Graham, Jeff

Profile

Jeff Graham (Dr. Jeff) is a cognitive psychologist with interests in computer-assisted instruction, neural network modeling, and health psychology.  He received his M.A. from the University of Western Ontario and his Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo. As an Associate Professor at the University of Otago (Dunedin, New Zealand) Jeff developed connectionist models of children's arithmetic and studied an accelerated learning curriculum for early childhood mathematics. Since 1988 Jeff has used computers to teach psychology.  With the help of many student volunteers Jeff and his colleagues have developed educational software projects like Sniffy, the Virtual Rat, a simulation of behavioural concepts in learning, and DeckChair Tutor, an online learning toolkit for teaching, assessment, and psychology experiment hosting.

Dr. Graham was hired in 1992 to design and implement the computer-laboratory component of PSY100 - Introductory Psychology. He develops new lab exercises that make appropriate use of multimedia technologies and fill in the gaps in the topics covered during lectures.

Computing Resources

With 65 computers in the lab we need 24 lab sections to handle the 1500 students enrolled in PSY100. We use 1.25 Ghz PowerPC G4 iMac computers for our student workstations.  Each machine has 1 gigabyte of RAM and a 60 gigabyte hard drive, and a high-speed CD-ROM superdrive.  These machines make internet browsing and complex computations very quick and easy.

Instructional Software development

DeckChair Tutor is a web-based learning software platform for presenting content and recording student learning and performance online. It has been developed over more than 10 years for use in the PSY100 computer lab. With the University and the UTM Psychology Department’s help, Dr. Graham and colleagues formed DeckChair Learning Systems Inc. (deckchairtutor.com, deckchairlearning.com) to commercialize this invention. The start-up company was awarded funds from the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE - Market Readiness) in 2008 and 2009.

See the DeckChair Tutor website at:

http://www.deckchairlearning.com/

The 5th edition of "Sniffy, the Virtual Rat," was released in 2012, an operant-conditioning simulation which has won design awards, been written up in magazines like The Economist, and appeared on TV news shows and CNN's Science & Technology Week.  Our publisher has informed us that Sniffy is now considered a best-seller (over 100,000 copies sold in US/Can/Europe/Australia/NZ).

See the Sniffy website at:

http://www.cengage.com/cgi-wadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M20bI&product_isbn_issn=9781111726256
and then click on the Tutorial link under the Book Resources.