wide range of emotional expression which is an excellent addition to our motivation and emotion chapter. Overall, the iPad and the apps allowed us to make our pedestrian introductory courses active in a community college like ours that does not have the resources of a psychology experimental lab to supplement lecture.

Moreover, we used the iPad in our advanced courses such as Developmental Psychology, Social Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, and Personality Psychology. Some of the apps we used were: Case Files in Psychiatry by McGraw Hill, Glyph, Personality Tests, Psychology Assessment, Brain Baseline and Article search apps. Of note, the Article Search app was one of our favorites because it gave us the most up-to-date research articles from two search engines—Google Scholar and Microsoft Scholar. We used it as a reference in the classroom to research journal articles in class to answer our questions. Through that modeling of active research inquiry, we found that students were no longer showing signs of aliteracy, as they read more and came more prepared to class armed with research articles to challenge ideas and concepts they disagreed with in the textbook. We felt that the iPad allowed our classes to reach the level of critical thinking, contextual learning, and deep and surface learning we had strived to achieve in previous iterations of these advanced classes, based on the enhanced quality and quantity of in-class discussion and improved quality of critical thinking written assignments.

CONCLUSION

We strongly believe that the iPad serves as a great buffer for the academic risk factors we listed above by bringing out the protective factors and strengths of our modern day student population, such as being mobile/always on the go, creative and technologically savvy. Through our brief experience using the iPad in our classes we have identified three important functions of the iPad as a pedagogical tool. First, we believe that the iPad serves as a learning conduit by enticing students to access old and new knowledge that is usually buried in antiquated resources, such as the encyclopedia, old textbooks and old journal articles. Second, we believe that the iPad is a resource providing background information for students. Our students saw it as a repository for large textbooks chat would have been left at home but instead are now finger rips away of being accessed. Third, we believe that the iPad extends the boundaries of the physical classroom co the boundaries of the World Wide Web, which gives students and instructors more space to play and see learning as fun and dynamic.

CHALLENGES, LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE PLANS

Our paper is aimed at two audiences: instructors who consider themselves either technophobes or traditionalists. Why? Because we find char these individuals have the most fervid opposition and apprehension about the iPad initiatives. We were motivated to write this manuscript to dispel myths and allay fears that faculty may have regarding technology use in the classroom, First, one of the myths we are constantly bombarded with is "do I have to change everything about my teaching style to accommodate the iPad?" Simply, no! The iPad is not a pedagogy, it is a tool. Second, one of the fears we often bear s "do I have robe techy or computer savvy?" Again, no! The iPad is not a platform, instructional delivery system or a learning environment, like Blackboard; it is a cool. And it is our belief that it can enhance an instructor's personal pedagogical styles and knowledge content through a more dynamic medium.

Even though our experience with the iPad had many highs. we encountered some challenges. First, we were challenged by the dynamism of technology and knowledge. Newer and better applications are being created daily, which can under­ mine the comfort we have in planning ahead of rime a semester long curriculum. Second, we also felt that the cost of the iPad as well as application can " break the bank" of a nominal instructor's budget. Third, we felt that technical issues such as Wi-Fi access and capability could thwart the excitement of an excellent in-class activity. Lase, being comfortable with the technological cool could be a challenge, although the minimum level of technological competency is pretty low, and instructors could design their classes to their proficiencies.

FUTURE PLANS

We acknowledge that the anecdotal style of our paper has advantages and limitations, and so we plan to assess the effectiveness of the iPad as well as to investigate whether the use of the iPad translates into better test student scores and overall academic achievement and success. We would also like to investigate how the use of the iPad affects non-academic factors such as attitude toward learning and metacognitions. With students' increasing familiarity and comfort with iPads and ocher like devices we hypothesize that there would be an increase in student interest and motivation co learn difficult copies like neuroscience. It is possible chat purring iPads in the hands of students with instructor driven presentations would allow some feelings of greater control among students and facilitate learning of the subject matter by students with a kinesthetic learning style. The authors are currently involved in an initiative from Educational Technology chat provides iPads for students so stay tuned for the results from char informal trial. \Y/e ac knowledge chat more empirical research needs to be done to establish gains from using iPads for faculty and students. These future studies can help clarify whether the gains arc in the form of better rest scores, greater interest in content and learning process, or greater motivation among students.

REFERENCES

Bee r, K. (1996). "No time, no interest, no way! The 3 voices of aliteracy." School Library Journal 42, 30- 33.

Biggs, J. (I 999). Teaching for quality learning at university. New York, NY: Open University Press.

Borko, H. and Putnam, R. T. (19 98). The role of context in teacher Learning and teacher education. In contextual reaching and learning: preparing teachers to enhance student success in and beyond school. Information Series No. 376.

Brown, B. L. (1998). Applying constructivism in vocational and career education Information. Series No. 378. Co lumbus: ERIC Clearing house on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education, Center on Education and Training for Employment, College of Education, (E D 428 298).

City University of New York. (2011). EdTech services for faculty. Office of Educational Technology, Hostos Community College.

Dirkx, J. M., Amey, M., & Hast0n, L. (1999). Context in the contextualized curriculum: Adult life worlds as unitary or multiplistic? In Proceedings of the 18rh Annual Midwest Research to Practice Conference in Adult, Continuing, and Community Education, edited by A. Austin, G. E. Nynes, and R. T. Miller.

El Mansour, B & Mupinga, D. M. (2007). Students' positive and negative experiences in hybrid and online classes. College Student Journal, 41(1), 24 2- 248.

Entwistle, N. (1988). Styles of learning and teaching. London, UK: David Fulton Publishing.

Gerbic, P. (2011). Teaching using a blended approach: n what does the literature tell us? Educational Media International, 48(3), 221-234. doi:10.1080/09523987.2 011.615159

Hostos Mission Statement. (2014).

Imel, S. (2000). Contextual learning in adult education. Practice Application, 12,

100-101.

Office of Institutional Research and Student Assessment (OIRSA). (2013). Continuous improvement matters: Institutional assessment plan for Hostos Community College 2013-2017. Bronx, NY: Office of Institutional Research and Student Assessment, Office of the President, Eugenia Marfa de Hostos Community College, The City University of New York.

Putnam, R. T., & Borko, H. (2000). What do new views of knowledge and chinking have to say about research on teacher learning; Educational Researcher, 29, 4 - 15.

Ramsey,J. (2002). "Hell's bibliophiles: The fifth way of looking at an aliterate."

Change, 34, 50-56.