The Comments: Winter, 2022

Wow, it has been a long time since I last posted responses from teaching evaluations. Partly that's because the Department of Psychology paused the Teaching Honour Roll about 4 years ago and hasn't started them up again. (Why? The criteria for being put on the Honour Roll require that a certain percentage of the class must respond to the end-of-term evaluations. Since moving USRIs online in Fall, 2014, response rates have plummeted from 80% to just over 50%. And that's where everything has been stuck since 2018.)

During the first term interrupted by Covid, there were no formal USRIs. (I still sent out a Google Form to my class because that feedback is important to me--especially during the difficult shift to remote teaching.)

Anyway, here are written comments provided by students this past Winter term from my PSYCO 282 course. Enjoy--but remember that my responses (in parentheses and in bold) to these comments may have an extra dash or snark and a pinch of sarcasm!

- Probably best prof I've had so far

- It's clear that Dr. Loepelmann cares about teaching and his students. He makes every lecture enjoyable on top of being well organized, well spoken, and overall a great professor.

- Psyco 282 with Professor Loepelmann was one of the most enjoyable and well-organized courses I took this semester. Whether it was online classes at the beginning of the term, or in-person classes later on, Professor Loepelmann made the lectures clear, interesting, and easy to understand. The self-management project was engaging and applicable to our daily lives. I have already recommended this course and instructor to multiple other students and will continue to do so.

- It was a pleasure being in Karsten Loepelmann's class this semester. He was engaging, knowledgable, and funny in a cheesy way. His lectures were often thought-provoking and made me think critically about why people behave the way they do. Overall, I enjoyed his class which made me more knowledgeable in the field of psychology.

- Instructor was equally enthusiastic in both online and in person lectures.

- I love u leopelmann <3

(C'mon, tell me how you really feel! 😊)

- this professors conduct was completely unacceptable. Regardless of ones views on class matters, I don't believe that for a PSYCH course a professor should be so vocal about their political and social views. This professor even went to the extent of trying to enforce his own mandates in a public university. Now I don't disagree for or against policy as I understand this is a difficult time, the way he went about sending multiple emails and constantly giving his opinion made this feel like a political science course rather than being about behaviour change. At the start of the semester he was an average prof doing his best but towards the end he constantly made people feel uncomfortable and even made scenes during class regarding mask debates. I know many people that didn't attend class including myself for his antics. For a tenured and self proclaimed "great" professor, he should understand how to conduct himself in a professional manner and focus on course content.

(Just to be clear: I am not tenured, and I do NOT--and never have--declared myself to be "great." In certain circumstances, the real world invades into the classroom. I did not give my political views; I commented on how the UCP government overreached itself by secretly demanding that post-secondary institutions follow its policies to remove mask mandates. (Yes, it was the government. No, I won't tell you how I know--but I do know.) The governments of other provinces did not meddle like this; most other universities across Canada kept their mask mandates in place--some of them until June 30, 2022. My classroom is my workplace. I resent anyone telling me what to do or how to do it. The fact that the extremely well-paid people who work in central admin did not step up and support front-line workers is appalling. Like it or not, my political and social views seep into everything I do (and they, clearly do the same to you, judging by your comments). It's too bad that my "completely unacceptable" conduct upset you. It's important to me to keep myself safe and healthy, and students in my class, too. I will never apologize for doing that.)

- instructor was slow at times when back in person.

(Slow? Like, speaking slowly? Or, like, in the pejorative sense?)

- No feedback on the student’s performance on the course. Need to learn from our mistakes on the midterms. When TA asked for clarification during the midterm viewing, he did not offer any assistance. Not familiar with the material? Told to refer to Prof.

(Wha-? No feedback? You mean the ExamVis for midterm 1 and the in-person exam viewing for midterm 2 were not feedback? How about the feedback you got on the quiz questions after every lecture? How about the feedback on each assignment? As for the TAs, I wish they could have been more prepared, but I did answer any questions that were referred to me.)

- Lack of enthusiasm from the instructor, especially when we went back in person

- Class lectures were basically a regurgitation of the textbook - we all know how to read - please make it come alive.

- I also really enjoyed his obvious enthusiasm many of the topics and I thought the supplementary videos he provided were both interesting and informative. Cheers!

- Personally, I really like how Professor Loepelmann actively engage in this class. I can easily understand his teaching and he is accessible outside the class even when we're online. I will definitely recommend his class to anyone who is interested in this subject.

(*Sigh* Just, *sigh*)

- I found in his feedback he was overly condescending and as a result I had no desire to seek extra help.

- I wish I saw more compassion from him. It did not seem like he was ever happy to answer questions from students. This is why when I was unsure of something, I would resort to a classmate or even Google because I would get too anxious to ask him anything, afraid that he would be snappy with his answer (as he often was when answering questions on the discussion board). Wish he was more approachable in this way.

(I'm sorry if that's how I came across to you. It was probably the most difficult term I've ever had in over 25 years of teaching. Posting videos online while also teaching in person was immensely draining, to say nothing about the existential threat of Covid and the war in Ukraine. If you're referring to my responses in the discussion forum, I tried to answer questions as quickly and concisely as possible. It can be frustrating if someone is asking--yet again--a question that I've answered before, or is answered in the syllabus. I would never be "snappy" with any student in person. Here are some other perspectives:)

- Dr. Loepelmann is an incredibly passionate professor and made this course extremely engaging and enjoyable. He treats all his students with respect and it is evident that he knows this course inside out. I would recommend both him and this course to everyone.

- His presentations are clear and interesting, he never goes over the class time , and shows a clear respect for his students. I took this course as an option and I am so glad I did. I would 100% recommend this course and Dr. Loepelmann to anyone and everyone

- This class was absolutely phenomenal. The content itself was all extremely interesting and I was never left wondering how it would be applicable in the real world, as research and examples were consistent throughout. Although we did watch many videos and interpreted plenty of graphs, it never felt excessive. The self-management project was the perfect assignment to aid in course knowledge. Each section of the project felt appropriately spaced, and no part of the assignment felt too big to comfortably complete within our busy schedules. It truthfully felt like a learning opportunity rather than a tedious project with no purpose. Finally and perhaps most importantly, Professor Loepelmann was absolutely fantastic. Although we began the semester online (where many professors tend to flounder) Karsten made every effort to make the content enjoyable and accessible. And he exceeded all my expectations. He continued to post online resources even once we moved online because he understood that with COVID people’s situations readily change. Our abundance of resources (ePoll quizzes, and textbook quizzes) that we were able to access at any point throughout the semester were irreplaceable. It is very apparent that he genuinely cares about the quality of learning we receive. This has honestly been the greatest class I have ever taken at the UofA. Give this man another teaching award please!

(Thanks!) 

- I wish we were given some practice midterms and finals to prepare better for the exams. Also, not being to able to get our exam copies back was a horrible experience.

(You got:
 - dozens of poll questions based on lectures
 - five worksheets
 - multiple-choice questions from the textbook posted on eClass
 - dozens of practice tests, quizzes, and application/misapplication exercises from the textbook
But you still want more?
No, you did not get midterm 1 back. Sorry if that was, er, "horrible." But you did get extremely detailed feedback from ExamVis--more feedback than students have ever gotten in person. And there were multiple exam viewings for midterm 2.)

 

- Dr Loepelmann was literally my favourite prof this entire term. He's enthusiastic about this subject and it shows in his lectures and interactions with students. I will forever remember hearing Dr. Loepelmann screech when he got Big Mac sauce on his keyboard during a Q & A for this class. 100% comedy gold.

(That's your takeaway from the course? *sigh*)

Why aren't you studying?

The Awards: Fall, 2017

I am honoured to have achieved the Department of Psychology’s Honour Roll with Distinction for my PSYCO 104: Basic Psychological Processes and PSYCO 494: Human Factors & Ergonomics courses. I also got on the Honour Roll for my Fall PSYCO 282: Behavior Modification course. Thanks to all who gave their feedback on these courses--good, bad, or ugly!

Although my rating for PSYCO 282: Behavior Modification was high enough for Distinction, not enough students completed the online surveys for it to qualify. I appreciate the time you spend doing the evaluations. I do take them seriously. I read every comment and make changes in my courses based on your feedback. Your voice does count!

Warning! My parenthetical responses to selected comments below may contain sarcasm. Please avoid if you have an allergy or sensitivity.

PSYCO 104

notes are hard to study

(Comment is hard to understand.)

if there is more picture in the lecture notes that will be more helpful to the visual leaner person

(There is no evidence supporting auditory and visual learning. I include pictures where they are relevant, but I do not include extraneous clip art.)

he keeps us all very engaged by relating to real life situations that are relevant to students. very funny! by far the best psychology professor i’ve come to contact with

(I try NOT to come into contact with students, as I've been told that is inappropriate.)

dislike.

This is a great class, and I think instructor is good professor.

This was an awesome course taught by an awesome instructor, will be scouting to take classes from this professor again for his enthusiasm to teach us objectives that would otherwise be deemed as boring

This prof. was my favourite of the term. He was very knowledgeable and passionate about psychology and I enjoyed that about the course; he was the reason I showed up to this class and I would loooooovvveeeeee him to teach all of the rest of my courses forever.

(Okay, so one "dislike," one "good," one "awesome," and one "loooooovvveeeeee.")

I thought my professor was very good at teaching in the lecture times. My only issue was with the style of the exams. I found it hard to study for since we were not provided practice or example questions from the prof. The questions provided with the textbook did not help prepare me for any of the exam questions and overall I found the textbook incredibly useless. In the future, I would strongly recommend that the emphasis on the textbook (ie 50% lecture, 50% textbook) on the exams be reduced. This was too much information to be studied thoroughly and as a result, made the exam much harder than it needed to be. Perhaps if study guides or at least practice questions were provided with the exam would've been much more achievable.

(If you get the Connect online content, you will have access to literally thousands of practice questions based on the textbook, presented as adaptive testing. This is an incredibly powerful tool that changes the difficulty of the questions you get to suit your learning. Evidence has shown that this improves learning and exam performance significantly. It's frustrating that more students do not take advantage of this option.

The textbook pages were messed up and didn't match the glossary in the back which made trying to learn a concept from the textbook extremely difficult.

(Thanks for letting me know. I will pass this along to the publisher.)

The professor was very interesting to listen to, which made the topics he was educating the students on much easier to understand and learn. His examples often came from personal, humorous experiences, which also added to the overall course experience. He is very intelligent and I would love to have him for all if my psychology courses!

The instructor was fantastic he always made the class interesting and tried to connect to the students. He made the class enjoyable and always made us laugh a bit. He also had really good example of the material to show us.

The class was very interesting and the way Loepelmann taught it was filled with enthusiasm, passion and interest. He provided great study material that helped on achieving good on the exam. His iclicker quizzes were helpful and even funny. He was so passionate about the material he made coming to class fun. Best prof this semester.

Karsten was an excellent teacher, he made the class interactive and fun. I have told my friends if they have an option to choose him for an instructor for one of their courses to definitely pick him. Tests were fair, you needed to read the text book for sure to do well on the exams. Overall a very good course.

(Thanks!)

Overall my professor was outstanding, he’s a great speaker and most of the time the class was entertaining, but there we’re a couple things that stood out to me as kind of unacceptable during the course. First of all he said he wasn’t going to do review classes, which I think is very inconsiderate as a teacher; I understand wanting students to come for more than just a review class but I don’t believe he has the right to make it harder for the students who do come to class and just want to know what to expect going into the exams. I also don’t think that it’s his decision to make whether or not students attend his class considering we are paying him to teach and it’s the students own waste if they do not attend. One more thing that didn’t sit well with me was the fact that he would just start class without any warning, no hello, no welcome, he would just start talking which would sometimes lead to missed notes or missed comments. When 200+ people are all talking at the same time it can be hard to recognize that the one we’re here to listen to has already started.

(Thanks for your detailed feedback. No, I don't do review classes, as I've explained before (it's not because I'm lazy, inconsiderate, or trying to make things harder). It sounds like what you're looking for is not a review, but a preview of the exam, which is a very different thing.
Each class, I did say "Good afternoon" and then said "Last time..." and briefly summarized where I left off. I do this to give the class a moment to settle down before actually starting the lecture. I'm sorry that you weren't able to hear me over the noise of the class.)

I really enjoyed being in the class as you taught us in a way in which we could remember things. I also appreciate how you are really patient with students leaving early. Would like to be in one of your other classes in future!

(I understand that students often have good reasons for leaving a class early.)

Instructor could cover more material in the textbook. A lot of the textbook material was never mentioned in class

(No, I can't cover more material. I filled the classes covering what I could. And you do NOT want me (or any instructor) to cover all textbook material in class. If you thought it was boring before...

it was very boring and the instructor often just read from his powerpoint slides

(See? Boring. Maybe next time, I'll ignore my PowerPoints entirely and just do freestyle rapping.)

I usually hate taking 100 level courses because they're often tedious and hard to appreciate. Doctor Loepelmann changed that for me. He incorporate's humour and anecdotes into his lectures, which make the course material fun easier to learn. He has a genuine love for teaching and wants to help the students share his love of psychology. His personal website is also incredibly useful for navigating the course. One of the best instructors I've ever had.

Dr. Loepelmann is a great instructor. Even though the class had ~400 students, it was one of the most engaging I had this semester purely due to his enthusiasm and teaching style! I hope to take PSYCO 282 with him in the future!

(Thanks!)

Can I just say... wow! Completely LIT COURSE WITH LIT FRIENDS AND A LIT PROF. The textbook was half lit, the physical version would only become lit if someone LIT IT ON FIRE. But the online version was fantastic and the questions were wowza! Completely recommend the online, would only recommend the physical copy if... idk you get the electronic when you buy the physical current edition copy but you can't access questions as fast in the physical edition. The in class activities and iClicker and jokes were LIT. If this prof taught math I'd probably take it, the jokes are your classic dad jokes but well thought out so you'd remember the jokes and examples on the exams. His name is a little hard to spell, but shoutout to Loepelmann the mann and looking forward to Yummie Treets being trademarked or patented.

(Whoa. Now I wish I was teaching English Lit. Geddit?)

PSYCO 282

great lectures with excellent examples. Instructor disagrees with textbook a bit and it seems like there must be a better textbook option.

(Nope. I've picked one that is one of the best in the field, with helpful pedagogical features, and at a great price. You can check ratings of behavior modification textbooks on Amazon and see that Miltenberger is the most highly rated one at 4.5 stars.)

Very interesting course material with lots of relations to real life examples. Excellent course. One complaint is that the assignments are marked so finely, so specifically, that I lost marks for not italicizing a title and journal number and for having an axis labeled as "Days" instead of "Time (Days)" even though the textbook uses "Days". Another complaint is that when I emailed Dr. Loepelmann asking a question, he merely replied with a riddle and did not help me find the answer at all, and I ended up failing that assignment because I didn't know what he was asking or what he was looking for. In the future, it would be great to answer students questions directly or maybe providing some examples.

(Science is about precision and accuracy; I explicitly pointed out the requirement for labels and units in the lecture. To your second point, I sometimes get questions from students about the assignments, along the lines of "Here's my answer to question 2. Is it right?" Of course, I cannot answer that. Do math profs say if you got your answers to calculus homework sets right? If I "pre-mark" someone's answers to the assignments, I am obligated to do that for the entire class. That, of course, is impossible. The point of an assignment is to assess your learning. If I give you the answers, it obviates the pedagogical intent of the assignment. Sometimes, the answer to your question is going to be "I can't tell you.")

This was my favorite class. It made me love psychology so much more. The prof made all the difference.

This course was amazing! I looked forward to it every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. The professor was enthusiastic and made the subject matter interesting and easy to understand. The notes provided for the class were thorough and the blanks in them kept me coming to class. The iClicker questions helped review material and engage the class. Marking on assignments were fair and midterms were the appropriate level of difficulty.

This course was awesome to come to. The project component was interesting and valuable because we were able to directly apply what we learned in class to real life behaviour modifying.

Prof is fantastic, the website is extremely handy and easy to use, the textbook is essential if you wish to do great in this class. Self-management project was also interesting and quite fun to do, a different take on learning outside the classroom. I would definitely recommend this course to other people.
Passionate prof, made his classes enjoyable and learned something new everyday.

(Thanks for all the kind words.)

This course was taught in a very effective way. The fill in the blank notes used were helpful and made it easy to take notes while still listening to the professor lecture.

The way student notes are given is somewhat unhelpful. Having a ppt or pdf with blanks in it would be much better than the text based notes that were provided.

(These two comments were literally right next to each other. *Sigh*)

Overall the course was excellent, the only comment that I have is to be aware of using person-first language, especially since the research in this course focuses primarily on people with disabilities.

(Dang it, I really tried to do this. I will go through my lectures again to correct them. Thanks for your important feedback on this.)

It was great and there should be some sort of assigned readings

(Er, what? Like the assigned readings in the syllabus you mean?)

I appreciate the fact that the notes could be easily pasted into a word document for easy note taking (as opposed to notes posted in PDFs)

(You may be the first person to thank me for that. I'm glad it worked for you.)

Manipulative and obnoxious instroctor. I won't take any class with again.

(I know, right? I'm so obnoxious, manipulating you into taking my class, reading the textbook, taking exams.)

Loepelmann is not very approachable. Seems slightly obnoxious and cold when asking questions. Get the feeling he is offended at questions getting asked, since it could mean he did not explain a concept clear enough. Cheerful personality when presenting/teaching and a good prof, but has some underlying attitude issues when one-on-one.

(When did you ask questions? At the end of class when I'm trying to pack up my stuff and get out of the way of the next instructor while dealing with a line of students all asking questions? Or during my office hours, when I don't have to rush through my answers in a quiet atmosphere? I'm sorry if I gave you the impression through our interactions that I have a bad attitude. I respect students, try my best to answer questions, and try to learn and improve by paying careful attention to student comments.)

Karsten was an excellent and engaging instructor. I have told all of my peers to take this course with him along with any other courses he may teach. This course has inspired me to widen the scope of my degree and look at extra certifications in the subject area.

Karsten Loepelmann is an excellent instructor, and my designated TA taught me things about APA formatting I should have learned a very, very, very long time ago. Thank you both for that. I really appreciated all of Karsten's supplementary materials on his websites, which helped me extensively on the Self-Management Project. While I wasn't extremely interested in the material, the structure and enthusiasm in lectures made them easy to attend.

Karsten was very successful in creating an amazing classroom experience. I never missed a lecture because he made them so interesting and enjoyable!

The instructor was really good and always replied to emails promptly. He was always very helpful and answered questions in a meaningful way.

Karsten Lopelman is a God" Okay, but actually. Karsten is the most pleasant professor I have ever had a course with. He is caring about his students, he lectures well, he gives great examples and has clear notes. Karsten's exams are fair, the textbook is a very useful resource (I read it religiously) and the fill in the blanks are the best idea since peanut butter. I would take absolutely any course Karsten teaches and when anyone tells me that they might take PSYCO 104 or PSYCO 282 the first words out of my mouth are " You have to take it with Karsten". I truly enjoy that you start every chapter with a research focus, it helps centre the idea and focus on where these ideas might be going. Once again another amazing course taught by Karsten, Bravo !

Dr. Loepelmann is a very nice professor and accessible outside the classroom. I have encountered some professors who refuses to answer students' question through emails and will refer them to the TAs but Dr. Loepelmann always answers my emails promptly and with detail and care.

(Thanks!)

PSYCO 494

What can I say? I am obsessed with human factors and ergonomics, now! I think about it every day and in almost every situation. I may actually devote my life to this topic. Aside from the captivating lectures, however, I wasn't terribly drawn to the textbook or the required readings. They seemed to be more "supplemental learning" and I honestly found myself forgetting to read the course pack. Thank you, Dr. Loepelmann, for the wonderful term! I am excited to take more classes with you in the future!

(I'm constantly looking for better readings; thanks for your feedback.)

This is my second course I have taken with this instructor. I thought he did a great job of making the course engaging and explaining concepts clearly and with humour. There was a lot of lists of things to understand within each topic, but I thought the exam format did a good job of examining these. I studied really hard for the first midterm and didn't do as well as I had hoped, but the instructor was great about being willing to discuss how to improve for the final. I am actually enjoying writing my term paper as the instructor gave us the freedom to choose a topic we are interested in. Overall, I enjoyed this class and would recommend this instructor.

(Thanks. I recommend me, too.)

The timing of the Macewan exercise around thanksgiving weekend was tricky. Procrastination=closed buildings. Excellent use of recent research. Like the independent topics for paper, would love a formal draft date to encourage getting it done early.

(Sorry about encountering closed buildings. I'll mention that to future classes. I don't want to have a formal topic-selection deadline, because to enforce it, it would have to be for marks--and I don't want anyone losing marks for something like this.)

A bit more guidance/discussion on the term paper would have been appreciated Overall a very interesting course with a lot of parallels to real life. More class interaction maybe would be something to consider to improve the class

(I am willing to work with you one-on-one if you need help with your term paper, but you've got to reach out to me via email or during office hours--otherwise I don't know what you need.)

Dr. Loepelmann did an amazing job with this course. I wasn't 100% what to expect with this topic but he was able to spark my interest by always coming to class well prepared and delivering lectures with enthusiasm. The two written assignments in this course were well though out and were effective ways of making sure we actually understood concepts and were able to apply them. I really enjoyed how the Loepelmann was able to link course concepts to real-life situations with videos and case studies that helped break up the lecture time. I would encourage you to continue using these and perhaps adding more, if possible. I also appreciated that you were able to offer us feedback on the Term Papers before final submission; that was super helpful!

(Yup, I am working to include more active learning content.)

Why aren't you studying?

The Awards: 18

I am honoured to have achieved the Department of Psychology’s Honour Roll with Distinction for my Spring, 2017 PSYCO 367: Perception class. Wait, what? Spring? That course ended 8 months ago! Did I just forget to post this? Am I too humble to post about winning an award? Nope and nope. The admin person who crunches the numbers for these department awards left and didn’t get around to this. And the new person had no idea there were awards or anything. It almost makes it seem like these awards are not that important. Well, it’s not like there’s a cash prize or anything. (But after I win one, I do take my family out to dinner.)

Warning! I may be a sarcastic jerk in making my snide little remarks. Comedy! If you are easily offended by overeducated, middle-aged white male privilege, turn back now. But if that’s your thing, read on!

The instructor made the information easy to learn and if students had any questions he was very good at explaining concepts in a different way. In a spring course, where some students are taking another course and/or working at the same time, it is difficult to keep up with the textbook readings and the lecture. It might be better to have lecture material cover 75% of exams and the textbook cover 25% rather than the 50/50 split. I'm not sure why so many students say this course is so hard, maybe it was the instructor that made this course better! I found the material to be fairly consistent with any other 300 level psych course. I really liked how the instructor had examples of illusions and concepts covered in class, and that he posted those and extra helpful material on his website. He was very organized!

(Thank you for the kind words and taking the time to write so much. There’s a lot of important information in the textbook, and you’re paying a lot for it. That’s why I make it worth a substantial amount on the exams.)

The final is too close to the last date of lecture. Not enough time to be fully 100% confident going into the final.

(I know--it really sucks to have the final the day after the last day of classes. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about that. You should give your feedback to the Office of the Registrar - Exams and Timetabling.)

Course was very fast-paced. Maybe less topics would be better

(It’s because Spring courses are packed into 6 weeks. I do not want to compromise the nature of content of the course, because it’s supposed to be the same as Fall/Winter courses. At least it wasn’t a 3-week course.)

Good course with a very interesting topic. It would however be nice if there were some assignments associated with the course. I do not tend to perform well on exams in general, and prefer classes where assignments are a part of the final grade

(Here’s where I have compromised the course. When I taught it in Fall/Winter, I had 10 “lab” assignments that students did. They were done on computer outside of class time. They were pretty highly regarded, fun, and helped students to understand concepts. But running these in a 6-week course is a nightmare, so I’ve had to cut them out.)

I really appreciate that the instructor presented some different material in the lecture than was in the text. Too many professors simply teach from the textbook, but the additional material in lecture helped to clarify concepts and made it more interesting. I also appreciated how animated the instructor was. This makes it so much more fun to be in class.

Dr. Loepelmann is a fantastic professor. I love his enthusiasm and humor, and I hope he continues to teach for many years

(Thanks!)

The iClicker questions were very useful in knowing what was to be expected on exams.

(Thank you for noticing that. I get a lot of complaints about there not being “sample exams,” but the clicker questions are basically that.)

Course was great. University making students pay for textbook they can't afford to pass the course is "a dick move." Still really good instructor

(It’s not the University, it’s me. I’m the one who makes the decision to have a textbook in a course. I’m sorry if you think I’m being a dick about that. I believe that the textbook covers a lot of important material that is essential to an understanding of perception. There’s no way I could cover that much material in lectures. I choose the same textbook being used in Fall/Winter terms, so there should be lots of used copies available. And I do make sure that there are copies of the textbook on reserve in the library--you can check those out for 2 hours at a time if you are unable to afford the (admittedly expensive) textbook.)

Hmm, all done and barely any sarcasm. Maybe next time!

Why aren’t you studying?

The Awards: 17

I am once again honoured to have been awarded Teaching Honour Roll with Distinction for all three of my Winter, 2017 term courses, alongside 16 of my colleagues. Thank you to the students in my classes who took the time to offer their feedback--good, bad, or ugly. Aside from clicking in answer to the questions, what does the feedback I get look like? Below are some actual statements, concerns, and critiques from actual students. Warning! If you are allergic to sarcastic responses from instructors, turn back now, or you’ll puff up like a balloon and have to take large doses of antihistamines.

PSYCO 104: Basic Psychological Proceses

Note: As a pilot project in this course, I assigned an Open Educational Resource (i.e., free) textbook. I asked explicitly for detailed feedback on this OER.

the online text book is not fair. it's so contradicting to lecture notes which is very annoying

(Hmm, do I go with “life is not fair”? I tried to point out the contradictions as much as I could, and I asked you to let me know if you found more, so that I could explain them to you. If you are annoyed by the fact that psychologists don’t agree on everything, well, are YOU going to be disappointed with every PSYCO course you take in the future.)

The textbook was very useful and provided alternate research to what was taught in class which helped solidify concepts.

The textbook explains concepts in a way that is extremely similar to the class notes... this isn't a bad thing, but I think that it would be helpful if we had a textbook that explained concepts from a different approach/perspective than the class notes.

The textbook was good and correlated with the lectures well.

The textbook was really good. The free version available online was not an inconvenience at all, no discrepancies between the course material learned during the lectures and the readings in the book.

(Okay, now you’re just messing with me, right? Do you see what I have to deal with? The textbook is simultaneously very dissimilar/dissimilar enough/not dissimilar enough. Were you all reading the same textbook?)

Vis a vis the textbook, although I prefer printed text to online resources, I think it was very appropriate and a huge relief to my budget. It was helpful for studying for exams, even though it was not the best written textbook.

(I agree with you about the quality of the textbook; I will not be using it again unless it improves substantially.)

The textbook was great! Free things are always good things

(I dunno. I can think of some free things I wouldn’t like. Chlamydia. Hailstones. All-you-can-eat free lobster. I don’t like lobster.)

Very enthusiastic which I appreciated. Almost a little too animated for a university course at times.

(Too animated? I’ll have you know I was designed and animated by the creative geniuses at Pixar!)

This instructor was absolutely fantastic. I meant every bubble I filled in, he has done a tremendous job.

This instructor is great, no lie. Made me be excited about coming to his classes to listen to him. He clearly is enthusiastic and wants us to succeed.

(Thanks, and thanks.)

The prof was at times annoying

(What did I do that was annoying? Was it making this sound?)

The free online textbook was a huge bonus. Made taking notes, which were also online, easy. Really accessible. The Professor made the class interesting and fun. His jokes made the class enjoyable and he related it to the course material.

The course was a bit boring. I enjoyed learning about all the previous research that was conducted to learn more about psychology. Loepelmann is sweet

(Again, I’m a bit confused: the course is boring, but I’m sweet?)

Text book was mediocre, the fact that the professor doesn't provide any practice midterms or finals or makes his notes available makes one question if he is the right individual to teach a first year course.

(Hee! Let me try now: The fact that you need practice midterms or finals makes one question if you are the right individual to be taking a university course. (Side note: no practice exams are available for any introductory psychology courses.) And what do you mean, I don’t make my notes available? They were on my website, like they always are.)

If anyone is overqualified for teaching an intro undergrad psych course, it's Dr. Loepelmann. One of the most organised, prepared, and enthusiastic profs I've ever had.

I wont need to take any more courses with this professor but i will be going out of my way to take more classes with him. He's the best Prof ive ever had the pleasure of having

 (Thanks, and thanks!)

Testing half out of the textbook is unfair as there was a lot of information in the text that was not covered in class and it made it confusing as to what was going to be on the test. The readings in the textbook should accompany and further what was learned in class rather than force the student to learn completely new material on their own. I know for other classes there was a lot more practice questions available and could be accessed through a code from the textbook. This would be a great aid in learning the material, while there were clicker questions for the class just having like 30 questions for the entire material was not enough.

I enjoyed the way he structured the course. It was fair to split the tests 50/50 amongst lecture and textbook. Looking at the textbook and being able to draw connections from what we learned connection better my understanding.

(You two should get together--you have a lot to discuss vis a vis “fairness.” I will be using a commercial textbook again that has several hundred practice questions available. No one better complain about that.)

Taking this course with Dr. Loepelmann was delightful. He is one of the best professors that I have been taught by in my university career so far. He showed up to class everyday on time and well prepared, he went out of his way to joke with us and show us funny videos to help lighten the mood of the dry course content and keep us engaged and he is overall a very well put together professor that knows what he is doing. This is very hard to find so it I can appreciate it. I would also like to say that so far I am not doing as well in this course as I would like but he is still very much deserving of this review. Great professor, I hope to see him here for a long time.

(Thanks for the kind words. I hope I was able to help you succeed in the course.)

Psychology was interesting but Loepelman seems to be regarded as a great professor but honestly I didn't see the draw, I had friends telling me that he had content in his class that wasn't covered in other classes until the 200 level. He didn't have a lot of things to engage the students, videos or examples, instead he had fill in the blank notes, which isn't a very engaging method. It seemed he liked to hear himself talk during the lectures.

The testing material was unnecessarily hard for the midterms, it covered all content from the notes as well as the entire textbook and included questions I believe were unfair. All in all he made the course load more than I thought was appropriate and wasn't helpful in discerning important information from irrelevant information. When I emailed him about what info from the textbook that would be a complimentary to the note he pretty much responded to know it all, the entire textbook. I believe that is unfair.

I enjoyed the content and hope to take more psych courses in the future however I will avoid Loepelman if given the chances, I sleep enough away from school don't need more in his class as well.

(Ouch--and you spelled my name wrong twice. So, asking students to know material from the textbook is “unfair”? Honestly, what do they do in other courses? Tell you to skip every other chapter?)

Very informative, and a good overview of the subject. I'm actually going to pursue a degree in Psych now as a result of it! (I was originally only taking it for personal interest with no plans to study psych further).

Karsten, you are a beauty. I ended up switching from specialized science into general science with a Psych minor partly because of this class.

(This is what happened to me: Took an intro psych course as an option, and fell in love with it.)

I like to use hard copies of textbooks and would have preferred if the instructor used a textbook that could be found used rather than the new one we had to buy which was quite expensive for what it included.

I found the textbook was great. I bought the physical copy and I found it was a very reasonable price when compared to other textbooks.

(The hardcover was $55.45 at the Bookstore. Or you could have printed it out from the free PDFs. Either way, it was not “quite expensive,” it was “very reasonable.”)

In some instances, the notes simply posed a question related to the concept. For example the notes would say something like: Cognitive neuroscience: What is the brain's role in cognition? Or something like that. Not only does it fail to explain what cognitive neuroscience is, but it can also confuse students between cognitive neuroscience and similar concepts such as biopsychology. Some concepts in this course are similar, so the notes should specifically outline the differences and define each concept clearly. The notes were also boring to look at (they were just black and white with the occasional picture), I don't know what can be done about that. One thing that really annoyed myself and other students was the fact that the exams were 50% from the textbook and 50% from the lecture notes. This form of testing sounds good in theory, but it really just ends up wasting the time of the students. For example, I spent 3 days for each midterm just looking through the textbook and taking notes. There was tons of overlap and it felt like the only reason the textbook was a component of the course was to make it more difficult to study. The few concepts in the textbook that were not from the notes could have easily been added with an additional page of lecture notes. But instead, why not force students to read through a textbook to make the course seem harder.

(1. I will strive to do a better job explaining concepts. Although definitions for things like cognitive neuroscience are not in the lecture notes, I do say a little bit about them in the lecture. Remember: the online notes are not a substitute for the actual lecture, they are a supplement to it.
2. I do not add needless decoration to my notes. Do you want clip art in the online notes? I view that as an unnecessary distraction, and likely a waste of ink.
3. Do you want to know why the exam questions are split 50/50 between textbook and lecture? Because students demanded it. Go back and read some of the student feedback I’ve posted on this blog and you’ll see. Asking you to read a textbook is wasting your time? I think you’re a bit too old to be spoon-fed.)

- Super strange comment, but it always threw me off when the professor didn't acknowledge that it was a new class (i.e take a moment to say where we left off)

(If I’m returning to a something where I left off in the middle last class, I do try to say, “Last time...” as a bit of a bridge. Sorry if not doing that confused you.)

Best.Prof.Ever.

(To be fair, I’ve heard that Einstein was pretty good, too.)

PSYCO 282: Behaviour Modification

Well-structured lectures, with a variety of videos and clicker questions to break up the powerpoints. Overall, it was a real pleasure to attend this class.

The course itself is quite barren and simple, it could use some changes.

(Our next Jeopardy category, “You Can’t Please Everyone.”)

This course proved to be very practical in real life and I'll continue to use the principals I learned in the future. Additionally, you have earned my seal of approval (which is no easy achievement).

(I know, right?)

The self management project was fun, the iclicker questions helped involve us in the class material plus review it in a reinforcing way.  Finally the teacher was enthusiastic, inviting, lnowledgeable and very approachable.

(I see what you did there.)

The instructor was really good with explaining the course material. Since the material was pretty dry the instructor made it very informational by providing extra videos in class and also by making the class entertaining by telling jokes.

The instructor was honestly one of the most boring people ever. There was no need to ever attend class and he never said anything important that was not in the notes, however you needed to to fill in the blanks.

The note-taking arrangement in this class as well as the instructor's well-organized and understandable powerpoints made this course one of the most enjoyable and understood courses in my 4 years at the U of A. Questions on exams were fair and pulled from the pertinent information in the course; these questions tested whether you understood the material rather than if you memorized the textbook. It was a no-nonsense kind of course that I have recommended and will continue to recommend to my peers.

(If you recommend this course, be sure to tell them how boring I am--one of the most boring people ever! Sad!)

Loepelmann is one of the reasons why my major is Psychology. It's unreal the UofA has a prof like him, he is without a doubt one of the best teachers I have had, let alone professors. He makes my scary student loan worth it, well at least almost worth it. Oh and his fill in the blanks notes are the best, it may not work for everyone, but **** for me they seem to really click.
* Inappropriate words were found and removed from this response.

(Well, that’s ******* great!)

Loepelmann you da bes

(Points deducted for spelling errors.)

Instructor specifically seemed inaccessible. To add however I did not attempt to contact because they seemed inaccessible.

(Er, what? I answer over 95% of email within 24 hours. I have a regularly scheduled office hour every week (which is NOT well attended). I will make an appointment with you if you cannot make it to my office hour. But I “seemed” inaccessible. WTF?)

I'm not the greatest student in the world, but this class captivated me and I'm so glad I took it! He is the most amazing professor and taught me so much that I absorbed. I struggle in school and his style of teaching was so helpful for me. I wish there were more classes that were tailored like this after 282 in the curriculum with him teaching. I will take any class he teaches. Also, love the way he does lecture material. It actually makes you focus more on what he is saying rather than getting every word down. Thank you so much for an amazing semester!

(Thanks for taking the course! Otherwise, I’d be a lonely man in an empty room.)

I would want to take all the rest of my Psych courses with Dr. Loepelmann if I could. All of the examples from research, products, and videos he presented in class helped me understand the concepts 10 000 times better. Amazing prof.

(I would want to teach all the other Psych courses. No, scratch that. There’s only one of me...)

I would have liked a more definitive rubric for the Self-Management assignment, as the marking scale was a bit unclear. IE, what constitute -1 mar, -2 marks, etc.

(I am spending my summer rewriting the rubric. However, keep in mind that it’s not a checklist.)

I was torn between loving and hating that we end early on so many days. Love it because, well, who doesn't want to go early sometimes?! Hate it because when it happens so often I start to think we lose a lot of classtime over the course of a semester. I was embarrassed to ask Dr. Loepelmann after class for the missing word(s) because I don't want him to think I'm not paying attention.

(Not every course fits exactly into the standard template of a 3* 1-term course. In fact, one of the reasons I stop a bit early is because some students miss fill-in words here or there. I am happy to provide them at the end of class. Often, it’s the same students at the end asking for missed fill-in words. It does not upset me if you ask for them. I’d rather you get them from me that not have them. No judgment!)

The way he teaches feels more like watching an engaging theatre show than sitting in a classroom being lectured at. He can hold your attention, and everything he says seems very calculated, carefully worded and rehearsed (maybe because he's done it so much?).

At first I though, oh god, he PLANNED that joke, how lame... but soon it didn't matter and I started enjoying it even more because it was planned.

Also, I dig the batman tie :)

For the TAs: It would be EXTREMELY helpful if you had a copy of the answer key at exam viewings so that the correct answer could be determined

(My apologies about the lack of answer keys. Here’s what happened. The TA who was scheduled to run the exam viewing was away at a conference and due to inclement weather was stranded out of town. She contacted me and, instead of cancelling the exam viewing at the last minute, we arranged for another TA to cover. Unfortunately, she neglected to ask for the answer keys. I assumed they were with the exam booklets, but they were not. My apologies for the inconvenience. We’ll try to do better.)

Whilst the 'fill in the blank' notes system is not popular among students, I found that it worked well to keep attendance high. This did turn into a problem later on in the course though, where a lot of the students around me would be off topic and not paying attention, only waiting for the blanks to appear on screen. These individuals can be very distracting to the learning process.

(I’d like to get feedback on how you think I could deal with the problem. Anyone?)

I liked the project, and how it made us tie concepts to a real life behavioural change.

(Great!)

I found the class very interesting and I even tried some of the behavior modification techniques on my Grandma's cat!

(Ethically, make sure you get the cat’s consent first.)

Having the notes on a separate website from eclass was frustrating because I could not download the PDF's onto my iPad from there.

(The note’s aren’t in PDF format, they’re in HTML. Putting them on eClass would make no difference. If you go to my blanks FAQ < https://sites.ualberta.ca/%7Ekloepelm/blanks.html>, there are instructions on how to load my notes into a text editor. iPads are, unfortunately, more difficult to work with.)

Great prof and definitely deserves all his teaching awards. He is always very prepared and loves what he teaches. I am not personally interested in this material but I am happy this prof makes it more manageable.

(Thanks!)

Great prof, great hair, great ties, great attitude, great smile.

(Wait, what? You like my hair? Seriously?)

Fantastic instructor and an engaging course overall that is applicable to life. However, sometimes that instructor did not speak loud enough and seems mumbled.

(Telling me that you can’t hear me after the class is over makes it really hard to help you. Please tell me while the course is actually underway!)

Extremely awesome professor with highly interesting course content. First day of classes when he opened with a Star Wars introduction, I knew he was already awesome. The iclickers and textbook were useful for the course. The additional videos showed in class were helpful in consolidating material. I really enjoyed this class and would recommend this Prof to all students.

Excellent professor and course. The course content was very interesting, insightful and applicable to real life. It is a bit provoking to think that human behaviour can be so malleable and so liable to so many different circumstances, this is the takeaway I got from this class. It kind of makes you want to create your own theories on other factors human behaviour may be susceptible to. The professor was extremely organized, enthusiastic, funny and open to discussion. I literally have nothing negative to say about the course, you even get your own chance to modify your behaviour for the better. I'd recommend it to anyone, even if just to take it for the awesome professor alone :)

Dr. Loepellman is a gem in your department NEVER LET HIM GO

(Thanks!)

I just want to get on the W.A.Y.S. blog

(FTW!)

PSYCO 494: Human Factors & Ergonomics

You can tell his jokes are planned and he likes to talk about himself a lot.

(Yeah, yeah. Blah blah blah. Enough about you, people come here to read about ME!)

This course has given me insight into what I may want to do as a career.

(Cool!)

The instructor was the only reason I took this god-forsaken course. He makes anything more interesting, even ergonomics which is pretty boring by itself but Loepelmann is the best

(It would help if you could tell me exactly what you didn’t like about the course. No need for future students to suffer.)

Karsten is a nice guy, very enthusiastic, well organized and spoken. He always answers questions and was polite. But as for his class I have so many regrets. I found the exams to brutal and it's frustrating having a term paper AND a final. I don't think the class is structured well to do well on tests because you have to literally memorize everything. I'm used to working hard in classes and don't mind hard work, but I really dislike unfair classes and I feel this entire class was unfair. I would not recommend this to anyone unless you want To be miserable and question your existence

(Well, you know what they say. I have compared my course to other 400-level PSYCO courses, and it’s not out of line. In fact, many of them have a much longer and more difficult list of required readings. A 12-page term paper and final exam is appropriate for a course of this level.)

I really like Dr. Lopelmann's teaching style! The only thing I think needs improvement are the slides. They're text heavy in the format accessible to the students and the sections/bullet points aren't clearly separated so studying different sections can get confusing. Sometimes I am unsure which point belongs under which heading or subheading.

(That can happen if you cut-and-paste from the notes webpage, which loses all of the formatting. And you spelling my name wrong.)

I love your classes. They're easy to understand, easy to follow, and it is always clear exactly what you want from us. I love the hands-on project. It really helped understand the material we were learning in class. One point of criticism would be to update your research. A lot of the studies you're drawing from are from the 90s and that's almost twenty years ago. It would be nice to see how much human factors has changed since then.

(I am constantly reading the literature for potential updates to the course. I don’t like change for the sake of change. But I will see what I can do to give you a better picture of contemporary HFE.

Dr. L. was a fantastic lecturer who really has a good grip on the classic "dad jokes" and masterful presentation and delivery of both course material and humour. It has been a pleasure to be in this class and the cherry on top were all the accents he did.

(You may not realize it, but all of these comments were made in a funny accent!)

Why aren’t you studying?

The Awards: 16

I am happy, honoured, and humbled all at the same time, because I have been named to the Department of Psychology’s Teaching Honour Roll with Distinction for all three of my Fall term courses. In 17 other PSYCO courses, the instructors were also awarded this honour (and another 10 courses were placed on the Honour Roll). Congratulations to my fellow instructors! Over the past semester, I have organized the Teaching of Psychology Brown Bags, a monthly seminar in which instructors share their teaching strategies, successes, and failures with each other. It’s amazing to see the innovation and devotion to teaching shown by my colleagues. It has inspired me to continue to try some new things in my own teaching.

A great big thank you to students who take a few minutes out of their busy lives at the end of the semester to complete the online USRIs (Universal Student Ratings of Instruction). This is just about the only way that the Department and Faculty evaluate me, and make decisions about whether to extend my contract. This makes USRIs especially important to me; I’d like to continue with this teaching thing.

As usual, I’d like to share with you some selected comments from Fall term (warning: my replies may contain sarcasm, and may cause itching and redness).

PSYCO 282: Behaviour Modification

prof reminded me of jim carrey!

(Aaaalllllrighty then!)

overall, reinforcing ;P

(I see what you did there.)

This course was one of my favourite psychology courses ever. The material was incredibly interesting and was covered well. Not only did we learn the basics but we were provided with many opportunities to learn from examples and gain a better understanding of how to apply the material. Dr. Loepelmann's notes were so well organized and I loved the website that he provided as a convenient location to find everything we really need for this course. I did not participate in the iClicker questions, however I always tried to get the correct answer before it was revealed to us. I loved this course, it was incredible and I've raved about it and Dr. Loepelmann all semester. The self-management project was a cool assignment. This course made me so interested in the content and application that I have looked into becoming a certified Behaviour Analyst in the future.

(Wow. Okay, you may be the first person to be so inspired. Good luck!)

This course was so boring, it just reiterated the same dull points on operant conditioning thousands of times during the semester. Maybe add more course content

(So, your criticism is that the course it too boring, and there wasn't enough of it...)

This class was very interesting and informative. The professor was very enthusiastic about the class content which made the class more engaging. I enjoyed the project and will continue to use the techniques I've learned this semester.

(I hope you do. No one ever tells me how that works out, though...)

The textbook shouldn't be required if some parts differ with the lecture notes. That makes it confusing to study for the exams.

There was A LOT of discrepancies between the textbook and the lecture and oftentimes the instructor would tell us not to listen to the textbook, if the textbook is always wrong, why did he make us buy this edition? We spend a lot of money on the textbook and he stated it was mandatory, but the instructor mostly tests on the lecture anyways.

(We have to be able to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty. In science--as in life--there is rarely one single answer that everyone unanimously agrees on. I know this makes it more difficult to answer questions on an exam, but it will help prepare you for life after university. It wouldn’t be fair to you if I presented course material in an overly simplified way. Also, only about half of the exam questions were based on lectures, exactly as I told you in class.)

The instructor's notes were extremely redundant and it was extremely hard to pay attention in class because all his notes were strictly words without ANY pictures to help aid in our understanding of the course material. The instructor was not very engaging and just went through his notes accordingly every single class. The instructor also made it EXTREMELY difficult to pay attention due to his notes only being fill in the blanks.

(So I’m sticking too close to the textbook? EXTREMELY closely? Yes, I could add pictures. What pictures would you like? Pictures of behaviour? Funny kittens? Research has found that extraneous pictures in PowerPoint slides actually impede learning of the material. Would having more blanks help you to pay attention? Or you could just forget about my notes and write your own.)

The instructor is highly knowledgeable in behaviour modification and is very enthusiastic when he teaches the course. He treats his students in a respectful manner and continually engages his class with a variety of activities. He is an excellent instructor, and I would highly recommend him to students looking to take this course.

(Thanks!)

Overall great course and great instructor! I enjoyed coming to class and it would not have been the same without Dr. Loepelmann's enthusiasum and sense of humor. Lecture time was used effectively and the videos which were showed in class were interesting and also helped to explain important concepts. Textbook was a great resource and the readings were managable. One suggestion I would make - make the iClicker count for participation marks. We're using it so often, it seems silly to not have it count for marks.

(The issue is that some students literally cannot afford a clicker, which would then impact their marks. I am thinking about this, and I think I have an acceptable way around this issue that I will try in my smaller Spring class.)

A rebuttal to your argument for iclickers. Iclickers are $80 at the bookstore. That's a ridiculous amount of money for tool that does one thing, and will likely only be used in a few classes. Also, the answers to your questions are biased: not everyone has an iclicker.

($80? According to the Bookstore website, a new iclicker 2 is $57.30 and a used one is $43.00--and you get half of that back when you return it. REEF Polling, which you run as an app on your phone, is even less, at USD$20.99. I know that answers to questions are biased; remember, in the first class I asked a question that demonstrated that to the class? I did that to encourage those--who could afford it--to get a clicker.)

Really liked the fill-in-the-blank notes style - it forces people to come to class and pay attention, which is a really good motivation for students who don't always show up. Made things very clear in class and I LOVED the text book used for this course. Very straight forward and an easy read - cleared up concepts and the fact that the notes were a really good reflection of the text books is an extremely great help for students. While I can say that some of the material is bland, this professor made the class fun and I truly enjoyed learning about it and I feel semiconfident applying it in real life.

(I hope you try applying some of the principles to real life!)

I would prefer to upload a PDF instead of writing into the text box, because I'm worried that my computer will crash and all of my work will be gone. Keep up the good work, and keep cracking the Dad jokes, it makes class more bearable.

(Because you will have to resubmit older parts of your project, you should keep a word processing document with all parts. That is, you should write your answers to part I in a Word file. Then copy and paste those into the text box. Then, do the same for part II. Again, just copy and paste your answers to parts I and II into the text box. If your eClass goes down or your browser crashes, you still have your answers safe in the Word file. Do you want more Dad jokes? Try Nice One Dad. )

Sometimes, videos shown in class were too long and boring.. some really didn't help me understand the material any better.

The only thing I think should be added is in the notes links to videos that were presented in class should be present. I enjoyed some videos shown in class but couldn't find it anywhere.

The instructor would show supplementary videos in class but would never link them on his notes for us to go back and watch them.

(Hey, just ask me if there’s a video you want to see again. Many are available on YouTube.)

Hopefully the notes can be made downloadable easier in word or pdf version.
I enjoy the types of notes he provides, I don't like how it's on a separate site from eclass.

(There’s always hope. Like, for example, in Rogue One, you can hope that everyone survives at the end of the movie. Er, well. Don’t expect my notes in Word or PDF ever. On this page I explain how you can get the HTML page into whatever text editor you wish. I use HTML because it is much more flexible than any other format, and is also accessible to those with disabilities. If I put my notes on eClass, there are a lot of cool CSS and Javascript things that I can’t do. And updating my notes on eClass is a slow, painful process.)

I hope he teaches other psychology classes so I can take them!

(Well, sure I do. I keep an updated list, if you like to take more of my courses--or avoid them.)

Everything about this course was well constructed, and your instruction faultless, with the exception of your voice, which sounds exactly like the character Dave on the youtube series Gayle, which I personally find rage-inducing, but others may not. An adult education theatre class or vocal coach could help you with that, should you so desire, but it's of course a relatively minor issue.

(It could be worse. I could sound exactly like Gayle Waters-Waters herself.)

Dr. Loepelmann is so enthusiastic about teaching its contagious. It is clear he has put in a lot of work on the course content and he really has made a conscious effort to put forth the best psychology course he can. I wish he taught all my classes because he is one of those teachers who you can just tell care. Some profs are just in it to do their research, so it is refreshing to take a class with someone who actually wants to be here, wants to teach, and clearly loves what he does. Best prof ever

(Thanks)

PSYCO 403: Advanced Perception

This class can be big or small, very great lecturer and very responsive! Great job

I love how enthusiastic you were when teaching, it made the class more interesting and enjoyable! Thank you.

I liked having the weekly quizzes but the format for the exams was tough; I felt that I never really knew what exactly to put for full marks, even by following the suggested format.

I enjoyed the class and the prof's sense of humour.

Dr. Loepelmann is very enthusiastic about the course subject matter and did his best to make the course interesting.

Dr. Karsten's way of teaching is really good, enjoyable, and makes you just want to be in the class! I have learned so much from this class and workload wise is very doable. Overall quality of the course is excellent!

(Wow, thanks everyone. This was one of the smallest classes I’ve ever taught, so I was concerned about how things would work out. Weirdly, I’m more worried about small classes than big ones.)

Also, not sure if it was just me but a few of the lectures came out weirdly when printing them out. It might be on my end or some formatting issue. Probably on my end but the lectures in question were some of the beginning ones after the midterm

(I’ve had a look at all of my lectures--across all of my courses--and have extensively modified the HTML code, so everything should look ok now. Sorry for any problems! Please let me know if you encounter problems.)

PSYCO 494: Human Factors & Ergonomics

overall the course was really good. The prof took a potentially dry subject and livened it up with case studies and videos. The class would have been much better if during times of class participation, people weren't afraid to talk. It was like pulling teeth. The prof tried to change that but just the group sucked.

Interesting course! Definitely would recommend more in class discussion to help with student engagement

(This term, I tried adding some more discussion/small group discussion activities in class. It needs some refinement, but I’m hoping this will engage everyone more. You’re right, sometimes it just depends on the makeup of the class as a whole--but I would never say that an entire class sucked.)

Terrified of airplanes... but in general really enjoyed the course and material that was covered! I find myself paying attention to design details that I had previously never really noticed, and analyzing design in systems that I encounter in my everyday life. This course was recommended to me and I had no idea what human factors and ergonomics meant beforehand, and now I enjoy explaining it to people who are baffled by the course name and how the two concepts are related.

(Oh noes! I don’t want anyone to be terrified of airplanes after taking this course. Remember the graph I showed in class about how deaths in western commercial aviation are at historic lows? You’re safer flying in an airplane than driving to the airport! Er, um, you should probably pay careful attention when driving, though.)

I have nothing negative to say, maybe this is due to recency bias but I think you're the best instructor I've had over the course of my undergrad. One comment I'd like to make is; even though you didn't get any audible laughs from your jokes, I found them very endearing so keep making them.

(Good application of cognitive principles there. So, my jokes are good at eliciting, er, silent laughs?)

I think the format of the midterm was presented to us a little too late - I had been studying all the material, but then the class before the midterm we found out that the exam would ask us about a bank of main terms and ideas, so I did not feel like I had sufficiently studied the main terms - I would've spent my time differently if I had known this a week ahead of the exam. Otherwise, I thought this would be a boring class but Dr Loepelmann made it really entertaining. He did a really good job with a really quiet, unresponsive class, and always made ideas and terms memorable with his examples.

(The format of the midterm exam is described in the syllabus. And in the first class, when I presented the learning objectives, I noted that they were important because essay exam questions would potentially be based on them directly. I’ll try to explain the format of the midterms more clearly in the future.)

Dr. Loepelmann is a great professor, and he tries to make the course interesting by bringing in interesting examples or case studies. Overall, really enjoyed this class.

(Thanks!)

Why aren’t you studying?

The Instructor of the Month

If you’re perusing the Faculty of Science website this month and happen to come across the “Instructor of the Month” section, you’ll see a familiar mug looking back at you. (Spoiler: It’s me.) I don’t know who nominated me, but thank you. In keeping with the behind-the-scenes theme of this blog, I'm going to take you, well, behind the scenes of the photoshoot.

These kinds of things are decided way in advance. I first learned of this award last July. A communications person from the Faculty of Science let me know, and asked me to answer the questions you see on the website. Happily, what you see on the website are my answers, unedited. (OK, not totally true. In answer to the question, “what do you think is the key to connecting with your students?” I first said, “I don't know--maybe you should ask my students!?”)

The next step was to set up the photoshoot, which was scheduled for August. (See? Way in advance.) It felt a little weird dressing up in a shirt and tie in the middle of summer when I wasn’t even teaching classes. (Notice my tie? Like it? Want to buy one? Sorry, it’s out of stock. But ThinkGeek.com has lots of other cool themed ties.)

If you look at some of the other photos accompanying Instructors of the Month, you’ll see that they were taken in a range of locations--in the field, in classrooms. Since it was a nice sunny day, I think the plan was to shoot the photos outside. But when the photographer, John Ulan, stepped into my office, his eyes got big and his head swiveled around checking out all the stuff that my wife won’t let me keep at home. Terminator 2 head. Simpsons poster. Count Chocula/Boo Berry/Frankenberry cereal boxes. Batman bobble-head. It seems shutterbugs like to shoot interesting things, and yeah, I guess my office is pretty interesting. So John decided to take my photo in my office. (Heck, my office looks way more interesting than me.)

Here’s a breakdown of the things you can see in the photo. In the background is my Legion of Super-Heroes (v4) poster from 1993, drawn by Canadian artist Stuart Immonen. Below that is a drawing by my eldest daughter. There’s a lot of stuff going on in that picture; if you look closely, you’ll see a My Little Pony pegasus. On the shelf is the Sigmund Freud action figure that I mentioned in the article. In the foreground stuck to my filing cabinet is the Ravenclaw magnet that I bought when Harry Potter: The Exhibition was at the Telus World of Science three years ago. Because Ravenclaw. The magnet is holding up a gag Back to the Future $1,000,000 bill that a friend bought for me. What you can see in the photo is only a small fraction of the geek stuff  in my office. You can’t see the autographed photos of Billy Dee Williams, Dirk Benedict, Lee Majors, and Nena. Or the collection of thank-you cards I’ve received from students over the years.



(So why do I have all this junk--I mean valuable memorabilia in my office? Aside from the fact that my wife won't allow it in the house? I enjoy watching behind-the-scenes features on my favourite movies, and I love listening to all of the commentary tracks (even the ones with the second assistant director and the key grip). On Pixar's old DVDs, they would show the workspaces of their employees--a lot of desks with computers. But there were always tons of toys, models, and cool knick-knacks everywhere. They claimed that having all of this clutter made them more creative. Sounds good to me (and look at how creative and innovative Pixar is). So I've done the same. Has this boosted my creativity? I dunno. But it's made my office a whole lot more interesting.)

Although there's only one photo in the article, many, many more were taken. It's a bit...embarrassing to have this kind of attention. I don’t think I’ve done anything special to deserve all this--just doing my job (and happy to do it). And look at the company I’m in. Two other outstanding psychology instructors have been given this honour already (Anthony Singhal and Michele Moscicki), not to mention a couple of other amazing instructors I worked with on Science 100 (Gerda De Vries and Vincent Bouchard). Wow. Now I’m really going to have to up my game.

Okay, time to get my head out of the clouds and get back to work.

Why aren’t you studying?

The Awards: 15

It's that time again, the Department of Psychology's Spring and Summer Teaching Honour Roll--er, six months after the course ended. (To be fair, it's only--er, four months after summer term ended.) Okay, whatever. I'm just happy to be nominated, etc., etc. Oh, and I'm also happy to have gotten on the Teaching Honour Roll with Distinction. Woot!

Thanks to those who do complete the online form. If you think doing so is a waste of time, I would ask you to reconsider. Teaching evaluations form an important core of the evaluation of instructors every year. If there's no data, it can affect future teaching.

Important note: The Department of Psychology will no longer be offering courses in Summer term. Only Fall, Winter, and Spring. Adjust your plans accordingly.

Here are some selected comments (danger: some replies may contain sarcasm!):

“The course was fun and interesting. However, the note taking was tricky. Sometimes, I wished the Professor had the words that we needed to copy down underlined. I would often find myself deeply engrossed in the material being taught only to realize that I had missed a few words.”

(Yeah, I hear this a lot. I've tried underlining the fill-in words in my PowerPoint slides, but this had the unintended consequence of students paying attention only long enough to fill in the word. Then they went back to chatting, or doing unrelated stuff on their laptops and phones. Later, when they realized they didn't actually understand anything, they wanted me to explain it all to them. Which I already did in class. That kind of takes a lot of the fun out of teaching. So look, if you miss a word or two, come up at the end of class and I'll give you the words you missed. I'm not going to be grouchy about it or anything. That's why I end class a couple of minutes early, BTW.)

“Perhaps make clicker participation worth a bit more? Sometimes the pace was a bit slow, so it was easier to get distracted, but otherwise this was an excellent course and
professor!”

(Thanks for the feedback on clickers.)

“I honestly really did not like the textbook for this course. It overlapped with the lectures maybe 30% of the time. So we had to teach ourselves at home the material in the textbook which I understand is fair but it should at least overlap with lectures a lot more than it did. It made the workload for this course double which made it hard to focus on what to study for the exam.”

The issue of having to teach yourself textbook material is a separate issue (but an important one). The class rated the textbook 4.1 out of 5. This edition has an average rating in my classes of 4.25. Although it's not the highest-rated textbook I use (the one I use for PSYCO 367: Perception), it's a strong rating. The overlap is not (all) the textbook's fault. Sometimes it's lacking important research and theories (tsk!) which I feel obligated to make up for in class. Other times, though, there are just things I'd prefer to talk about that are not the in textbook. Anyway, you wouldn't want me to just duplicate textbook material in class. Trust me on this.

“I think its a lot of material. Maybe the last section of cognitive engineering could be removed especially because the course pack section of notes is very outdated and was really hard to get through. Maybe instead the section of AI/Human intelligence could be expanded instead.”

I'm looking for a more recent coursepack reading on HF/E, but nothing at the right level so far. I'll keep looking. It's important to me to keep this section in the course: it's my area, and it's all about the direct relevance of psychological research to the designed world we live in.

“Dr. L is one of the best professor at the U of A and should be in the running for next year's Last Lecture. He is the only reason I took this course. This course was NOT a requirement for my degree and was taken for pure entertainment and enjoyment. Instead of watching TV or sleeping in, I thought taking this class with Dr. L would be more fun and a great reason to get out of bed in the morning! Even though I am an average student at best, Dr. L presented the material in a way that I could understand and apply to everyday life. This is the sign of a great teacher! I could get a "D" in this class and I would still be happy with what I learned from Dr. L's entertaining teaching style. Like the old cliche goes...he could read the phone book and it would still be an awesome experience!”

(Wow, thanks. Is there anything you didn't like about this class?)

“The only thing I didn't like about this class...”

(Hah! I knew there was something!)

“...was the last set of readings on Applied Cognitive Psychology. It was dated and absolutely painful to read. The author was horrendous! Another bad thing that happened (which had nothing to do with Dr. L) is having the first midterm near a construction zone. It was absolutely distracting and definitely threw my first midterm grade off.”

(First, do NOT nominate me for Last Lecture. No thanks. Those lectures are amazing. Like the 2016 one. Wow. But there's no way I could talk for an hour. I mean, I can teach a course and go on and on and on. But talk to a general audience? Nope.

Yeah, the worst thing about this class was that construction business. Many of us have...issues with the building manager (who was not only unable to find the source of the construction noise, but was unaware that there was construction happening at all--even though the people at Classroom Bookings new about it). My sincere apologies for the disruption.)

“I feel like more assessment could be added to the course (small assignments etc) in order to provide more testing. Some practice exams would also be useful. For me, this course was a bit too dense and long to be offered as a spring course; I find it would be much better in the fall or winter terms.”

(It's hard for me to reconcile your comments: 1) the course is too dense and long, and 2) you would like a greater workload. Um, those are mutually exclusive. This is something that I've struggled with. It's still a 3-credit course, and there are the same number of classroom hours as a Fall/Winter course. So the course should be academically rigorous, and not watered down in any way. But then--it is offered over 3 weeks, which severely curtails the kind of work I can expect from students (one of the reasons why I do not teach PSYCO 282: Behavior Modification in Spring--it's impossible).

“The class was enjoyable - not boring at all. Lopelmann's silly humor and videos served as a nice diversion. Overall, this is a course and prof I highly recommend!”

(It's spelled L-o-e-p-e-l-m-a-n-n. And I'm not "silly." Hmph. I'm more...goofy.)

“n/a”

(o/k)

Hm. Not so much sarcasm after all. Must be the eggnog. (More nog than egg.)

Why aren't you studying?