Abstract:

The use of virtual learning environments in teaching of psychology is rapidly expanding across world's universities. To develop of such settings is necessary to consider the learning and instructional theory to ensure the quality of instruction. The instructional design is a learning process analysis needs and goals, the development of a delivery system to satisfy those needs. The virtual setting can be used to develop methodological skills (Dickins, et al. 2000); hypothesis test (Aberson et al., 2003); to replicate classic experiments in cognitive psychology (Ragozzine, 2002) and to develop skills in reading (Maki & Maki, 2000; Edmonds, 2005). However there are few researches about learning transference of the skills learned in Web sites to academic activities requested in class. The Virtual Laboratory of Strategic Reading is a software package, available on internet that allows students to learn a strategy to analyze papers published in journals. The purpose of this paper was to show the benefits of a interactive system for the development of reading skills of scientific texts and to evaluate the level learning transference. Method Participants.- 140 psychology college students. Setting.- The training was carried out in a room of 4.50 m X 2.50 m, equipped with five computers, this space was named “Virtual Laboratory of Strategic Reading”, in this space can work simultaneously five students. Procedure.-Design: A pretest-postest group design was used. Measures.- Global scores in Pretest-Postest, and auto-evaluation of their research reports requested in the subject of Applied Psychology. The system was conformed of two evaluations (Pretest-Postest) and eight modules, each of them identifiable by their labels. Inside each modules definitions, examples and exercises were included. Procedure.- Pretest. This test was divided in two sections, section 1 evaluated concept handling, and section 2 it´s application on empirical research text. Eight modules formed the workshop, each one corresponded to one element of general strategy to analyze texts. Postest.- After ending the eight modules, participants answered a test, which was identical to pretest. Learning Transference.- The end of workshop the students evaluated their own research reports that their elaborated in the course of Applied Psychology. Results The t test for related samples showed significant differences Prestest and Postest (t(139)=16.660 p≤0.001). The increases observed from a test to other suggest that students learned both skills: the identification of the definitions and their application in new texts. The transfer learning was evaluated through the analysis that the students made of their own reports delivered in the subject of Applied Psychology, this analysis showed that the students were able to transfer skills learned in the laboratory to a real situation. Conclusion. The adoption of this Web site proved to be a good tool the courses of Experimental Psychology, Applied Psychology and Behavioral Research.

Keywords:

Learning transfer, on-line systems, analysis of scientific texts, instructional theory.