Occasionally, I get new information about something I've posted about before, and usually update the original post. Unless you go back and reread those, however, you may miss out on that info. Sometimes, it's hardly worth it to do an update. So here are some updates to things I've previously written about:
- The New Colleague: After the brutal Alberta budget was released, our potentially new Faculty Lecturer decided not to come to the UofA. This is probably not a coincidence.
- The Budget and the Clocks: I wish the clocks were the only thing affected by the devastating provincial budget. There's talk that the University may invoke "Article 32," a clause in the Faculty Agreement that allows the University to eliminate programs--in effect, cutting tenured positions. This would be a very bad precedent, and would substantially affect morale. (Oh, also? The brackets on the wall where the clocks used to be have been removed. And I may lose the phone in my office. Do you think the Premier has a clock and a phone in her office?)
- The End of Perception: The end is near. I'm teaching PSYCO 267: Perception for the last time this term, and taught PSYCO 365: Advanced Perception for the last time in the past winter term. On the other hand, I will teach PSYCO 403 (LEC B2): Advanced Perception in Winter, 2014. And I will try to teach PSYCO 367: Perception in Spring, 2014.
- The Udacity Partnership: Massive Online Open Course provider Udacity, with whom the UofA signed an agreement last year, has decided to concentrate on one discipline (Computer Science). That means all of our MOOCs (including the psychology one I'm working on as well as DINO 101) will have to find a new home. Stay tuned.
- The Secret Project: ...is still moving ahead. I've been consulting with some people who have given me some great ideas about how to improve student engagement. Plus, there's a cool new learning technology that I'm going to be using. All of this will be tested in my Fall, 2013 PSYCO 104 LEC A3 class.
Why aren't you studying?
I wish I found this site when I was taking your classes so I could have been not studying on here instead. Actually, I stumbled upon an article about Black Friday while googling past tornadoes in Edmonton (the tornado warning has got me trapped at home with nothing better to do than to learn more about tornadoes). After reading the story, I found that the author was none other than Dr. Loepelmann ("Hey, I know that guy!" popped into my head). Small world haha I didn't expect to find your site on the front page of a google search, to be honest. After that, I dug around the site and became very interested in the topics that you write about so I bookmarked this site =) Thank you for giving me an alternative to studying, Dr. Loepelmann.
@Student: Yeah, I'm kinda stuck here in my office right now, too. Tornado warning!