The Memory: 1

I've been lecturing on memory recently. It's a great topic because you can apply the results of research to your own memory and studying.

First, if there's anything the research tells us, it's that memory isn't one thing. As I've talked about before, we can remember specific memories (called verbatim traces), but we can also store more general information related to the memory (called gist).

This gives us an important clue about memory: it's not just about the memory--it's also about things related to the memory. It suggests that memories in our heads are very different from those in a computer. In a computer, each memory occupies a lonely little memory location on a chip--whichever one is available. In our heads, in contrast, incoming memories look for a good place to land. They want to stick to things that they are similar to. This is why it's hard to remember things if they don't make sense to you: the memories have nowhere to land.

Second, there's a neat effect known as context-dependent memory. It's the fact that where you are will influence your ability to remember things you learned in that location. If you come to class, you'll learn all kinds of neat psychology-flavoured bits (at least, if you're in my class you will). The words I say and the words that appear on the big screen do no exist apart from their context; rather, they are a part of the context (clever, innit? ;-) This is good reason to come to class--especially if the exam is held in the classroom. If you're just mooching the lecture notes off someone else, you're missing that experience. (Real keeners are known to study the textbook in the classroom as well.)

Again, this tells us that memories are more than just random bits that get stuffed into your brain. Yes, they do get stored, but the situation matters. Why? Recent research has used brain scans to analyze the brain while it's learning (or encoding memories) and again when it's remembering (or retrieving memories). The patterns in both cases are remarkably similar. If you learn something in one environment and then try to remember it in another environment, it will be more difficult because the patterns of brain activity (partially produced by your environment) will be a bit different.

So, here are the upshots. First, if you're trying to commit a definition to memory, try to remember an example of that as well. If you want to remember that episodic memories are about your personal life events, think of some significant event from your own life--like the last party you went to (if you can remember it).

Second, go to class. Maybe your final exam isn't in the classroom (although mine are--that's my choice), your midterms are. Wouldn't it be nice to have a bit of a free memory boost when you're writing an exam?

Why aren't you studying?

The Student/Faculty Ratio

There's a pretty clear trend in the student/faculty ratio that's been happening since the 1980s: it's increasing. In other words, there are fewer instructors to deal with more students. That means class sizes are increasing, right? Possibly yes, but not necessarily.

Huh? How can that be? The key word above is "faculty." This term is defined as (technically): "Full Time Equivalent continuing faculty." Don't worry about the Full Time Equivalent business--the "continuing faculty" part is the most important. This term means tenured or tenure-track faculty (in other words, Professors). This term does not include contract academic staff (in other words, me).

Although I don't have specific data, I know that the number of contract academic staff (CAS) has increased substantially over the past decade or two. Here's the situation, using last year's data. There are about 2,200 continuing faculty at the UofA. There are over 800 CAS--who are not counted in the student/faculty ratio.

I've read that the student/faculty ratio this year is around 22.2:1. So, for every professor, there are over 22 students. But if you factor in CAS, that number goes to 16.3 or so. The University, however, does not count me or my CAS colleagues--we don't exist. Literally, I don't count. (To be fair to the UofA, no institution counts their contract/sessional staff in the s/f ratio. Why not? I dunno.)

Despite the fact that I'm a nobody, I'm not too depressed. Students talk to me as if I actually existed. Plus, I get paid actual money. But I wish I were more valued. I've got a solution to this, by the way: get rid of CAS. No, don't fire us--give us continuing positions (called "conversion"). Until then, I will continue to haunt the hallways and classrooms as a ghost...

Why aren't you studying?

The Office Hour

I had my office hour yesterday, and I got a lot of work done. Oh yeah, I also had a student stop by to ask questions.

I used to have a lot of office hours, but then I also used to have a lot of students coming to ask questions. Gradually, however, the flow of students became a trickle, and I started to cut back on my office hours. So why the change?

The answer is probably the Internet. Email is one factor. I've put my email address on the syllabus for every course I've ever taught, going back to 1994. Every year since then I've gotten more and more emails (I got a grand total of 1 in '94--now it's more like 1 an hour). It's easier to fire off a message whenever you want, than to arrange to meet with an instructor at a mutually convenient time. I teach a lot of classes, and it can be tough to find time to meet with a student outside of my regular office hours. Sometimes I do, and then the student doesn't show up. Hey, at least call and leave a message so I can do something more productive with my time than catching up on I Can Has Cheezburger?.

Another factor is the web. Used to be, if you wanted to know how you did on a midterm (or even to get your final grade), you had to actually go to the department and look up your mark on a sheet of paper posted to a bulletin board. Since you had to walk all the way there in the first place, maybe you'd also stop by your instructor's office and talk to them. But if you can look up everything online, why bother traipsing all the way to the Biological Sciences Building? Some people don't even know where the Department of Psychology is!

Anyway, if you actually make the extra effort to come and see an instructor in person, that's probably going to stand out in their memory. And that, usually, is a good thing.

Why aren't you studying?

The Review Class

I don't do review classes.

Why not? Because reviewing is an individualized process. It's not really something that can be done in a classroom for a hundred or more students simultaneously.

Think of it this way. You might have trouble understanding a certain concept. Does everyone in the class have similar difficulty? If so, then a review might be warranted. But how do I know what students don't understand? I don't.

OK, I actually do--but to a very limited extent. If I get email from someone asking me to explain a concept again, I'll know that that person didn't get it the first time. But I almost never get questions on the exact same concepts from different students. If I did, I'd realize there were problems connecting the teaching to the learning. (That's probably my fault, in that case.)

Still, if I try to review a concept that, say, 50% of the class doesn't get, it might be beneficial. But the rest of the class--who got it already--are sitting there, yawning, chatting, texting, sleeping, kissing, etc., because they're bored out their minds. This isn't a great use of class time.

From my point of view, I've taught the material already. I've tried to do my best job to make it understandable--despite the complexity of some of the things I cover. If I just go over everything again...well, if no one understood it the first time, how are they going to understand it if I go over the exact same things again? Again, it's not worth the time.

Now, I'm not pessimistic about things. I have some hope that classroom response systems ("clickers") can help. Students bring these gadgets to class, and answer questions that the instructor puts into his or her PowerPoints. This is a great way of assessing learning because it's so immediate. I can present a concept, and right after, test to see if anyone is getting it. There are downsides, too: the clickers are an extra cost for students, and it's a real pain to come up with great testing questions.

I've done a research study on clickers, which found that students like them (when they're free). So there's still some work to be done. Maybe if more classes used clickers, I'd be more willing to use them in my classes. Answer in the comments: How many of your courses currently use clickers?

But back to the topic of reviews. If I as an instructor don't do review classes, what are students to do? Easy answer: do your own review. You should know the concepts you're having trouble understanding. Then what? Ask me for help, or ask the teaching assistant. That's what we're here for. This actually takes more of my time, because I'll be meeting students outside of class time, or answering email. But you'll end up with a greater understanding and probably a better grade.

Why aren't you studying?

The Faculty Lecturer

In writing about Fair Employment Week, a student asked a good question: "What exactly are sessionals?" From a student's perspective, I can understand the question--you come to class and trust that the person doing the teaching is qualified. The thing is, there are different kinds of university teachers...

I am a "Faculty Lecturer." This is a particular title that described my position. That means I work for the Faculty of Science, teaching a certain number of courses for them (in the Department of Psychology) to fulfill the terms of my contract. (Er, except when I teach Arts courses.) Speaking of contracts...

Faculty Lecturers (and "sessional" instructors) at the UofA are known as "Contract Academic Staff" (CAS). This term means that we work under a contract that may be renewed every so often, say every 5 years, every year, or even every term (or "session," hence the word "sessional"). It's stressful to work in a job that doesn't have any guaranteed security--if student enrollments drop, fewer instructors will be needed, and CAS will not have their contracts renewed.

So what? In these uncertain economic times, doesn't that apply to anybody--that they could be laid off at any time?

Let me contrast CAS with "Faculty members." These are the people who hold the title "Professor." (One can be an Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor, by the way.) This term denotes academic rank, and may be called a tenured or tenure-track position. Tenure is the academic version of ultimate job security: you've reached the highest rank, the highest levels of pay, and--unless you do something criminal or otherwise horribly bad--you've got a secure job. No one can come along and tell you that because you haven't published enough papers this year, for example, you're fired. Their workload consists of teaching and research. I have great respect for my colleagues; they work hard to get tenure, and even when they achieve it, they continue to work hard.

Sessional teaching jobs were originally intended to be temporary--you would hire, say, a recent Ph.D. graduate who gained valuable teaching experience while filling in for a professor on sabbatical. (A sabbatical is an academic sort of partially paid hiatus from work, when profs write books or do research.) That has changed, partly due to greater student enrollments; there's a need for warm bodies to do all that teaching! As a result, many "sessionals" work on contract for years--even decades. (I've been a contract academic since 1995--that's quite a few sessions ago.)

Tying this back to where I started... Fair Employment Week is an attempt to recognize the positive impact that contract academics have on students, and to toot our own horns a little bit. Sadly, the capital-U University barely acknowledges our contributions officially in public. And, um, I better shut up now. I'd like my contract to be renewed...

Why aren't you studying?

The Exam Structure

You know that it's important to look at your midterms to see where you went wrong, don't you? Just sayin'...

When you look at your exam, there are things you should look for:

• On how many questions did you have to guess the answer?
  

• Which lectures/chapters give you problems?

• Did you devote less time to studying those? (Were you absent for those lectures?) Maybe a neuroscience chapter was particularly challenging, because of all the anatomical terms. On the other hand, maybe you got those questions all correct because you spent so much time on them--at the expense of other material.
  

• What kind of questions gave you the most difficulty?

Let me explain what I mean by "kind of question." There's a way of categorizing different multiple-choice questions called Bloom's Taxonomy. I use a slightly less complex version that has three categories of questions:

1. Factual: assess your knowledge of definitions, terms, and other facts. Answering these questions requires remembering of learned information. For example:
   
   Who wrote The Principles of Psychology in 1890?
   (a) Wilhelm Wundt
   (b) Sigmund Freud
   (c) William James
   (d) B. F. Skinner
   
   
2. Application: evaluate your ability to apply learned factual knowledge to a new situation, or to solving a problem. You'll have to have the background knowledge, but also the ability to see how it relates to a previously unseen example. For example:
   
   Assuming the Weber fraction is 0.03, given a 1,000 g weight, what is the JND?
   (a) 1,000 g
   (b) 3 g
   (c) 30 g
   (d) 0.03 g
   
   
3. Conceptual: tests your capacity to see patterns, relate knowledge from different areas, evaluate evidence. Not only do you have to have the background knowledge, you've got to be able to analyze it, synthesize it with new information, and evaluate what you know. For example:
   
   Which of the following phenomena of operant conditioning contains within it a form of classical conditioning?
   (a) latent learning
   (b) overjustification effect
   (c) secondary reinforcement
   (d) delay of gratification
   

Multiple choice exams usually contain a large number of factual questions. There will be a few application questions, and also a few conceptual ones. It's hard to write good conceptual questions, and they can be quite challenging to answer. If you're not doing well on the factual questions, you're probably going to struggle with the other kinds as well.

But problems just with application and conceptual questions reveal that your understanding isn't as...deep as it could be. You may be great at memorizing definitions, but that's not all there is to taking a (well-designed) multiple choice exam.

(BTW, Bloom's Taxonomy can also be used in short-, medium-, and long-answer exams. In fact, I use it in mine. For example, in my "medium-length" questions, I ask students to 1. define a term, 2. give an example, and 3. explain why it's important or what other concepts it relates to. See? Bloom's Taxonomy.)

In case you must know, the answer to all the questions above is (c). When in doubt, pick (c), right? ;-)

Why aren't you studying?

The Exam Marking

And...done. Done marking midterms, that is. No, not the multiple choice ones. Actual long-answer, hand-written, sweat-stained essay exams. Exam on Thursday, done marking on Saturday. Not too bad. I once finished them in one day. Ah, but I was younger then, with eyes that focused and no daughter who always wants to play My Little Pony with me (I get to be Pinkie Pie!).

I try really hard to get exam results back as quickly as I can. As soon as a multiple choice exam is over, I walk it over to TSQS (Test Scoring and Questionnaire Services, of course). Many instructors just go back to their office and have their administrative assistant schlep them off via campus mail. Me, I prefer to have results back as quickly as I can. My best time ever was 2 hours, from exam over to results posted online.

I've heard that there should be a "cooling-off" period, but I don't know exactly why. Heck, I know a prof who has exams on which you scratch off your answer, like a lottery ticket. If you're right, you get full marks. If you're wrong, you get to scratch off another answer. Get that one right, and you get part marks. It's pretty cool, but it's apparently expensive to get the exams made up that way.

I like the nice people at TSQS. They've even helped me out of tight spots, when I've needed results back in a hurry. Normally, they promise 24 hours, but they regularly beat that, except at busy times, like during final exams.

Do you care either way? Would you like to have scratch-and-win exams? Or do you prefer to wait, even if you know the results have been posted?

Why aren't you studying?