The goCognitive project provides access to online resources for the teaching and learning of cognitive neuroscience. The project creates new and meaningful web-based teaching contexts within neuroscience education. The web-based project combines interactive demonstrations and laboratory simulations with student-conducted interviews of prominent researchers. The project supplements course materials and provides students with research tools to conduct small-scale, behavioral studies within the classroom context. The project allows students, independent of geographical location, to experience prominent researchers in the field of cognitive neuroscience through video materials. The project builds on the results of a project supported by the Idaho State Board of Education. Information from a needs assessment informs the on-going development of the website and resources that are tailored to the needs of faculty teaching neuroscience and students who are learning neuroscience. The project draws on and combines expertise in cognitive neuroscience/cognitive psychology and in the development of web-based instructional products to produce project materials. Evaluation includes web-metrics to assess usage, course-based evaluations to assess and document classroom instruction, evaluation activities to test the efficacy and impact of project resources. The evaluation of the project has the potential to inform the design and implementation of the evaluation of web-based resources in educational settings.
GoCognitive.net is an online resource for students and educators in the fields of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. It provides online demonstrations and video interviews on topics related to perception, attention, short- and long-term memory, motor behavior, language, decision making, and the neural basis of cognition (see figure 1). This award (NSF DUE-0942497) enabled us to create a responsive and award-winning website that currently hosts more than 180 videos focused on interviews with notable researchers in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology. In response to a phone survey of more than 90 instructors of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience at different institutions all across the United States and with the help of this NSF award we have interviewed 18 leading scientists about their research and other, general questions within the field of cognitive neuroscience (see figure 2). One of the goals of this project was the integration of undergraduate and graduate students in the creation of teaching resources for cognitive neuroscience. Apart from graduate student support at the University of Idaho, four additional students from different institutions contributed to the planning and production of video interviews. In addition to the video interviews, the website also offers online demonstrations and online experiments to illustrate important cognitive principles. The provided materials can be easily searched and filtered by associated tags, and related videos are grouped into chapters allowing for easy browsing and sequential viewing. Usage of the website has grown substantially over the duration of the grant (2010-2014). Depending on the metrics used, site traffic and page views have increased 600-1,000% since 2010 (see figure 3). The website has been visited approximately 360,000 times by 254,000 users and has had 825,000 page views. The average duration of a visit to the site is 2:41 minutes and most users visit the site from within the United States (approx. 53%). In addition, the site is most active during times of the year when college classes are in session – indicating the active use of the materials as supplements to classroom (or online) instruction. The videos of the associated youTube channel have been viewed more than 325,000 times and the total viewing time is close to 1,000,000 minutes. Currently the channel has approximately 1,700 subscribers (see figure 4). As part of this award we have used two extensive student surveys (n=117 and n=74) to evaluate the quality and meaningfulness of the materials for advanced undergraduate students of cognitive psychology. During the final year of the award six independent instructors received small stipends to evaluate the materials in their classes at institutions of varying size and research intensity and found the materials to be informative and engaging. We anticipate that the content of the website will continue to grow over time and continue to provide a useful resource for students and educators in cognitive neuroscience, especially at institutions with less access to research opportunities or regular research colloquia.
