Successful innovations

Our college was the recipient of a Title III grant, which provides funding for technology infrastructure. On top of getting some *sweet* iPads, we as faculty were encouraged to apply the use of technology in classes to increase student engagement. The program encouraging this at York College is called Successful Innovations.

This past Fall, a joint brain-child of mine and Mrs. Kroeker's was to do some kind of experiment. I am, after all, trained as a researcher. Mrs. Kroeker had the idea about using text messages as a medium to study social psychology. Particularly, have you ever gotten a text message that you just weren't sure about?

"We need to talk."
"What was that about?"

You know...ambiguous text messages.

This fit in well with our section about situational and dispositional attributions, and the fundamental attribution theory.

For example- "We need to talk." ... Is it someone being controlling (dispositional)? Or does the sender need to fill you in on the latest drama (situational)?

Our 26 students of Social Psychology developed a survey containing 10 ambiguous text messages similar to the ones above. They also provided one situational and one dispositional explanation for each. Participants from YC came up to our workspace to receive anonymous text messages (sent by psych students using the free TextNow app) on their personal devices and complete the survey. 59 students ended up participating: over 10% of the YC student body! Combining that number with the number of enrolled Social Psych students brought our total number of students involved to nearly 20% of the YC population! Talk about student engagement...

Though our findings weren't clear, and it was most students' first attempt at running a study, I would call this a success in terms of training and experience for Psych majors. Two of our students presented the findings to the students, faculty, and staff at Chapel. Three other students presented the findings at the Nebraska Psychological Society meeting - the first time YC has presented any research at NPS!

We are proud of how much time and effort YC Psychology students put into this project. I am hopeful that we can continue this line of inquiry in future experiments!