My distance learning psychology students are assigned a very simple project to compare two different memory strategies: recall and recognition. Recall refers to the bringing forth of information from memory with no cues or assistance while recognition refers to the process of retrieving information with cues. Each student is expected to find three adult subjects, obtain information from them and follow specific procedures to collect data. Generalizations from each experimenter's limited findings (data from only 3 subjects) would be meaningless so I created a method to combine data from all students and create one large database of subjects from which to draw conclusions.

These students are in a continuous enrollment course structure creating a constant source of data for this particular project. As a new student completes the assignment they add their information on-line via a simple form to the database (FileMakerPro). Simple statistical methods [means] are used to evaluate the information.

Students then use the newly recalculated results to form the basis of their conclusions. The data now consists of many subjects representing the factors under study such as parental status, age, sex. Since the actual data is changing the conclusions may also change thus, creating a dynamic study.

The problems with attempting to combine data occur when students do not use the same procedure or have not collected the required data from the subjects. Since conditions may vary from student to student the control factors in the procedure are diminished. However, these problems can become issues relevant to research methodology and discussed in the conclusion section of the report as well as in the on-line discussion forums.

The database is up and running constantly on the college server so when a student uses the online data entry form, the data is automatically placed into the different fields (age, sex, parental status, # recall, #recognition), analyzed and outputed in chart format showing the actual data entries from all subjects and the means.