The Furlough Days

Today is the first of a bunch of "furlough days" at the UofA. So I will be trying really hard to not do any work, to show solidarity with my colleagues. Um, even though I already checked (and answered) email. And then I, er, started writing this blog entry. But from this point on, I will not be doing any course prep for next term, or answering email, or even--

Wait, scratch that. This isn't about having "days off" without pay. I can't just just take six days off and do no prep work at all--there's no way I'd be ready for the first day of class. It's about taking a pay cut, to help bail the University out of the great big, deep hole the administration dug, getting caught with their pants down with bad investments in the Great Recession. (Sorry about the mixed metaphor. Meh, I don't care--who's reading this anyway? Besides my mom.)

Anyway, I'll just pretend that I'm not doing any work. If you don't get an answer to your email, here are some classic posts that answer some FAQs:

• Need some help getting into my classes, which are all currently full? I've got an answer for you.
  
• Do you want to get your final grade "bumped up"? Just read this post from last year.

Why aren't you studying? (Like, for next term...)

The Eggnog Latte

Ah, a nonfat eggnog latte. It's a small indulgence that I allow myself every December after classes end. The caffeine keeps me going, because my kids are still conspiring to deprive me of sleep. The latte also helps get me into the holiday frame of mind--which is difficult, because I'm surrounded by so many term papers.

Don't get me wrong, I like these term papers. They're pretty interesting. But marking them takes up a huge lot of time. I do my best to prepare as much as I can beforehand: final exams ready to go, syllabi for next term completed, Christmas shopping done. I don't check my personal email, I don't read the newspaper, I don't watch TV. About the only thing that gets in my way is: snow. It does have to be shoveled. (Of course, it's snowed now for 5 days in a row, grr!)

What I'm trying to avoid is procrastination. I remember being a student and, after classes ended, getting the sudden and overwhelming urge to arrange all my CDs in alphabetical order. It's got to be done, right? Might as well do it now. Psychology Today has a list of 10 things to know about procrastination that you might want to check out--after you're done studying.

Why aren't you studying?
(I know, I know, you're going to ask "why aren't you marking?" Right? Someone else beat you to it. I beat you to it, too. It is OK to take a break--just as long as it doesn't last all day.)

The Copyright

You've heard about the expiration of the UofA's Access Copyright licence, right? It's been on ExpressNews and The Gateway, ya know. OK, here's the upshot, in bullet points (just like in class!)

• new copyright law in the works (Bill C-32: The Copyright Modernization Act)
• new Access Copyright licence: would require UofA to pay $45/student
• likely to be passed on to students
• current licence expires 12/31/2010what happens 1/1/2011?

There are a couple of important implications of all this. One affects coursepacks. As an instructor, I am not allowed to create a coursepack unless the UofA has a licence. (I could track down each copyright holder and negotiate with each directly, but, yeah, that's not going to happen. It's enough hassle to fill out the Access Copyright Log every term.) In January, I teach two classes that don't have textbooks--just coursepacks. So how will that work? In a clever bit of trickery, the coursepacks will actually be printed/published/assembled in 2010, so they are covered under the about-to-expire licence. Ha-HA! Take that, Access Copyright.

The second change is that required textbooks will not be available on reserve. A couple of key words in that last sentence are "required" and "reserve." Any recommended textbooks can remain on reserve. But if a textbook is required, it has to go on the regular shelves (or it will be sent back to whomever lent it to the library in the first place), so you can't take it out for an hour at a time to photocopy it, you naughty students! You can, however, er, take it out for three weeks and photocopy it. I mean, read it. In a typical 14-week class, though, only five students would be able to borrow the book. If students are fast "readers," more students could have access to the book, but even if it takes one day to "read" the book, only about 100 students could take it out. And my class is bigger than that.

Due to popular demand, I've put copies of textbooks for my courses on reserve. This term, it's been especially important for my perception course (PSYCO 267). I've assigned "Virtual Labs" that run off a CD-ROM that comes with every copy of the textbook. But if you bought the book used, it is probably missing the CD--and you can't buy the CD by itself. (You could buy the eTextbook which has access to the labs online, but that still costs about $70.)

In a stroke of good luck, however, I am onto a special opportunity provided by Nelson Education, the Canadian publisher of that book. An opportunity that could potentially save 60 PSYCO 267 students in my class next term quite a bit of money. And I might get the opportunity to do a study I've wanted to do for a long time, but on a much bigger scale than I ever hoped. But, I've probably said too much already...

Why aren't you studying?

The Gay Bisanz Memorial Turkey Drive

Dr Gay Bisanz taught me developmental psychology as an undergraduate. It wasn't a required course, but I took it anyway--I wanted to take as many psych courses as I could. It was a good choice. Sure, she taught me specific things about how people grow and develop, and general general things about science, psychology, critical thinking--but she also showed me the importance of giving back to your community. Sadly, Gay Bisanz died of cancer on June 1, 2005.

Gay started the Department of Psychology's now-famous Turkey Drive. People in the Department--academic staff, support staff, post-docs, students, and more--give money that is directed to CBC Edmonton's Turkey Drive for the Food Bank. But beyond that, some people bake cookies for sale, make jewelry, and donate items for raffle--there are a lot of very creative ways to part people with their money. Some instructors have volunteered to catch a pie with their face if their class contributes more money than any other class.

Last year, a total of $6,531.91 was collected. This year, the Turkey Drive goes from November 24 to December 8. Stop by the Psychology General Office (BS P-217) and buy a cookie, or a raffle ticket for one of the really nice gift baskets up for grabs. (The 2-for-$1 white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies are my personal weakness.)

Why aren't you studying?

The Exam Statistics: The Q Score

This is my final post on the topic of exam statistics. Previously, I described my use of the mean, difficulty scores, and point-biserial correlation. This time: the dreaded Q score. (Just to clarify: I'm not describing the other "Q Score", which represents the public's familiarity with--and appeal of--a person, product, company, or television show. That's not dreaded at all.)

The dreaded Q score is not a statistic that I regularly receive with all my other exam stats. I have to put in a special request. It's extra work for the people over at TS&QS, which means there's an additional cost that must be paid by the Department of Psychology. TS&QS has to go into their database of exam results for my class and perform a statistical comparison between two (or more) given exams.

Here's where the dread comes in: Why would I want to statistically compare two (or more) students' exams? If I suspect them of cheating, that's why. Sometimes, the cheating is blatantly obvious. The cameras in the classrooms (you know about those, right?) may clearly show one person peering over at the exam of another. Other times, it's not so obvious. Why is that guy jittering in his seat, looking everywhere except at his exam? Maybe he's nervous, or has exam anxiety. Why is that girl acting squirrelly, shifting her eyes back and forth? Maybe she drank too much coffee, has caffeine overload, and now really, really has to pee. Whatever the case, the exam proctors will not interrupt any student taking the exam. Nope. We'll just let you do what you do. If that's cheating, so be it.

However, at the end of the exam, the answer sheets from any suspicious students are set aside. (Think you can fool us by not leaving at the same time, or handing in your exams to different proctors? Tsk. You don't know how many eyes are watching, do you?) Those answer sheets will be analyzed, and I will get the dreaded Q score. I don't want to say too much about how it works, so suffice it to say that it gives a probability that cheating has occurred, compared to chance. Maybe I'll write more about how I have to deal with cheating in another post, but for now, let's just say it involves a lot of dread.

Although I have caught several cheaters over the years, I'm glad I've never had to deal with anything like what happened in Professor Richard Quinn's class recently. Yeesh.

(Cartoon by Frank Cammuso. It's important to give credit where credit is due. Otherwise, it's like, um...cheating.)

Why aren't you studying?

The Mouse

That's right, a mouse. I've got a mouse in my office. Well, it's probably not here full-time, but it does drop in and visit. Speaking of dropping, that's what's in the photo: droppings. See the two little black sesame-seed looking things? Mouse poop. On my desk. (Describing it with a food metaphor is kinda making me queasy. Bleah.)

A couple of weeks ago, there was a knock at my door. A couple of jolly fellows were putting mouse traps in everyone's offices in the Psychology wing. I told them I hadn't seen any mice, but they were quick to point out two little black grains of rice (bleah) on the floor. They didn't clean up the poop.

At this point, the lightbulb went off in my head. Oh, yeah. The chocolate bar that I left on my side table the other day. I came in to find it half eaten. I wasn't pleased as I threw the remainder away (Swiss dark chocolate!)--I figured the cleaning staff had seen it an gotten a bit hungry. Nope. Those must've been mouse teeth marks.

OK, so now: mouse trap. The problem is that it hasn't been working. I come into my office in the morning and regularly find more poops. On my desk. Of course you know, this means war! I don't want to get hantavirus. So yesterday I went out and got a couple of better mousetraps, put some cheese in them (this is what cartoons have taught me: mice love cheese), turned out the lights and left for the day. Heh-heh-heh, I laughed menacingly.

Today I opened the door to my office hesitantly. What would I find? Answer: nothing. OK, not exactly nothing. No mouse. No cheese. Yup, the l'il sucker ripped off my cheese. But at least the mouse traps were still there. This means I'm now helpfully feeding the mouse that's running around on the second floor. Dr Snyder, whose office is just down the hall, recently saw it looking at him from his bookshelf, but he wasn't able to catch it. In my office, however, the mouse prefers my desk. Evidence? Another poop. Probably left right after polishing off those two bits of cheese. Can a mouse be impertinent?

I suppose there's some joke in here somewhere about a psychologist and a mouse, but I'm drawing a blank. Do you know any good ones?

Why aren't you studying?

The Exam Statistics: The Point Biserial Correlation

I'm continuing my explanation of the reams of statistics I get about multiple choice exams. Last time, I explained exam item difficulty scores. (Fascinating, no?) This time: point biserial correlation coefficient, or "rpb". That is, "r" for the correlation coefficient (why, oh why is it the letter r?) and "pb" to specify that it's the point biserial and not some other kind of correlation. Like, um, some other kind.

If I've constructed a good exam item, it should be neither too hard nor too easy. It should also differentiate among students. But I can't tell how well it does that just by looking at the difficulty score. Instead, there's a more complex measure, the rpb. In general, I need a correlation index for a categorical variable with a continuous variable. More specifically, I want to correlate the categorical variable of a test item (i.e., whether a student answered the test item correctly or incorrectly), with the continuous variable of the student's percent score on the examination. Got that? I didn't think so.

Let me try again. Student A did well on the exam, getting 90% correct. Student B did not do so well, getting only 50%. If I look at any given exam question, in general, student A should be more likely to answer it correctly than student B. This is not the same as difficulty, because I'm not simply looking at what proportion of the class answered the question correctly. I'm correlating each student's score with their performance on each question. The key to all this is the word "should" in the sentence above.

If an exam item is poorly constructed for whatever reason, good students may do worse on it than students who did worse on the exam. That is, the better you are overall, the less likely you are to answer it correctly. That is not supposed to happen. The rpb gives me this information for each question on the exam. Experts in exam construction recommend that the rpb should range from 0.30 to 1.00. Anything question getting a rpb lower than 0.30 means that I will take a look at it and try to figure out why that's happening.

And if the rpb is negative, well...it's a negative correlation. That's the worst case I described: better students are doing worse answering this question; and poorer students are doing well. I won't use any questions getting a negative rpb again unless I can figure out why it's happening. Maybe I can tweak the question, maybe I have to rewrite it to ask about the same knowledge in a different way. Or maybe I'll just give up entirely, go and get a coffee, and check out some LOLcats.

Why aren't you studying?