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We were pleased to be asked to deliver a couple of breakout events at the ATP Conference this year through which we were able to gather lots of constructive criticism about PsychExchange. On the whole teachers were very kind with their comments.

Around 80 psychology teachers attended our two discussions at the ATP Conference and provided us with some great feedback which we have been able to use to improve the site. Following on from the conference, during the latter part of August, we decided to conduct an online survey of the usefulness of PsychExchange via e-mail.

This article is therefore a summary of the feedback we have received and the resulting changes that we have been able to make to PsychExchange.  It was a relief for us that the feedback from the conference and the survey was very good regarding the usefulness of the site. For example, of the approximately 200 people who completed the online survey (by the time this article was written) over half found the site ‘very useful’. The qualitative responses were also very encouraging.

How useful have you found psychexchange?

The survey revealed that teachers are finding the downloading of resources, videos, ideas and the weekly e-mail the most useful features. From the qualitative responses we discovered that the forums, private messaging and bookmarking are rated as less useful because many teachers are not aware of how to use these features. Several teachers have requested a ‘dummies guide’ to using PsychExchange which we have developed and is now available on PsychExchange.   We were encouraged with the responses to the question on the survey which asked how likely users would be to share a resource in the future, with over 90% of respondents saying they would be likely to share in the future.

How likely are you to share a resource in the future?

An interesting finding from the survey was that even though the majority of teachers state that they are comfortable leaving comments on the site, most teachers do not. This is backed up by our user data on the site showing that 1,352 files have been uploaded compared to 1,000 comments made. The main reason given for not commenting on resources is simply forgetting to do so.  The most common criticism of the site, not surprisingly, is searching the site for the appropriate resources. In particular, finding a good resource and then not being able to relocate the same file again.  We have made a number of improvements to the site and most of these are to the profile section of the site which should help users  manage downloads more effectively. Every user now has a unique profile which can be found, once you are logged on, by clicking on the  ‘My Profile’ link in the top right-hand section of the site.

The profile page can be used rather like a Facebook-type page and importantly it keeps a record of resources, ideas etc that you have both uploaded and downloaded. For example, in your profile if you click on ‘My Bookmarks’ this will show you all of the recent files that you have
downloaded which you might want to either use again or comment on.  A great feature of the profile section is that it will save all of the resources that you bookmark, so you can use them again in the future. When you are browsing resources and you find a resource that you find useful, you can now bookmark it by clicking on the link next to the resource detail called ‘Bookmark’. You can now go into your profile, click on ‘My Bookmarks’, and you’ll find that the resource has been saved there.

There is a more detailed analysis of the survey on PsychExchange.   More importantly thanks to all of those teachers who have taken time to upload their resources, ideas and comments and have given us feedback to improve PsychExchange.

Mark Holah & Jamie Davies