Description

This software was developed for Vision Science Laboratory to enhance students’ learning experience through 4 interactive and practical laboratory experiments. This software was designed in 2 approaches: (1) structured and designed experiments (i.e., default setting in the programme); & (2) self-adjusted/ designed experiments by the students (i.e., through modifying the parameters in the programmes to redesign the experiment).

Intended Educational Value

The experiments in this software enable students to link their learning experience in the laboratory with didactic lectures on the concepts of psychophysics. A detailed manual was provided to the students for them to know how to manipulate the programme.

Example of Application

This software was implemented as part of the laboratory session in the subject SO314 Visual Science 4 in 2011/12. In order to make it flexible for the students to work on the experiments with this software and review the materials related to these experiments, the software was uploaded to Blackboard for online access. Students were divided into small groups (approximately 6-7 students each group) to follow the user manual and submit a group report upon the completion of one of the pre-assigned experiments.

Evaluation/ Comments

At the end of the semester, a customised student feedback questionnaire was administered to collect student feedback on their satisfaction.

Results show that about half of the students strongly agreed or agreed that the software was able to (1) demonstrate the concepts of psychophysics in an interactive way; (2) provide a useful way for the application of psychophysics; & (3) enhance the understanding of different psychophysical methods. On the other hand, about 60% of the students found the software not well-organized and not easy to use or they had difficulty in using it to analyze and synthesize the data. In the revised user manual, further guidance and examples was provided for students to know how to conduct data analysis more effectively.

Students also did not find it enjoyable to use this software. Some of the students commented that the software was not attractive and unable to apply the concepts of vision science in a clinical way. In order to improve the design of the software, the graphic user interface was improved by including more graphics. An additional experiment on “Visual Search” was included to improve its clinical application. This new experiment enables students to apply psychophysical methods to conduct experiment to determine the efficiency of the participants on completing a given search task. Through investigating the relationship between the number of the items in the search display and the reaction time to locate the task item allows, users can gain a better understanding of the mechanism of visual search. Several student helpers had tried this new experiment and agreed that this new experiment was more clinically relevant and it made the software more enjoyable.