The End of Term

In one of my classes this term, I finished my lectures with time to spare. In the other two, I was so far behind, I had to skip content (which I hate to do) and talk really fast (which I really hate to do).

I try to make lectures fill the time available. That's not easy when I've got a new lecture: I don't know how long it'll take exactly. Maybe students will have lots of questions, or maybe my PowerPoint slides are confusing and I have to make up for it with a lot of top-of-my-head explaining. On the other hand, it could be deadly boring, and I'll rip through it just to put an end to everyone's misery.

One thing that helps is showing videos in class--for a number of reasons. They're great buffers. Running short of time? Cut the videos. Lots of time to spare? Show them all. Of course, I'd always like to show all the videos, because I believe there's some educational value in hearing people explain their theories in her own words. Especially if they're, er, dead now. I still have fond memories of some of the interesting videos that were shown in the classes I took as an undergrad.

Despite cutting out some videos, things didn't work out this term. But I know why: not all terms are created equal. For example, Tuesday/Thursday courses can have 25 or 26 classes during a Fall or Winter term. That's a difference of 80 minutes, which is a lot of lecture. It's even worse for Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Friday classes, which can have 36, 37, or even 38 classes--creating a maximum difference of 100 minutes.

Beyond showing videos, I really don't know how else to handle this variability. Should I create more lecture material and only use it some terms? But is that fair to the students who enroll in a different term and are "deprived" of some of my wonderful lectures? Should I just rip through it all when I'm short of classes in a given term? Or should I just try and fill the minimum amount of time, and then cancel any extraneous classes? (Why am I even asking this? Believe it or not, some students do not want profs to cancel any classes--they want to get as much of the time they paid for as possible.)

I'm looking forward to Spring term because the number of classes is always reliably the same. Although the amount of time I have to lecture in Spring is actually less than a Fall or Winter course. *sigh*

Why aren't you studying?

The Importance of Sleep, Again

I've written about the importance of sleep before, but I'm lecturing on sleep in intro psych so it's on my mind again. Actually, it's on my mind a lot--every day. That's because I haven't slept through the night in over a year. (This past week has been especially hilarious: the baby has actually had a few good nights sleep-wise, but on those nights, my other daughter has woken up in the middle of the night--needing Dada to help her get back to sleep. I totally get the irony of lecturing on the importance of sleep when I'm likely the most sleep-deprived individual in the room.)

What's worse is that I've been reading a lot of really good research showing just how important it is to get a good night's sleep. The Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) has an annual meeting showcasing a huge amount of interesting work on sleep. At their meeting in June, 2009, one study in particular caught my eye (and the attention of some journalists and bloggers). It was found that sleep quality (not quantity, per se) was correlated with math scores. That is, the better your sleep, the better your scores on math exams. English scores went up, too. You don't think you can affect the quality of sleep you get? Sure you can: sleep on a regular schedule, don't pull all-nighters, and don't have a baby who wakes up every couple of hours. (OK, maybe that last one is a bit hard to do.)

Sleep also has been shown to aid memory: "Sleeping on it" may just be the best way to remember something. And in another widely reported finding, sleep quality turned out to be important for learning in general, and for learning vocabulary in particular. Ya, more gooder sleeps does to help your talking goodly-like and knowing the betterer words.

Ugh, I need a nap.

Why aren't you studying?

Baklava!

That's a picture of my baklava to the left there. To get my mind off feeling sick and miserable, I decided to make baklava. Sure, I could easily stop by Paradiso Pastries (11318 134 Avenue) on the way home. But there's just something about creating using your own hands.

I'm a fan of the blog dinner with Julie, written by a (*choke*) Calgary mom, cookbook author, radio personality, caterer, and (obviously) blogger. Coincidentally, she also made baklava recently (I made mine first). I've made a few of her recipes, but this time I just wanted to get rid of some phyllo I've had in the freezer since, well, er...since before my kids were born. It was still good, amazingly.

My recipe came from my main man, Alton Brown. I thought his recipe was interesting, using three different kinds of nuts. Instead of walnuts, though, I opted for cashews. Also, to put a Canadian spin on it, I added some maple syrup to the honey syrup. Yum!

How does this relate to psychology? Well, I am talking about the psychology of food and eating in my Advanced Perception course, and I'll be talking about hunger, eating, and weight in intro psych soon. Hmm, after eating all this baklava, maybe I go and weigh myself...

Why aren't you studying?

The Laryngitis

I'm sorry for the state of my voice this week. I know I sound like a frog with, um, a frog in its throat.

I was hit by a particularly nasty virus (picked up from my oldest daughter, via daycare or school, grr!) that decided to settle in my lungs, turning into a lower respiratory tract infection--likely pneumonia--activating my asthma, and giving me bronchitis. The result of all this was a cough that was so bad that my wife took her pillow and went to sleep in a different room. Wearing earplugs.

I started taking antibiotics for the infection, and maxed out on daily doses of inhaled steroids to open my airways. Unfortunately (I am coming to a point here, really; this isn't just about me describing my illness, honestly), one of the side effects is a hoarse voice. Or, in extreme cases, laryngitis: an inflammation of the larynx, which includes the vocal apparatus. Hence, my sounding like a goat that's eaten, um, a Smart Car. Wait, that doesn't even make sense. Did I mention I've got a fever, too? But look, you're learning all about parts of the body. Yay!

I always try my best to work through whatever illness I've got. It would be nice to put up my feet at home, and snuggle into an easy chair with a bowl of chicken soup to watch Oprah. But I don't see that as being professional. If I miss a class (or two, or three), that throws a monkey wrench into my schedule. Do I cut things out of the lecture? Do I just talk really, really fast to get through it all? Both of those are not fair to students--the paying customers. So, the show must go on.

Obviously, if my voice goes completely, I've got to give up. So complete laryngitis is one of the few things that will keep me out of the classroom. The others are explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting. Of those three, I'd pick laryngitis.

So, what do you think? Should I stay at home with Oprah, or try and croak through my lectures?

Why aren't you studying?

Anatomy of a Lecture: Part 3

So far, I’ve talked about deciding on a new lecture topic, and the prep work that went into it. This time, I’ve got a collection of links to websites on synesthesia. I know I promised a “ridiculous” number of links, but these aren’t all the resources I used; I’m not going to link you to scientific journal articles, and, er, I can’t link to an actual book. Still, there’s lots of good stuff out there (and it’s not overly technical).

Tests: Think you’ve got synesthesia? Take one of these tests and find out for sure (the first one is a “real” test, the others are not so hot).

  • The Synesthesia Battery is David Eagleman’s rigorous, standardized test of synesthesia
  • Synaesthesia Toolkit from Multisense Synaesthesia Research lab, directed by Prof. Julia Simner at the University of Sussex
  • Synesthesia tests has a number of different, um, synesthesia tests (unfortunately, it’s in poorly translated English)
  • Synesthesia Test assesses your grapheme → colour synesthesia (but if you simply click on the same colour over and over though, it hilariously thinks you have synesthesia!)
Simulations: If you don’t have synesthesia, it may be hard to imagine what it must be like. Here are some simulations of it.
  • animator Samantha Moore's video An Eyeful of Sound  represents her visual experience of sounds, in collaboration with Dr Jamie Ward
  • a sort-of simulation of grapheme → colour synesthesia: type letters and watch them change colours
  • a strange Java applet that turns visual images into sound, called The vOICe
  • here’s a musical sketch pad that turns your drawings into sound
  • experience sound generated from watercolour paintings by an artist
  • the Music Animation Machine lets you turn any piece of music into a coloured visual display
Documentaries: Here are the best documentaries I’ve found--some from TV, some web-based. If you come across a particularly good video, send it my way.
  • I think the best one so far was produced by the BBC series Horizon, called “Derek Tastes of Earwax” (love that title). It also aired in the US as “When Senses Collide” and “When Senses Overlap” (available on YouTube)
  • ResearchChannel has another good one, called Red Mondays and Gemstone Jalapeños: The Synesthetic World (available on YouTube). BoingBoing has an abridged version as well (available on YouTube).
  • Another Discovery Channel show, One Step Beyond, has a brief video on synesthesia that features interviews with David Eagleman and noted synesthete Sean Day (available on HowStuffWorks).
  • The Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast has an episode on Synesthesia
Magazine articles: (sorry)
Books/book authors:
Organizations:
Websites by/for/about synesthetes: Sometimes, it’s best to hear what synesthesia is like first-hand, from those who experience it.
Other good stuff: These links don't fit into any other category, but are worth a look.
Research groups/researchers: If you want more hard-core knowledge, you can find lots of peer-reviewed research articles here.
Qualia: “Qualia” is the term used by philosophers to mean our internal subjective experience--you know, do you “see” red like I “see” red? Synesthesia has been called “qualia becoming deranged.” If philosophy is your thing, here's some more about qualia in general.
And if that isn’t enough for you, Crétien van Campen has collection of over 50 synesthesia websites, and a bibliography of Synesthesia in Art and Science that's over 50 pages long. Is that ridiculous enough for you?

Why aren't you studying?

(12/31/2023: Links updated)

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?

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