STEP - A system for teaching experimental psychology using E-prime

Students in psychology need to learn to design and analyze their own experi ments. However, software that allows students to build experiments on their own has been limited in a variety of ways. The shipping of the first full release of the E-Prime system later this year will open up a new opportunit y for addressing this problem. Because E-Prime promises to become the stand ard for building experiments in psychology, it is now possible to construct a Web-based resource that uses E-Prime as the delivery engine for a wide v ariety of instructional materials. This new system, funded by the National Science Foundation, is called STEP (System for the Teaching of Experimental Psychology). The goal of the STEP Project is to provide instructional mate rials that will facilitate the use of E-Prime in various learning contexts. We are now compiling a targe set of classic experiments implemented in E-P rime and available over the Internet from http://step.psy.cmu.edu. The Web site also distributes instructional materials for building courses in exper imental psychology based on E-Prime.