Creation of Web Program Prototypes for Developing Awareness and Understanding of Social Interaction

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

Psychology - Social (72) Currently, there is no affordable technology which can enable more than small numbers of undergraduates to carefully observe and analyze the details of social interaction--a necessary prerequisite for the development of interactional skills as well as the awareness necessary to become more ethically reflective concerning interactional acts. This project aims at the development of such skills and awareness in an affordable manner through the development of a suite of Internet server-resident programs which is allowing students to view, transcribe, and analyze digital, server-archived recordings of social interaction, as well as evaluate their knowledge of interactional phenomena and interpretive concepts presented in their classes. (As such, it addresses the NSF theme of integrating technology in education.) To produce such programs, the project is employing a programmer to develop the programs for playing, transcribing and qualitatively analyzing, and also to interrelate these programs with an automated evaluation system already developed and operating. Thus, this project is being developed both by a teacher of social interaction and by the executive director of the Center for Computer-based Instructional Technology (CCBIT) at the University. This center developed and operates the above-mentioned computer-assisted evaluation system. While this project is meant to fill the immediate needs of teaching social interaction at the introductory undergraduate level at the University, a wide range of scholars in the fields of communication and communication disorders have expressed an interest in its development, and it should also prove desirable to teachers of social interaction skills in professional schools, such as nursing schools, medical schools, and management programs.