w h a t ?
NRU is an interactive environment for learning about negative reinforcement, one of the more challenging concepts to teach and learn in Psychology. It was conceptualized by a team of community college students and their instructor and brought to life by the Maricopa Center for Learning & Instruction.
h o w ?
NRU was initially developed in the Spring of 1996 as a part of the Studio 1151 pilot project. In one semester, a team of four students and a psychology instructor at Scottsdale Community College, brainstormed a topic, flowcharted an approach, developed storyboards, scripted content, and acquired media needed for the project. More details are available about the team's process as well as the Studio 1151 Guidebook that was used during the development.
w h e r e ?
The team's design called for rich media that would best be delivered via a multimedia CD-ROM. A walkthrough web tour gives an idea of the environment of the program, it's flow, and also includes the original storyboards.
In August of 1997, we re-purposed the content into a version that could be accessed via the web, using Macromedia's Shockwave technology.
In the Spring of 1998, we embarked on a detailed evaluation of NRU, which necessitated writing NRU into a paper version (Adobe Acrobat format).
m o r e ?
Studio 1151: Developing Multimedia with Student/Faculty Teams presented at the November 1996 League for Innovation conference, Phoenix.
Behind the Scenes: Technology at the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction presented at the November 1996 League for Innovation conference, Phoenix.
The shockwave version of NRU was a finalist for the 1997 Macromedia People's Choice awards.
NRU was presented at the May 1998 Connections '98 Conference, Vancouver, B.C.
A summary of our formal evaluation of NRU was presented at the February 1999 Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) conference.
NRU was presented as a poster session at the Syllabus99 conference in July, 1999.