How to Get Free Marks

You want free marks? Sure, no problem--all you have to do is prove to me that I'm wrong.

It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Earlier this term, Melissa T. asked me why the teaching assistant had marked an answer wrong on one of her assignments. She had written an alternative answer that sounded plausible to me, so I told her about my free mark policy. Melissa came back a couple of days later with a strong journal article supporting her point, and she ended up with a free mark! (To be fair, my TA stuck to the marking guide I provided, so it's not the TA's fault Melissa initially lost a mark. It's impossible to create a marking guide that covers every possible answer, and every variation on an answer. But that's another post for another day.)

You might have learned something in another one of your classes that contradicts what I say (or what the textbook says). This shouldn't be surprising--"facts" change all the time in science. (Like, old-time doctors used to prescribe smoking. And cocaine. Nice going, stupid old-time doctors!) The instructor of one of your other classes might be up on some brand-new study that hasn't worked its way into the textbook I use, into my lectures, and into my exams. So why should you be penalized for knowing more? Or, perhaps, for knowing something in more detail?

So, to get a free mark, all you have to is:

• find an error in the marking of an exam or assignment (sorry, no free marks for correcting an error in the textbook--that is worth $2, however--and no free marks for pointing out an error in my lectures, although you will have my genuine gratitude)
• find good (i.e., peer-reviewed, primary source) evidence to support your answer (sorry, Googling some random website or even finding empirical evidence cited in a textbook is not good enough--it's got to make it through the peer-review process)
• find current evidence (sorry, digging up a peer-reviewed paper from 1847 may not qualify if subsequent research has undermined it)
• give me your supporting evidence at least one day before the final exam
  

This is a great win-win situation: you end up getting a free mark, and I end up with a exam or assignment question that's more relevant, up-to-date, and fair.

Why aren't you studying?

Anatomy of a Lecture: Part 2

(As you read in part 1, I've been working hard on a new lecture, on synesthesia.)

How long does it take to prepare (or "prep") a lecture? There's no simple answer to this. Different people will take different amounts of time. Some topics may take longer than others. And I don't think anyone actually keeps track of how long it takes (because that would take time, too; also, the final number would probably be a bit depressing). Plus, doing background research takes a certain amount of time, as does typing the lecture notes, as does creating the PowerPoint slides, as does creating the notes for the web. Do you count all of that time?

Looking around on the web, there are warnings to about how long it takes to prepare lecture material. A common one is that it takes 10 hours for a "new prep" (a course you've never taught before), and 3 hours to update a previously taught class. However, the book Advice for New Faculty Members by Robert Boice recommends that instructors try and reduce prep time to 2 hours for every hour of class, otherwise too much time is wasted, taking away from time doing research. I've also read recommendations that instructors should ask to borrow other people's lecture materials! (Note to anyone who's going to ask: The answer is No. Why? Aside from students, the sum total of my working life since 1995 is my lecture notes. Go do yours yourself.)

I haven't kept close track of how much time I spent on my new lecture on synesthesia. But I'd put it at over 100 hours. This includes listening to a whole bunch of podcasts, watching several documentaries, reading paper after paper after paper, reading (all or parts of) six books, and going to dozens of websites. I'm not telling you this to show off or anything. Maybe I'm a terrible instructor, and that's why it takes me so long. Perhaps somebody else could have whipped this off using the 2-hour recommendation: there are 3 hours of lecture to fill, so they would have spent no more than 6 hours of prep time. Yeah, I wish.

The synesthesia lecture I created is one of the largest I've created that focuses on a single sensory/perceptual phenomenon: 83 PowerPoint slides. Object Perception in PSYCO 267, in contrast, clocks in at 104 slides, but I've got a ton of image-only slides. Perception and Art in PSYCO 365 is a whopping 126 slides--but there are oh-so-many gorgeous pictures of fine art and not a lot of wordy words.

One of the hardest things to do when creating something is edit: deciding what to include and what to (*sigh*) leave out. I left out a lot of things about synesthesia, sometimes because they weren't directly relevant, and sometimes because they were just redundant with other studies. I felt obligated to talk about the current state of theories about synesthesia, and the evidence surrounding them--it turns out that research on synesthesia is exploding with the use of brain imaging techniques. In fact, from 2000-2006, there were 60 studies published (compared to less than 20 in the 1990s). I don't want to brag or anything, but I doubt there's anyone on campus who knows more about synesthesia than I do right now. Ok, I'm bragging.

If you have an interest in synesthesia, part 3 will have a ridiculous number of links to more info. Ridiculous!

Why aren't you studying?

Thanks for Nothing

When the provincial budget (slogan: "Budget 2010: Striking the Right Balance") first came out on February 9, there was cautious optimism on campus because there was a 0% increase in operating grants for post-secondary education. This was not unexpected, and was a whole lot better than facing a cutback.

Sadly however, tucked away behind all the announcements, there was a cutback of 4.5%, or $20 million. That might not seem like a lot, but it's a staggering amount, coming on the heels of a $59 million shortfall (or "budget gap") due to reduced provincial grants, and the recent tanking of global economic markets, among other things. (But hey, it's not all bad news for everybody in education--Alberta teachers are getting a 5.99% raise! Retroactive to September 1, 2009! Of course, it's up to the school boards to find that money.)

Here's the problem: there's not a lot of room to cut. Moving the UofA's email system to Gmail will save only about $1 million. Big whoop. How else can the gap be closed? Raising tuition as much as provincial law allows? Check. Introducing crazy new "fees" (*cough* CoSSS *cough*)? Check. Asking the staff association (AASUA) to take "furlough" days off without pay? Check-a-roonie. Let's just take a look at the latter one.

Academic staff will have the following days off: December 24, and December 29 to 30, 2010; as well as January 4 and 5, 2011. (In addition, there are holidays like December 25 and 26, which are observed on Monday, December 27 and Tuesday the 28th because the holidays fall on a weekend; the same goes for January 1 which is observed on Monday, January 3, 2011.) I now realize that I'm not paid for working on weekends! Wow! So don't expect me to answer any emails on the weekend. Also, I won't be answering emails on my furlough days. Mark your calendars! I shouldn't be doing any prep work for the upcoming semester, working on lectures, reading papers, that sort of thing. Of course, going back to work on Thursday, January 6th is going to be a helluva bitch.

So, where else can we cut? How about getting rid of some of the "fat cats" mentioned in some of the asinine comments following this story in the Edmonton Journal? Hmm, I don't see many people wearing three-piece suits puffing on cigars. Hey, maybe they mean tenured faculty? Ooops--nope, you can't just give a full Professor a pink slip. But the story in the paper talks about layoffs. Who could they going to lay off...? Who could they chop...?

Contract staff like me.

I'm not going to be sleeping too well unless/until my contract is renewed at the end of the summer. Sure, the classes I teach are full, with even more students wanting to get in. Sure, my teaching performance has won me awards. But how much does that count when it comes to the cold, hard numbers and cold, hard cash? In fact, my years of experience and awards may work against me: I'm more expensive than, say, a graduate student or someone with a shiny new Ph.D. So I might be getting a whole lot more "days off" than just six furlough days.

As students, you can expect higher tuition/fees (duh), almost certainly larger classes, and those classes may be taught by some really grumpy professors who've had their arms twisted to get them out of the lab and back into the classroom. (This happened before, in the 1990s as a consequence of the Ralph Klein cuts--there was a massive layoff of sessionals, class sizes grew, and some bitter close-to-retirement profs were forced back into the classroom.)

So thanks, Ed. Thanks for nothing.

Hope I'll see you next year...

Why aren't you studying?

Anatomy of a Lecture: Part 1

I regularly review the lectures in each course I teach. I ask myself, Am I presenting the current state of research and theory? Is it interesting and relevant? Is there something else I could (or should) be talking about?

Sometimes, I look at a lecture and decide that it's past its prime--either I have to revamp it completely or get rid of it. Either option is hard. It's not fun to completely redo a lecture; I've got to immerse myself in the current theories and read a whole bunch of research papers. On the other hand, because I've spent a lot of time developing a lecture, it's hard to retire it (it's one of my babies!).

Last year, I realized that my Advanced Perception lecture on motion perception was not keeping up with the times. (For example, I presented a theory that--although interesting--has been largely abandoned.) Worse, a lot of the lecture repeated the same information from my lower-level Perception course, making it repetitive and potentially even boring. But trying to get up to speed on the complex area of motion perception was daunting. So, out it went.

My motion perception lecture was followed by an extended look at the (controversial) ecological approach to perception. Why did I spend so much time on this one theory? No other theory got such privileged treatment, and I briefly talked about the ecological approach earlier in the course alongside the other major theories. Then I remembered that I originally developed the lecture to complement a chapter on the ecological approach in the assigned textbook for the course. Which I was no longer using. Oops. So, out it went.

This left me with a large hole in the middle of term that I would have to fill with a new lecture. Actually, I wanted to make room in the course so that I could talk about the strange phenomenon known as "synesthesia." Now I had room--lots and lots of room. Just really quite a large bit of room: 3 hours of lecture.

So I was faced with a new problem: Would there be enough known about synesthesia to fill out a whole lecture--and fill all that time? The answer: Yes. Oh, yes, indeed--as you'll see in part 2...

Why aren't you studying?

The Awards: 2

The Department of Psychology's Teaching Honor Roll just came out. These awards are based on teaching evaluations in Fall, 2009 term classes. I'm pleased to report that I was named to the Teaching Honor Roll for one class, and the Honor Roll With Distinction for the other two. This is a good news/bad news thing.

It's good news that, generally, students in two of my classes had a very positive experience. But it's bad news that students in the other class did not have a similarly positive experience. It's the first time since 1997 that I have not received Honor Roll With Distinction for an intro psych class. Looking back, I know what the problem in that class was: the room.

The room I taught in is dark. The walls are dark brick, and the lighting is terrible--sort of pot lights, creating dim little spotlights here and there. Making it worse is the fact that I have to turn off some lights so everyone can see the PowerPoint slides. Why is darkness a problem?

If you're (literally) in the dark in a public space, you feel anonymous. It's like you're the only one there and no one can see you. As a result, you might be more likely to engage in behaviours that you might not, if the lights were on. (Don't believe me? Check out this paper, titled "Good Lamps Are the Best Police: Darkness Increases Dishonesty and Self-Interested Behavior".) The behaviour in this case was chatting. I had some students chatting during the whole entire damn class, from the start to the end. In case you haven't guessed, this really pisses me off.

I'm trying my best to provide a certain in-class experience for students. To do this, I require the cooperation of everyone in the room. Now I don't insist on absolute silence or anything. I've got no problem with someone asking their neighbour for the last fill-in word they missed. But if you're talking during the whole entire damn class, why bother coming? I mean, really? What are you getting out of the class? Filling in blanks here and there on a printout is not the same as learning. In fact, it's not learning at all. Even worse, with your nonstop chatter, you're disrupting the other students all around you--the ones who actually do want to learn something. And it also throws me off, too.

If a pair of students continues to chat for a bit too long, I often stop talking and glare at them until they get the message and shut up. (This is not going to happen to you if you're occasionally getting fill-in words from your neighbours.) Social pressure can work wonders. However, if a classroom is dark, I may not be able to see who's talking. That's what happened last term. Although I did stop-'n-stare quite a few times, there were always other conversations that just kept going and going and going. It was so bad, I had numerous students ask me to do something about it.

So I gave my class a stern lecture about respect and taking their conversations outside. That didn't work. So I threatened to remove the talkers from the class if they didn't shut up (which I actually had to do once before). That didn't work; I couldn't see them in the dark. I grew increasingly frustrated, and dreaded going to each class. That's right: I had a class that I did not want to go to. For me, this is a worst-case scenario--disliking a class. And this was just due to a very small minority of people. With a negative attitude, I probably did not do the best possible job for that class. For that, I apologize.

The point of this rant is to get out the message that your behaviour has consequences, often beyond what you might expect. If you're excited to see one of your friends in a class, that's great. But if you want to catch up, do it after class. Go for coffee, or have lunch together. But do not spend the whole entire damn class chatting. Realize that you're not just bothering the other students within earshot, but you may also be disrupting your instructor, thereby affecting the whole class.

Why aren't you studying?

UPDATE: Here are comments from my evaluations in that noisy class:

"class are also often too noisy"
"[instructor] did nothing to actually stop [the class] talking"
"I appreciate you respecting students' desire to learn by reprimanding those continually talkative students. They were the only downside in this course."
"Thanks you for acknowledging the chatterboxes in our class and reprimanding them"
"It was a noisy class!"

The Reading List: 1

This post is not about your reading list. (For that, you should Read The Syllabus.) No, this is about my reading list--the things that I'm reading at the moment. I'm not going to include the endless, neverending stream of journal articles. Here instead are some of the books I'm currently reading...

I've just finished SuperFreakonomics, which is an economics book. Wait wait wait! I didn't say it was an economics textbook, did I? No, I didn't. It's a really engaging book, looking at the microeconomics of... Wait wait wait! It's not boring, really--just check out the reviews at Amazon.com. The stories they present are interesting for their own sake, but as a psychologist, I like the intersection of psychology and economics, in what's called "behavioural economics": how our behaviour is affected by perceptions of incentives.

Right now, however, I've just started "reading" Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. Why the quotes? I'm actually listening to it as a audiobook. Although I bought the book when it first came out, I never seemed to have time to sit down and read it. I didn't want to start reading it and then have to put it aside and do work or something. Neil Gaiman is just about my favourite author; every story he writes is like a coconut cream pie with pecans, deep-fried in chocolate and covered with whipped cream. I would not want to put that down. Listening to this during my commute makes the time just fly by. Bonus: The Graveyard Book is up next! Extra bonus: if you're short on cash, these audiobooks are available from the Edmonton Public Library (membership: only $12/year).

I'm never reading just one book. Also, I'm always reading something work-related. Fun, but work-related. Right now, that's The Frog Who Croaked Blue: Synesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses by Jamie Ward. Synesthesia is a curious phenomenon in which people experience a stimulus in the usual way (like seeing a letter), but also having a cross-modal experience (seeing a letter in a particular colour, when it's actually just gray). For many years, it was pooh-poohed, but there a ton of neuroscience research being done on it now. I'm reading this to prep for a lecture on synesthesia I'm writing for my Advanced Perception course.

What are you reading? Tell me in the comments below.

Why aren't you studying?

Read The Syllabus

Q: What's the most important thing to do on the first day of class?

A: Go to class. (Why, what was your answer?)

The other important thing to do is: Read the syllabus. The syllabus (from Latin, meaning "list") or course outline is my blueprint for the entire course. I spend hours writing each syllabus, making very careful choices in what I include--and what I leave out. I try to keep it short, fitting it to one sheet of paper whenever possible. That's not easy to do without going to a 6-point font. So it's really discouraging for me to have someone ask for information that's in the syllabus.

Here are The Top 10 Questions That Are Answered By The Syllabus:

1. Is this class graded on a curve?
2. Is there a textbook for this course?
3. Is there anything specific we're supposed to be reading?
4. When is the midterm?
5. What chapters are on the midterm?
6. When are your office hours?
7. Where's your office?
8. Do I need a prereq for this course?
9. What if I miss a midterm?
10. Is the final cumulative?

I'm not going to say that these are stupid questions. ("Rrrd. Fffa. Ffllabfff." I'm biting my lip really hard right now.) But if you find yourself asking one of these questions, I hope you feel awfully sheepish when I tell you, "It's on the syllabus." I mean, if you can't bring yourself to read and remember what's on the syllabus, how are you going to do on the exams?

OK, so my metaphor for the syllabus is a blueprint. The UofA, on the other hand, views it more as a contract between instructor and student. There's a lot of "Calendar" this and "Code of Student" that. It really is important for you to know what your rights are, otherwise, you're probably going to forfeit them. (When, for example, is the deadline for disputing marks on a midterm or other term assignment? Read the syllabus.)

Interestingly, university administration is thinking about cutting funds for printing hardcopies of syllabi to save money. I find that it's hard enough to get some students to read a piece of paper that been put directly into their hands--what if it's now just some e-document online somewhere? Honestly, I think I'd be willing to spend my own money to copy the syllabus and hand it out in class, if it comes to that.

What do you think? Does it matter to you if you get a hardcopy syllabus or not? Post your opinion in the comments below.

Why aren't you studying?

Update 1/4/2010: Just got the memo (which was supposed to be sent out last month) in my email: the Dean (of Arts, apparently) is "strongly encouraging" us to go with e-syllabi.

Update 5/10/2013: Great comic by PhD Comics: "It's in the syllabus."

What format do you prefer for the syllabus? (Please vote only once.)

PDF only

hardcopy only

hardcopy and PDF

I don't need any syllabus because I'm psychic

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