What I Did on my Winter Vacation (2011 edition)

I took my family to Hawaii. I know, right? It’s awesome. Palm trees, warm breezes, sunset dinners overlooking the ocean.

Our hotel, the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani, had a lot of family-friendly activities. Kids can help feed the koi fish, make leis, and ego to a free pineapple tasting. The chefs built an enormous German-themed gingerbread village, complete with two model trains. And there’s free outdoor music and hula dancing every night.

Shopping? We were right next to the International Marketplace, so: check. Took a trip to a “swap meet” (read: flea market) which has 700+ vendors located in the Aloha Stadium parking lot, check. Ala Moana shopping centre? Check. And yawn.

Trinkets and T-shirts are as exciting to me as an Internet outage. Me, I love just going to a grocery store to see what’s interesting. A huge pile of papayas! Key lime pie gum! Haupia yogurt! Macadamia nuts! And of course, that delicious Kona coffee--the only coffee grown in North America.

We saw to the zoo, the aquarium, we even went swimming with the dolphins. Well, we tried to, anyway. Turns out some kids get really freaked out when they are within touching distance of 7-foot aquatic mammals, and have to get out of the water immediately. This brings me to...

The bad news. Before you start to both hate me and envy me, let me tell you that this vacation was not all mai tais and hibiscus. Oh, no my friend. There were downsides.

The cost: Hawaii is expensive. From the flight to the hotel to the meals, everything is pricey--even though the CAD-USD exchange rate was holding steady around $0.98.

The beach: I’m not a toss-my-beach-towel-on-the-sand-and-flop-down-on-it-for-the-day person. I’m more of a sit-in-the-shade-and-read-a-book-while-sipping-an-iced-coffee person. I don’t enjoy spraying sticky sunblock all over me; it makes me feel like a licked lollypop that fell onto the floor. And the sand. It gets everywhere. Just...everywhere. But my kids like the beach, so off I go. Oh, and it rained almost every day.

The catamaran ride from hell: It was pretty windy that day (there was a wind advisory, actually) but I didn’t expect our 1-hour tour to hit 8-foot swells. There were free drinks, but when you’re holding on to a railing for dear life with one hand and holding on to one of your children for dear life with the other hand, it’s kinda hard to sip your drink. Plus, seawater splashed into mine. Yuck.

The hotel: I love to sleep--I really do--whenever I get the opportunity. And what better opportunity than a tropical getaway? Alas, Waikiki is not a quiet place. It’s a tradeoff: if you want to be close to a lot of activities, you’ve got to be in the city, with all of its sirens and car horns and trucks beep-beep-beep backing up. Unfortunately, the lanai doors at our hotel were only single-pane glass, which offers no soundproofing. So when the street performers (including, but not limited to, drummers, singers, and what apparently was a troupe of synchronized shouters) started their night shift, we were forced to listen to them, even with 29-dB NRR earplugs. Hilariously, every night, they started just as we were trying, in vain, to put the kids to sleep.

The kids: Think you’re a seasoned world traveler who can handle anything? You haven’t traveled until you’ve traveled with kids. Well, with my kids, anyway. For example, try having the two-year-old decide to start ignoring you, run away, scream at her 129 dB max volume (yes, I measured that; I’m a scientist), and vomit all over her shirt. And this was in the departure lounge before we even got on the plane. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids. Showing them the diversity of the world is a blast. But it’s not easy. I’m seriously reconsidering Disneyland in 2012, girls.

Finally, I missed Christmas. No matter how much you decorate a palm tree, it ain’t a Christmas tree. I actually started to miss snow. (Really!) And not just that; Christmas is about friends and family. There’s something a bit...hollow about sharing your Christmas dinner with dozens of strangers in a hotel restaurant. Yeah, I’m glad to be back. (Also: the U of Hawaii Department of Psychology has no Faculty Lecturer positions open.)

How was your holiday break?

Why aren’t you studying?

The Heads-Down

OK, I've got my eggnog latte, a red pen, and my big stack of term papers. That means I'm going to go heads-down for the next 6 days; my goal is always to have the term papers marked for the final exam. I've never had so short a window to mark term papers before (who makes up the exam schedule anyway? Hmm, sounds like a topic for another post.), so there's a lot of pressure.

I do have an office hour today, but after that, you're not going to see me around. You can contact the teaching assistant, or if there's something urgent, there's always email--but I won't be checking it as frequently. Why? Interruptions like email have a prolonged effect on task flow. You check your email, but then you might as well check Facebook, and the news, and play "just one game" of Poppit, and make a snack, and...

Wait, where was I? Oh, right. Heads down.

Best of luck on your final exams!

Why aren't you studying?

The Importance of Sleep, Yet Again

Here's an interesting research finding about sleep: if you exercise, chances are that you'll sleep better. If you do an average of at least 150 minutes per week (about 20 minutes per day) of "moderate to vigorous" exercise, you will likely experience an increase in sleep quality, and decrease in sleepiness during the day. Walking briskly counts as moderate exercise, so even rushing from one class to another counts. Bonus!

On the other hand, The Gateway has a silly feature about an editor's attempt at getting more stuff done by dividing the week into six 28-hour days. I think it's telling that the story concludes with the line, "I might try it again sometime...but not until I sleep for a day to catch up." That's pretty conclusive evidence that this kind of lifestyle is not sustainable. If you want to be more productive, maybe you should be thinking in terms of better quality of work, not quantity. More than once, I've been handed a term paper by a bleary-eyed student who mumbled, "I was up all night writing this." You know what? I can tell.

I've posted about the importance of sleep before, and then again. I'm going to be lecturing on it in intro psych, so I't on my brain. Even, like, fantasizing about it. Not dreaming about it, however--that would require actual sleep. I don't want to name names, but someone is still waking me up every night.

There was a blissful period of a few weeks when she decided to sleep through the night, but now she's at the age when she needs more than zero naps, but less than one. (Yeah, try to do the math on that one.) If she takes an afternoon nap, she won't go to sleep until 11:00. But if she doesn't have a nap, it's Miss Crankypants for the rest of the day. Oh, and she'll also fall asleep on the floor in the evening, which means she won't be tired at bedtime. Sigh.

Anyway, in sum: Sleep is good.

Why aren't you studying?

(HT: PsychCentral.)

The Fall Term Reading Week

Argh! I'm up to my neck in a major consulting project, and the deadline is stomping toward me like a rancorous rancor. I appreciate having a couple of days--Fall Term class break and Remembrance Day--to devote to this project, but what if we got a whole week off? The Fall Term reading week idea received 55% approval in a plebiscite in March, 2011. But just because students are in favour of something, doesn't mean admin is going to pay any attention to it. (Lower tuition fees, anyone?) So it's a bit amazing that the fall reading week proposal is actively being considered by UofA administration, a subject of some discussion on the Whither the U of A? blog. There are four possibilities under consideration:

1. Classes start a week earlier, keeping the same number of instructional days. For example, classes would have started August 31 instead of September 7 this year.
Evaluation: This is a bad idea. Classes would start before the Labour Day long weekend, disrupting many vacation plans. And students who rent apartments would have to pay rent for the whole month of August--or just miss the first day of class. (Guess which one students would pick.)

2. Start classes a day earlier, there would be one fewer day between the last day of classes and start of the exam period (so-called "study break"), and instructional days would be decreased by one.
Evaluation: This is better--less disruption of summer. But I think students wouldn't like one fewer day to prep for finals, and I wouldn't like losing one class in Fall Term.

3. Like option #2, classes would start one day earlier, but there would be no reduction in study break days; instead two instructional days would be lost.
Evaluation: I would not like to lose a classe. Either I'd have to talk faster, or cut out some content. But what to cut? It's all important; otherwise it wouldn't be in the course. Also, if I teach the same course in both Fall and Winter terms, due to the different number of instructional hours, I'd have to have two different sets of lectures and two different sets of exams. Confusing much?

4. Start classes on the same day as always, and just cut out three instructional days.
Evaluation: WTF? Why is this even on the table? Having a break is not a good tradeoff for losing that much in-class time. Bad, bad, bad.

Interestingly, even the Edmonton Public School Board is considering a week-long fall break. This is an intriguing possibility, as I have two kids and don't like to pull them out of school just to go on a vacation. So if the UofA has a week-long break at the same time that my kids are out of school, we could go on a guilt-free family holiday that is not during the most expensive time of year (e.g., Christmas, summer), for once. But if the two fall breaks are at different times, or if the EPSB decides to implement a break and the UofA doesn't (or vice-versa), that would suck.

Which of the four options do you prefer?

Why aren't you studying?

The End of Perception

I'm sad to report that at the last Department of Psychology council meeting, despite my arguments, my colleagues voted to kill PSYCO 365: Advanced Perception. Not only that, but PSYCO 267: Perception is also not long for this world. A moment of silence, please.

I like to think of Advanced Perception as "my" course. One year, I took it as an undergraduate (it was PSYCO 466 back then); the next year, I was a graduate student and TA for that same course. Back then it was taught by Dr Charles Bourassa. When he retired, I was assigned to the course. Since 1995, with only two exceptions in 1999 and 2000, that course has been mine, all mine. At first, it looked very much like Dr Bourassa's course (steal from the best, right?), but I gradually shaped it into something that I wanted, adding topics like face perception, synesthesia, and perception and art. It wasn't easy--there's no textbook that's really appropriate for a 300-level course. I tried using one, but it was generally loathed by students, so over several years I assembled readings here and there to support my lectures. I like to think that I was successful in shaping Advanced Perception: my evaluations steadily improved from "meh" when I first started out, to Honour Roll with Distinction in the past three years.

Unfortunately, with a reassessment of the "streams" of courses available in psychology, it was proposed that, because no 400-level course in perception existed, Advanced Perception had to go. The motion passed by a wide margin.

But--wait. There is a loophole. I can teach the course (modified a bit--maybe including a term paper requirement) as a "special topics" PSYCO 403 course. Not only that, but the Department has a policy that any special topics course that is continually taught over a number of years will get rolled into an official numbered course, and put into the UofA Calendar. Heh heh. So maybe it's not dead after all--maybe the hundreds and hundreds of hours I put into doing secondary research won't all be wasted. There is a downside: instead of being able to accommodate 125 students (with lots more wanting to get in), I'll only have 30. Sorry, everybody.

And what of PSYCO 267? The Department wanted to do away with the perception course stream, so that means that Perception is also a goner. But--wait. It's not being killed outright, it's being renumbered to PSYCO 367. That means it will have to be modified--no multiple-choice-only exams, and I'll have to review appropriate textbooks--but it will live. It seems a bit strange to retain this course, because it's sort of "stranded": there's no 200-level perception course (the prereq will be PSYCO 275 or PSYCO 259 258, the newly renumbered Faculty of Science Cognitive Psychology course), and there's no (official) 400-level perception course. Oh well, whatever. The other change will be to downsize it from 200+ to 125. I generally like teaching smaller classes, but there's no way to accommodate the strong demand that PSYCO 267 currently generates. Sorry, everybody.

If you're reading this and freaking out about your course planning for next year, relax. These changes first have to be approved by central admin, and then they won't go into effect until 2013-2014. So I still have a bit of time left with two of my favourite courses.

Cherish your loved ones, you don't know when they may be taken from you.

Why aren't you studying?

Update: These changes won't take effect until the 2013-2014 Calendar year, so Advanced Perception will still be offered as PSYCO 365 in Winter, 2012 and Winter, 2013.

Update: The Faculty of Arts course PSYCO 258: Cognitive Psychology will NOT be renumbered to PSYCO 259, but starting in Fall, 2013 it WILL be a Faculty of Science course.

Update: PSYCO 403: Advanced Perception has been offered in the Winter term since 2021.

The Open Comments: 3

It's midterm time, and that means it's also time for me to ask you for your comments. Feedback is a really important component of improvement. And it makes no sense to wait until the end-of-term evals if there's something I can be doing better now. (Yeah, I know my intro psych clicker "experiment" is not going like I'd planned. I'm working on it...)

So, how are things going this term? Got a handle on things? Can you hear me in class?

Why aren't you studying?

The Right Way to Study

Do you know how to study? Yeah, that's obvious. But do you know the best way to study? Here's a quiz, from Chris Chabris' and Dan Simons' The Invisible Gorilla blog:

Imagine you’re taking an introductory psychology class and you have to study for your first test. You’ve read the assigned text, and now you three more days to prepare. What should you do?
1. Re-read the text once more each day.
2. Spend each day studying the text to identify critical concepts and the links among them.
3. Quiz yourself the first day, reread the text the second day, and quiz yourself again the third day.

Before you answer, don't try to guess what the right answer is, think about what you actually do. OK, now make your choice. (The answer is below.)

Do you know what you know? That is, are you able to make an accurate assessment of what you know (and what you don't know)? Let me explain. Take an intro psych course. You go to class, you read the textbook, you learn stuff. But how well have you learned it? With your gradually coalescing knowledge about psychology, do you have the ability to assess that knowledge? It seems like a paradox. Chabris and Simons call this the "illusion of knowledge": you believe that you have a better understanding of something than you actually do. This false sense of security is given by your feeling of familiarity with what you've read (and can be explained by fuzzy trace theory).

There are two ways are to get around this illusion. One, you take an exam. No, seriously. Exams (especially midterms) are not meant to be completely evaluative (judging your understanding), but are also formative (indicating what things need more work). Not surprisingly, students focus on the former at the expense of the latter. But exams can provide you with valuable feedback on your progress--as long as you actually check out your exams, going over each question to see what you did. If you just check your marks online, you're limiting yourself to the evaluative side of it.

The other way is to do what it says in choice 3 above. If you quiz yourself (before the exam) by trying to answer learning objectives or sample multiple choice questions, you are shifting the balance from evaluative to formative; you are giving yourself a chance to improve on weak areas before you get evaluated by an exam. Multiple quizzing can help you determine what's working, and what's not. Unfortunately, students tend to go with choice 1, even though it's more work with less of a payoff.

To put the quizzing together with the studying, you can apply the SQ4R method (survey, question, read, recite, relate, and review).

(HT: The Invisible Gorilla and research by Karpicke and Blunt, 2011.)

Why aren't you studying?