Abstract:

Psychology teaching is mostly teacher-centered which can omit students’ active learning as reported by the instructors of psychology. In higher education, video-based cases are widely used for students’ group discussions in which students are actively involved. Anchored instruction (AI) with seven design principles presents video-based meaningful contexts in which real life problems are embedded. There are limited number of studies embracing such design principles in the area of psychology. In this study, we aimed to utilize three principles of AI to teach psychology via a concurrent convergent design. 50 out of 115 participants registered for an introductory psychology course were assigned to either AI or traditional method (TM) conditions and the remaining were used as controls. We used conventional methods of teaching for the TM group by exposing them regular in-class lectures. On the other hand, the AI group watched a video on a therapy session and had group discussions in addition to in-class lectures. Both treatment groups were tested on related developmental psychology topics in the beginning and at the end of the experiment. Even though the difference was not significant, students in the AI condition scored higher than their counterparts at the post-test. The analyses of final exam scores while controlling midterm scores showed that the AI group significantly outperformed the TM group at the finals. Ingroup discussions from the AI condition revealed that students used their knowledge to solve the problems embedded in the video by referring to expected developmental psychology concepts and processes. In conclusion, this study showed that AI can provide psychology students at higher education an in-depth learning experience which motivates them to study in the long run.

Keywords: