Home GMU Statement Introduction Background Potential Benefits Further Required Research Conclusion Bibliography

Potential Benefits

The Internet has provided the psychology field with a seemingly endless number of benefits. Teachers have been provided with the opportunity to develop new and creative ways of teaching. Students have the ability to learn a more broad range of material, because of access to international content. The understanding of psychology, from both a teachers’ and students’ standpoints, will be more accurate because the Internet has brought the entire world population closer together. One of the most noticeable ways in which the Internet helps psychology is in regard to psychological research. Experiments, the core of psychological research, have been performed in constantly increasing amounts on the Internet (Musch, 2002, p. 241). Blank (2008) expressed that collecting data using the Internet has been increasingly popular. Because the Internet reaches most of the world, the data collected is more internationally diverse. This diverse data is collected using questionnaires, interactive experiments, surveys, and data-collection websites (p. 25). Psychological phenomena, such as how people are influenced by certain stimuli, spreads rapidly over the Internet. Because the Internet gives psychologists access to most of the world, studying this spread of phenomena is easier than ever before (Hantula, 2006, p. 227). Experiments done on the web are different than traditional experiments that are performed in labs. The main difference is that web-experiments bring the participant to the experiment, instead of the other way around. This gives the experimenter access to populations of people that are much more demographically and culturally diverse. This diversity typically is not possible with traditional lab experiments. Web-experiments also usually have very high statistical power because of the large sample of people the experiment reaches (Musch, 2002, p. 241.) Alongside a diverse sample of people and statistical power, web-based experiments save money because they do not require lab space, equipment, and paying people to run the experiments (Etzel, 2009, p. 1). The Internet can obviously help in psychological research, but it can also play a major role in the psychology curriculum. Most teaching in psychology is taught with a Western bias, and using the Internet to have access to the entire world can give psychologists and students a more global view of psychology. Blank (2008) points out that the psychology curriculum in many institutions is dominated by print publications. Generally, western psychologists write these publications. Unfortunately, even textbooks in other countries don’t have a lot of international material. Today’s psychology students and teachers may need to better understand the differences and similarities between people across the world, such as differences between individualistic and collectivistic cultures. But, because of a lack of international education, psychologists and students tend not to be able to help too well those with needs in the broader global community (p. 23). Dr. Anthony Marsella, a recognized figure in international psychology, explained how psychological education, training, and research need to adapt in order to influence and create international changes. The most important part of globalizing psychology is to educate and train psychologists to be “ethnically, culturally, and racially sensitive and to prepare our students to honor and value global diversity rather than uniformity (Blank, 2008, p. 22).” The Internet can be used as a powerful tool to globalize psychology. According to Blank (2008), the Internet can put us in contact with other countries that we do not know much about and that we would generally have little access to. Obviously, this can help educate and train students, and even current psychologists. The Internet has given the psychology discipline a chance to become internationalized. This will only happen if instructors find ways to incorporate the global opportunities into their courses. They could have students use the Internet to communicate with international psychologists and students. This could be an integral part of the course. Videoconferencing and teleconferencing is an example of how teachers could incorporate an Internet-based technology into their curriculum. Instructors could have guest lecturers from other countries speak to students on their area of psychological expertise through recorded or streaming video (2008, p. 24). In addition, web sites can allow individuals from all over the world to access schools material. They can view lectures, readings, and even ask questions to the instructor (Etzel, 2009, p. 1).

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