The SPOT (Fall, 2023): PSYCH 494

Once more unto the breach--diving into the comments from my PSYCH 494: Human Factors and Ergonomics course. Who knows what they'll have to say...? (If it's not immediately obvious, my comments in parentheses are in full-on sarcastic/snark mode.)

 Once more unto the breach--diving into the comments from my PSYCH 494: Human Factors and Ergonomics course. Who knows what they'll have to say...? (If it's not immediately obvious, my comments in parentheses are in full-on sarcastic/snark mode.)

Wait--before I dive in. One of my kids is now in university. I hear every day about things that other instructors are doing (or, in many cases, are failing to do). Here’s a tiny sampling:

• There is disregard for rules. (For example, one prof tried to hold two final exams. It boggles my mind that they thought this was even remotely a possibility. Shame.)

• There is disregard for students. (For example, holding exams on a Saturday. I don’t care that they’re consolidated exams that everyone in the course has to take at exactly the same time. That’s bullshit. Closely related is having assignment deadlines on the weekend. Take a damn break and make it due on Monday. It’s not hard.)

• And there’s being intentionally underhanded. Like a course that marks assignments by giving students a percentage, then converting that to a letter grade. At the end of term, the final grade is calculated by doing a weighted mean of the letter grades. WTF? And none of this is explained anywhere like the syllabus where university rules require it. (I’m looking at you, Department of English.) This also falls into the category of bullshit. Even a high-school level of math can show you how this distorts a student’s true performance. I can’t even.

I’m listing these things because a) I would never pull anything like that. And b) it makes me embarrassed for my institution. You need to do better, University of Alberta instructors. Whatever criticism I may receive (i.e., see below), I am satisfied in knowing that I am doing better than a whole bunch of my peers. Okay, now let's get into my feedback!

"one thing i appreciated about lecture notes specifically is the lecture outlines at the topic of every note package. thinking about them now i paid little attention to them but i think it’s incredibly helpful being told explicitly that it’s worth focusing on certain topics that were mentioned in these outlines."

(That's great to hear.)

"The first midterm caught me by surprise since my expectations of the test format didn't match what was presented. Had I known what to expect my study methods would have differed."
"In the short assignment I felt like there was not enough of what you really wanted the papers to be. At least from myself and what I have heard from other students is that it was hard to figure out exactly what we were supposed to write for the short assignment.”
“Professor L does a great job of providing clear instructions for assignments and exams.”

(I thought I made it clear. I gave examples of questions. I'm not going to give examples of essay question answers, as each one varies from another by a huge amount. There's not much that generalizes.)

“Exams and paper often had specific hidden criteria that students were effectively expected to guess (like being expected to guess the conceptual model of the designer of MacEwan, which if you got wrong resulted in a 5% penalty in the grade for that paper).”

(No, I’m not asking you to guess. I’m asking you to think, and make a conclusion based on the evidence that I stepped you through in the walkthrough. Yes, it’s difficult! No, not everyone will be able to get it. It should be easy to get 50%, harder to get 75%, and even harder to get 100%. This should be true of all coursework. It’s not a hidden criterion: you were explicitly told to provide the designer’s conceptual model. It’s also not a “5% penalty”--it’s that you did not get the correct answer so you didn’t earn that 5%.)

“The blanks gave enough to ensure that I was engaged but not overwhelming that I couldn’t pay attention to what was being actually discussed.”
“Fill in the blanks can make the lectures boring and thus I am not engaged in the material”

(Gotcha. They’re engaging but not engaging.)

“The readings, especially the textbook, were honestly quite interesting to read adn was quite informative.”
“I quite enjoyed Don Norman's book. I appreciate how it is not a traditional textbook. It was very readable.”
“The book did not really help in my understanding as what we needed to know was discussed in class, a waste of money”

(You mean the free ebook available on the library website was a waste of money?)

“If you cant recount word for word the lecture slides, then you will struggle with the exam. There was no room for deviation even if it was clear you understood the concept”

(My job is to evaluate people’s learning, under the assumption that not everyone will learn everything to the exact same degree. If your answer to an exam question is perfect, you’ll get a perfect mark. If it’s incomplete, you’re going to get a lower mark. I’m not grading you on your understanding, I’m grading you on what you put down on paper.)

“I think there could be more material to practice for the midterm and finals, such as more sample questions for the short answer and long answer”
“I felt the exam questions were unfair in what the question asked for and how we were marked.”
“The midterm was definetely not evaluative of peoples understanding , the average was a 55%. I studied incredbly hard and had memorized the material as wel as understood it yet was docked marks for stupid things”

(Literally every single learning outcome can be considered a potential essay question--and there are dozens of them. Also, literally every single term in bold can be considered a potential short-answer question. I haven’t counted, but there are dozens if not hundreds of them as well. That’s a lot of potential practice, but you have to put in the work of doing a self-evaluation. Further, I also said I was willing to give feedback if you tried answering the questions and sent them to me in advance of the final exam.
As for fairness, that word means “impartial and just treatment or behavior without favoritism or discrimination.” How was I unfair? Maybe you didn’t like your mark, but that has nothing to do with fairness.
The class mean was low, I agree. That’s because performance overall was pretty low. Much lower than in previous terms--with exams having similar content, marked the same way. Maybe you understood the material, but if you write down something incorrect, that’s what I have to mark you on.)

“the term paper could be done without utilizing any information from the course.”

(That depends on your topic. You chose your topic, not me. If the systems approach applies to your topic, that’s an enormous amount of course content.)

“I enjoyed being able to test myself and my research and writing abilities when completing my term paper. It’s by far the largest writing assignment I have done in University thus far and found that I enjoyed being able to research and write about a topic in such depth.”

(It’s a shame you didn’t have the opportunity to write more before this course. At least you finally got the chance!)

“Only being graded on 4 total assignments (midterm, applied project, final paper, final exam) is extremely punishing and does not give much room for growth if a mistake is made.”

(My understanding is that having a greater course load is “punishing.” You want more assignments? Yikes. I agree in principle that more assignments is probably better, but I have a limited capacity to do marking. I don’t get to have a TA in this course; I have a marker, but I have to beg for that every term.)

“feel the structure of the midterm & final exams exclude the possibility of assessing all content learned in the course. We were responsible for all course material, but only a few terms would appear on the exam.”

(Oh my gawd! You want me to test you on everything? Seriously? I’ve never heard of any instructor doing that on any exam in my 30 years of teaching. The best instructors can do is take a representative sample and test on that.)

“The term paper was so much work, which definitely caused a time crunch.”

(I think that’s a you-thing, not a me-thing. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s a Term paper. Like, you’re supposed to work on it over the course of a term. I try hard to push students to do that--giving a bonus mark when you decide on your term paper topic. If you leave it to the end of term, yup, there’s going to be a time crunch. When I was a student, I had my term papers done two weeks before they were due. And this is in a time before anything was available on the web. I had to physically go to multiple libraries to look up and read my sources. Now, many students don’t even start their term paper two weeks before it’s due.)

“Other classes come into play and impact my schedule and how I manage my time for assignments but the course work for this class independently is well spaced out and allows for lots of time to complete the assignments if you manage your time well.”

(Yes! Time management skills FTW!)

“You’re doing great lol.hats off to you.”
“I appreciate all the real-life examples! They really helped me to see the relevance of course content in daily life.”
“Case studies were very helpful in expanding the impacts of the topics and how they apply to our environment in practice.”
“Excellent use of case studies, very engaging.”
“They were EXCELLENT and incredibly helpful! Professor Loeplmann used several examples to illustrate real-world applications of difficult concepts.”

(You spelled my name wrong.)

“not supplying notes online feels antiquated and infantilizing.”

(I have my notes online. On my website. I’ve been doing it for every course I’ve taught since 1995. How’s that for antiquated?
Oh--wait. Do you mean that I don’t post my PowerPoint slides? No, I don’t. I am exquisitely mindful of accommodating people with disabilities. PDFs of PowerPoints are crap for that. HTML is still an elegant solution. You can print them out. You can load them into a word processor.
Oh--wait. Do you want that I don’t give you full notes and have blanks that you have to fill in? I’ve been saying this--and posting on this blog--for years: You Don’t Have To Use My Notes. You can take everything down longhand.
Oh--wait. Do you mean something else? I dunno. I don’t really know what you’re criticizing. Maybe you just couldn’t find my notes online.)

“The midterm exam was marked by Dr. Loepelmann himself very quickly after it occurred. :D For both the applied project and the midterm, the instructor provided in-class feedback which was great! No need for extra viewing sessions; efficient use of class time.”
“Feedback from the midterm exam as well as the assignments was specific and helpful for future learning. He also gave the option of submitting term papers early for some extra feedback which I found incredibly helpful.”
“The early term paper submission feedback was very helpful and was very much appreciated.”
“karsten seems to be a cool guy and easy professor to speak to. despite never actually speaking to him.”
“Dr. Loepelmann is professional, kind, and knowledgeable. He is also very humourous! One of the best instructors I have had in my university career. If I could afford to gift him an Aeron chair, I would. Thank you!”

(Well, it looks like my strategy of “be the worst jerk of an instructor ever” is not working.
Anyway, to all the haters: I hope that one day you get to teach a class and get feedback on it.)

Why aren’t you studying?

The SPOT (Fall, 2023): PSYCH 367

On, I continue! Slogging through Student Perspectives Of Teaching! This time, PSYCH 367: Perception. (If it's not immediately obvious, my comments in parentheses are in full-on sarcastic/snark mode.)

“Slides should be relased for finals or atleast sometime during the course to review. Its not fair to have fill in the blank notes and expect everyone to be able to attend classes and never miss one. Students should not be faulted because other students do not attend your classes. The blanks could be provided or the slides to provide extra information. everyclass moved very quickly and would sometimes go on irrelevant tangents.”

(Me? Irrelevant tangents? I stick really close to my notes. Sometimes I got questions from students that I tried my best to answer. Is that what you mean by “tangents”? You can get any missed blanks from me at the end of class. Or from the Discord.)

“The notes and course are really well put together and easy to follow! Notes make sense and are well suited to the material Lectures are the most engaging part of this class. They are fun and interesting and presented in a very easy way to follow with easily understood language.”

(I’m glad it works for some people.)

“Topics not gone over thoroughly enough. major topics are brought up and then dismissed with no emphasis whatsoever”

(I wish I knew what “major topic” I bought up and then “dismissed.” Being specific here would actually help me. There’s nothing I can do with this vague feedback. You see, it’s really hard to present information to other people so that they can understand it. Was it autism? See, I can't go off on an "irrelevant tangent" or some people won't like that. See above.)

“Might have been nice to have a basic rubric or template for labs, just to get any idea of the desired format.”

(Yup, I know. I’m working on it.)

“Your classes are the only classes I have ever taken that require me to graph data. No prerequisites for this course seem to require digital literacy. As such I suggest that at minimum, the requirements for graphing are better laid out within course documentation. Preferably, this would be a skill that you would actually teach us. The references included do not contain sufficient information on what is required to organize the data, and modify the graph to make it do what it should. I genuinely found making a graph to be the most challenging content in the entire class.”

(At some point, you have to learn how to do graphing. This is that point. I’ve never taken a course in graphing. I’m completely self-taught--in the era before YouTube. In this course you were required to make: two graphs. That’s all. Just two line graphs. I’m happy to hear that you were able to learn how to make graphs in this course. I consider that a success. I mean, are there university courses on how to make a graph? Let me know and I will seriously add that as a prerequisite. Seriously.)

“The lectures consisted of tons of information and evidence to back up theories that were both disproven and proven. It was difficult to follow what was the actual theories that are in use present day as we had to also know the false ones.”

(Er, theories are not “true” or “false” (or right or wrong). That’s not how theories work. We get to better theories by seeing what didn’t work. I showed you the scientific process. There is value in that. This is a third-year course. It’s not about getting the right answer and moving on. There is complexity and nuance to science that you’re only starting to see at this level. Wait till you get to graduate courses. Shit, you’ll start to believe that nothing is true.)

“the course website stating how you have never missed a class is not very supporting or accomodating to students. Students should not be faulted because other students do not attend your classes. It is not my problem that people do not attend your classes. Most profs do provide slide lectures.”

(So my strong work ethic is not “supporting”? You’ll have to connect the dots for me on that one. I try very hard to be present for students in my classes--even when I was feeling ill pre-Covid. Likewise, I expect a level of commitment from students. Missing a class here or there happens, I acknowledge that. But this was an in-person class. So is it now unreasonable of me to expect that students actually attend classes? I guess you don’t have to. But you also don’t have to get an A. No, I don’t provide slides. That’s not my style. I’ve sat in on classes in which everyone has the slides. It's unbelievable how many students were disengaged, on their phones, going through email. Great, they were in class. But they weren’t present.)

“It felt like we were often rushing through things closer to exams, not giving us enough time to reflect and learn the information before the exam.”

(That’s on me and I apologized to the class for it. I’ll apologize again. I am sorry. I know that I need to remove some content. Editing is really hard for me.)

“the format of the notes, the epolls during class and the online labs were all amazing ways to reinforce what we were learning and added an active element to classes. 10/10”

(Thx)

“While the text book was helpful and so were the practice tests that it gave, I would've strongly preferred at least one practice test from the prof. Every prof as a unique way of writing questions and being able to have baseline for what questions to expect make it easier to prepare.”

(See, that’s where the ePoll questions come in. I wrote those.)

“Overall, I liked the textbook! I just wish there wasn't so much extra content in addition to lecture notes - it makes studying a little difficult as I don't know what to really focus on.”

(I’m glad you found the textbook helpful. I’m ditching it next time I teach this class.)

“Labs didn't really help my understanding, personally, and were just more work for grading.”
“The labs helped reinforce some important concepts in the course.”

(Do you see how these surveys don’t really help me do my job? I mean, what am I supposed to do with this information?

“Both the midterms felt like they tested on material we never covered, and were not really in the lecture notes. Even after studying a lot I still wasn’t prepared because the tests had questions on other material that we didn’t go over.”

(I have never put a question on an exam based on material that was not in the lecture or textbook. Did you, y’know, read the textbook? That’s where 50% of the exam questions came from. Hmm, I think I may have discovered the cause of your difficulty.)

“That one lab due just before reading week was sneaky and mean, especially considering there was another lab due on the first day back after classes. I would pick one or the other.”

(Not trying to be sneaky or mean. I could, if I tried. Having things due on the weekend, like some instructors do. I try to space out the labs as much as possible, while also trying to cover the relevant background material before you do the lab. It’s very difficult to do this. Keep in mind, the labs are free. If I went with for-pay labs--about $60--I’d have a great selection to choose from and much greater flexibility. But I’d get mad comments from students about having to pay so much to do labs. I know the timing of these labs sucked. But I’ll see what else I can do next time. It's interesting that I didn't get a single positive comment about the labs being free.)

“Two midterms I feel is not accurate or conducive to learning. More exams worth a smaller percentage of the overall grade I think would have benefited in this course as there was so much content that was expected to be known and memorized for the exams. More exams allow for most focus on the key concepts.”

(You want more exams? You, dear person, are in the distinct minority. Don’t tell your fellow students about this!)

“it would be useful to have low stakes quizzes to see if the content was actually being learned after each chapter and to also promote staying on top of the reading chapters from the textbook”

(So, you want something like, um, chapter quizzes maybe? Like the chapter quizzes that are on eClass? Or are you saying you want free marks for doing these?)

“My instructor provided very helpful examples that made the content interesting!”
“The visuals/examples make the class more engaging and are something hat is easy to reflect on when writing the exams/reviewing”
“Examples used in class were great.”
“Diagrams, videos, interactive activities were a really nice touch to the course material - it helped with staying focused during the entire class!”
“Very very very very very good at explaining things and giving help one-on-one if you asked. I wish I had the time to come and ask for help or have the language to get help.”
“They explained things very well and would change the explanation from the textbook to help”
“I never asked but when anyone asked questions in class he was quick to come up with a different way of putting it aside from the written notes to help people understand”

(Whew. I’m glad I’m not completely wasting my time. I was starting to get worried!)

“No feedback was ever given by you, by the ta yes but not by you. when the average was 60 all you had to say was that it was consistent with past perfromance which is bull**** and not motivational or helpful at all.
* Inappropriate words were found and removed from this response.”
“I emailed the prof with concerns on my performance and was replied to with a lengthy email about ways in which I could better my performance of exams and also with what resources to refer to.”

(To the first person: I designed the labs that the TA give you feedback on. That's a design choice I made. Also, do you want me to say that the class did badly? And some people did really crappy on the exam? That would be demotivating. Sometimes, classes do better than historical averages, which I take great care to point out to the class. And, see what the second person wrote? I’m here to help. But I’m not going to come over to your house or anything. You have to make some effort. Did you reach out to me at all?)

“Not the most approachable.”
“the nicest prof i’ve ever had by far!”

(*heavy sigh*)

“Oh, he makes the class feel amazing with how he talks, jokes, and sets himself up in the class. I love this man so much, and I hope my next class with him is even better (:. He really REALLY reminds me of Wilson from the show 'House, M.D.' and makes me want to watch the show so much every time I have a class of his.”
“Very respectful and made the lectures fun to attend due to their sense of humour and this also made the content more enjoyable to learn. They also had amazing examples of each topic to help with learning the material and having those examples be fun made it easier to learn too”
“I really like Dr. Loepelmann's teaching style, and the material in the classes he teaches are always fascinating. I was already really interested in perception, and I was delighted when I found out he taught that class! I look forward to taking more classes with him in the future <3”
“this is the best prof at the entire uofa he deserves all the praise in the world! he clearly loves his area of expertise and going to his class is always a good experience. obviously the content is hard but he does a good job of explaining the majority of the time.”

(❤️)

Why aren't you studying?

The SPOT (Fall, 2023): PSYCH 282

The SPOT are, of course, the Student Perspectives Of Teaching, taking the place of the USRIs. Here are some selected comments from students in PSYCH 282: Behaviour Modification from Fall term, 2023. (If it's not immediately obvious, my comments in parentheses are in full-on snark mode.)

“I like the organization of the textbook better than the lectures. It seems more logical.”

(But my lectures follow the chapters of the textbook exactly. I don’t know what else I could do except read directly from the textbook. Here’s what others thought, below.)

“The lecture material and the textbook aligned extremely well”
“The textbook did have lots of overlap but it helped reinforce and strengthen my understanding.”

💀

“It would be nice to have a video to watch that explains the self-management project in a bit more detail”

(I wrote an 11-page document all about: The Self-Management Project. Is it not long enough? Not detailed enough? I also talked about the project throughout the course in lecture. Sorry if that’s not enough for you, but I’m trying to treat you as adults.)

“There were immensely to many terms needing to be remembered for each test. A non-cumulative design for each test would be more conducive to a better learning environment.”

(The midterms were not cumulative, although this university-level course does build upon itself. All of those terms are part of the course content. Part of learning about behaviour modification is learning the language of the field. This is not part of the “learning environment.” You just want the exams to be easier, right?)

“notes could've been in greek"

(Προσπάθησα να κάνω τα πάντα κατανοητά.)

“Class lectures were structured into 3-50 minute lectures throughout the week which felt like a really good pace to go about some of the heavy technical terms, subtopics and jargon that this course involves. The syllabus outlined everything in a very comprehensive and effective manner detailing what topics are going to be covered each week and the major due dates for the self management project."

(See? This person gets it.)

“I think at times the self-management project instructions and expectations could have been clearer. There were a lot of questions asking clarification about a lot of things. I also found the scoring rubric to be confusing. The point deduction and addition system in it was confusing.”
“I found the requirements for the self-management project clear”

(These responses were literally one right after the other.)

“I didn't like the fill in the blank lecture notes. I found it distracting trying to make sure I was getting all the blanks filled in and would miss blanks often when I was trying to pay attention to the lecture.”
“The taking of the notes by filling the blanks really increased my in class attention. Was a good idea.”

(Some like it, some hate it. You don’t have to use them at all, you know. You are free to write everything down yourself. As I said in the first lecture, if you miss some blanks, you can come up to me at the end and I’ll help you out and give you the blanks you missed. Also, I think people were sharing them on Discord. So you won’t miss anything if you just put in a bit of extra effort.)

“I hate textbook exclusive testable knowledge. Everything testable should be covered in lectures.”

(Reading is an important skill. Yes, it takes effort. You sign up for my course, I assume that you want to learn things--and develop your skills. No?)

“There were a plethora of resources available on eClass and on the instructor's main course website. Literally everything from supplemental videos, Textbook answer key guides, assignment video tutorials, ePoll question sets, customized worksheets for several of the topics we learned throughout the course, substitution recorded lecture videos for the classes the professor unfortunately had to miss, a Zoom link to access some lectures when the class became a hybrid class, to even appealing, simplified 1 page infographics that made processing certain concepts and topics that much easier.”

(Gee, when you put it that way, it sure looks like I put a lot of thought and effort into teaching this class!)

“Prof posted a recording on zoom but did not give us the password required to access the recording.”

(When you click the video, Zoom copies the passcode to your clipboard and a message on screen says, “Copy Passcode to Clipboard.” This is how Zoom works, and I can’t change it. Sorry if it was too confusing for you.)

“the textbook did not align with the notes in too many instances”

(“Too many”? There were five. And I pointed each one out to you explicitly. I figure second-year university students can handle that.)

“This course has strongly shaped how I see psychology as a field. As well I have made great strides in my own personal wellbeing”
“I had no idea about behaviour modification, and despite this being a hard course, I am highly motivated to continue more in this field, especially due to Loepelmann's amazing humour, knowledge, and overall awesomeness.”

(Well that’s pretty darn cool. You keep me going, people; you keep me going.)

“Need to read the textbook if you want to get over 80 on exams”

(Is this a surprise or something? I did say half of the exam questions are from the textbook. And why are you writing this comment to me? This isn't rmp.)

“More practice exam or questions would have been better”

(So, having dozens of ePoll questions, dozens of worksheet questions, dozens on online chapter questions, and literally hundreds of practice quiz and practice test questions in the textbook are not enough? Really? How many are enough? Thousands? smh)

“had lots of practice exams”

(Yes. Yes, I did.)

“The one project that got split into 5 parts has a certain amount of points for each section but I found it difficult to tell how you were doing percentage/letter grade wise”

(You just have to do a calculation: the weighted mean. Here’s an online calculator: https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/math/weighted-average-calculator.html. If you are can’t do this, then I am sad that your math teachers have all let you down.)

“dont get to keep our tests”

(Yep, just like every other PSYCH course that has multiple choice exams. However, you could go to the exam viewing and spend 2 hours looking it over, though. You’re welcome!)

“THEY DID NOT MARK ANYTHING ON TIME”

(I have to stand up for my TAs here. First, what even does “on time” mean? Were there some deadlines to have marked material back? Did I make any promises about when your results would be available? Answer: No. Marking almost 300 completely different assignment submissions is a massive job. It’s not the same as a TA marking answers to math problems in which everyone is supposed to get the exact same right answer. They did a damn good job and I appreciate it. More patience you need.)

“If anything it felt slow paced at times”
“Too fast sometimes”

(Ah, a classic complaint from two students in the same course. I go both too fast and too slow. In the same class.)

“I felt that the self management project was useless as we as students are already struggling with the material, we don’t need a full on project that is designed to change one of our behaviours when we can barely keep up as it is with not only this course but other courses as well.”
“The test were less about knowing the elements of the course and more about almost tricking us questions as it was close to the material but way to challenging to decifer.”
“Midterm 1 was very fair and representative of the course content as well as the self-management project which incorporated the occasional subject content of the course close to the date that it was actually taught.”

(Maybe--and this is just a thought--maybe different people experience the same course in different ways. Maybe some people struggle more than others. I could simplify my course content to satisfy everyone. But then ? Is my course worse than, say, a second-year CHEM course? Or a second-year ENGL course?)

“He is a WONDERFUL human and made the lectures incredibly enjoyable to attend!!! I would definitely take a class with him again. He is incredibly funny, engaging, and definitely passionate and knowledgeable about what he teaches!!! Definitely one of the best psych profs I have had, he is so organized and prepared”
“Dr. Loepelmann is one of the best professors I have had in university. You can tell that he wants people to succeed and go to great lengths to ensure that people are understanding the content of his lecture.”
“Dr. Loepelmann is an excellent professor. He makes the class and the topics more interesting with the videos played to us during class. He explains the topics in a concise way.”
“The energetic environment made me excited to learn and I always looked forward to coming to classes.”
“The environment wasn't too serious either: the expectations were mostly all clear and he was so incredibly kind and funny.”
“This course honestly broke my spirit.”

(Well, that’s what I’m aiming for.)

Why aren't you studying?

The Remote Delivery - Reviews

I'm going through (cleaning out?) some of the stuff I have left over from our abrupt switch to remote teaching and learning due to the Covid pandemic. I was online almost two full years, from March 2020 to the end of February 2022. (I previously wrote about that experience.)

(← crappy AI-generated image, thanks to Microsoft Bing Image Creator)

I never went through my evaluations and feedback comments (partly because the Department of Psychology has stopped giving out in-house teaching awards--which is another topic entirely). So here they are. Sorry, I've lost track of which courses these are from, and exactly which term. It all just blends together now.

“I really enjoyed the approach he took for the remote learning. Many profs seemed they had no clue how to go about it; some profs didn't even give anything like videos or notes. He was really fast acting in such a stressful and unique situation. I hope he knows that his hardwork and dedication to his students and his classes don't go unnoticed."

“Thank you for staying so consistent and working so hard. As a student watching and seeing that, it is truly inspiring.”

“The speed of which the instructor moved his material online. Some of my other instructors took a while to do so (which is understandable since it all caught us off guard) but it is really nice that Karsten Loepelmann had a lecture online the day the in-class lectures closed. He always updated on time as well which helped to keep me on schedule rather than waiting around for the next lectures to come.”

“The notes with blanks allowed me to listen more in class which helped me with my understanding of the material and concepts. I appreciated the ability to follow along with the PowerPoints while he voiced over the lectures. As well, the introduction and conclusion videos really helped and was something some other professors did not do.”

“I personally found that I was more motivated to engage with lectures during the set class time when they were initially conducted live, and I think some others may feel the same way. However, in the youtube format, I felt I was able to better absorb and understand the material as I could replay parts that didn't immediately register so falling a bit behind was traded off for clarity which isn't so bad in my opinion.”

“This course was very well suited to my style of learning and was one of the best classes I have taken in 4 years. The transition to remote learning was very smooth. Thank you for all the effort and enthusiasm you brought to this course, especially when everything went haywire.”

“The remote delivered lectures were of excellent quality; definitely appreciated the humour in them as well. Whether it's knowing the course material inside out, preparing well-thought out test questions, or editing his Youtube videos, you can tell this guy goes the extra mile and more.”

“Karsten was an awesome lecturer, he made the online classes probably as entertaining as they could be and he was really easy to stay engaged with. My only complaint is that there was absolutely no way to review our midterm exams and the final is cumulative so it’s impossible to know which areas we need to work on for the final.”

“Lecturer displayed content in an interesting way. Great quality lectures with great sound. Was pleasing to the ear to listen for more than 3hrs a session. Enjoyed this course overall.”

(More than 3 hours? You poor soul! Take a break, for heaven’s sake! Gah!)

“If you are going to do more asynchronous videos in future semesters, break them into smaller, better focused videos so that each one feels more self-contained and to better space out the watching to execute the spacing effect of learning.”

(Excellent application of course content. Sorry about the length. What happens is I get carried away and lose track of time. And I hate chopping a video when I'm in the middle of explaining something.)

“I was very impressed by Dr. Loepelmann's delivery of this course given the circumstances. The effort put in was noticed and appreciated!”

“I feel like there is so much content to be covered, and the online videos make are longer than class time would be. It is a lot of information to try to teach myself and remember.”

(I didn’t work out if they were longer or not. If there were longer, it’s not because I added more content to the course. I probably talked more slowly than I would in face-to-face classes, because I’m not getting feedback on whether you’re understanding everything so I just go slow.)

“Absolutely outstanding professor. He did very well at making online courses fun and interactive. Very engaging and well spoken.”

(Aw, thanks!)

Why aren't you studying?

The Toe

The broken toe, that is. Ugh, yes, I have a broken toe: distal metatarsal on the third toe of my right foot. I broke it exactly two weeks before classes. No, there's no interesting story. I'd like to say that it was run over after I grabbed a child out of the way of an out-of-control bus. Like something out of the movie Speed. But no. The real story is, well, pretty dumb.

I came home, took off my shoes, and took a step. Unfortunately, I happened to step with my full weight onto a sharp little rock. This came as a surprise to me, along with the intense pain it caused. I reacted by freaking out and sort-of jumping off the rock and sort-of kicking my leg out. No problem, except that there was a door frame occupying the space where my leg kicked out, and my foot smashed into it. The worst part of all this--aside from my broken toe--is that there was no damage at all to the door frame. C'mon, at least a crack? No?

(What was a rock doing in the house? My guess is that it was leftover gravel that was on the roads from last winter. The city does a lousy job of cleaning it all up in the spring in my neighbourhood, and there are piles of sand and gravel everywhere. Rocks get stuck in the bottom of running shoes and fall out onto the floor of the house. I found the rock and kept it as a "souvenir" but then my wife threw it away. It was pretty big. For a little rock.)

The X-ray showed it was broken, so I was off to the medical supply store to get my strappy boot. It's actually pretty comfortable. I may continue to wear it even after my toe heals.

The worst part was not the pain, but knowing that classes started in two weeks. That's not enough time to heal up. I'd have to hobble around campus. Even worse, one of my classes was in the Fine Arts Building--1 kilometre from my office, door-to-door. Ugh. I timed it: it took me 25 minutes to limp there, and another 25 to shuffle back.

(Yeah, Google Maps says 850 m from building-to-building, but my Fitbit says 1.0 km door-to-door.)

The prognosis is 4 to 6 weeks for recovery. It's already been 4 weeks, and I am starting to feel better. I know this because the other day, on the way to that faraway class, I actually passed a couple of bros in HUB Mall. Sure, they were wrapped up in their conversation, but this was the first time I passed another human being in a month!

I'm actually supposed to be doing better than this, but my medical advice was to "stay off your feet." Ha! As if. Tell that to the people in Exams and Timetabling who assigned me a classroom on the opposite side of campus. Here's a typical result from my Fitbit:

(14,641 steps is not exactly "staying off my feet.")

Being temporarily disabled, however, has given me perspective on what mobility challenged people face every day. There are a lot of stairs on campus. North Campus is pretty spread out. And even just psychology courses are scheduled in buildings all across campus. It's really opened my eyes.

So if you see someone who has a mobility aid, or is just hobbling along maybe hold the door open for them. Some people may not want--or need--any help. But a limping guy in a fashionable boot would appreciate it.

Why aren't you studying?

(P.S. In a weird twist, I'm not teaching in FAB anymore. But that's another post...)

I've Taught My Last PSYCO Course

So, that's it. I've taught my last PSYCO course--ever. I taught my first in 1994, and I just finished my last one, 28 years later. I've taught a bunch of them: PSYCO 104, PSYCO 105, PSYCO 258, PSYCO 233, PSYCO 267, PSYCO 282, PSYCO 323, PSYCO 354, PSYCO 365, PSYCO 403, and PSYCO 494. But, no more.

Wait--do you think I'm retiring? Nope, not me. Instead, the UAlberta Department of Psychology has "retired" the PSYCO designation for psychology courses. From now on, they're all going to be PSYCH. Psych!

It was felt that calling our courses PSYCO was too much like calling them psycho. This is not a good look for a department of psychology. None of us ever actually pronounced it like "psycho"; we all said "psych" anyway. So in Department Council meeting on February 12, 2021, we voted to change the designation (96% in favour with one abstention). Usually, change to things in the UAlberta Calendar take a loooong time to change, so having it take effect in Fall, 2022 is pretty fast in terms of University-level speed.

Etymology moment: in Greek mythology, Psyche was a mortal woman who became the wife of Eros (the Greek god of love and sex) and the goddess of the soul. The word psyche means "the human soul, mind, or spirit." None of this is what psychology is about.

Trivia moment: some psychology departments around the world have changed their names to "Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences", or some variant thereof. But "psychology" is still #1 by a wide margin.

Be careful not to confuse PSYCH with PSYCI (Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry psychiatry) or PSYCE (Faculté Saint-Jean psychologie) courses.

I hope you're as psyched for the change as I am!

Why aren't you studying?

The Remote Exams

I’m coming down to the last remote exams I’ll ever have to do. (I hope. I really, really hope.) If you’ve been in any of my remote classes, you’ll know that I have closed-book exams and use exam proctoring software and exam integrity software, and you’ll also understand the reasons why (I won’t go over them again here).

I don’t go through all of this hassle because it’s peaceful and relaxing. It is super stressful for students, but even more so for me. There is a lot that I have to do to prep, and I feel the weight of responsibility for each and every student on my shoulders. Here’s what’s involved behind the scenes.

At the start of term, I have to register the dates and times of my remote exams with eClass support so they can arrange to have support staff available. A couple of days before the exam, they’ll also check my Smart Exam Monitor (SEM) and ExamLock settings to make sure everything is okay. SEM is the proctoring software that uses AI to monitor students’ cameras and mics. It uses really, really bad AI. Shockingly bad. It flags almost every student for a violation. It takes an excruciatingly long time to go through each flagged student and make sure they are not actual violations. ExamLock is exam integrity software that takes screenshots of students’ screens to make sure they’re not running Google searches in another window. ExamLock is crashy, but seeing students’ screens can often help me troubleshoot problems--which are frequently caused by: ExamLock. It also flags around half the class for (nonexistent) violations, which means even more time clicking and clearing flags. It takes 2-3 hours overall to go through the software and clear all the flags.

A month before the exam, I have to coordinate with my wife. Yes, with my wife. She and I share parenting duties, including picking up and dropping off our kids at school. Well, schools actually--two different schools, which is why it takes both of us. This family coordination is required because some of my students have academic accommodations, most commonly that they receive extra time on exams. So even though an exam might start at, say, 2:00pm, it is possible that some students will still be writing their exam at 5:00. I’ve had a student who got 7 hours to write a 2-hour final exam. That’s right: 7 hours. This is why I have to coordinate schedules with my wife. She’s a family doctor, so she has to change her schedule and end her workday early enough to pick up both of our kids while I’m staring, sweating, at a computer screen. It’s hard enough for her patients to get an appointment to see her, but if I have a lot of exams, it’s even harder for them because of all the child-picking-up. So online exams require a lot of planning in my household. (Oh, and that 7-hour student? They didn’t show up for the final exam. So we had to rearrange our lives again around the 7-hour deferred exam. Which the student didn’t show up for either.)

First, I have to create an exam, for example a multiple choice exam, using my exam management software. I have to export the exam, then import it into eClass. For some reason, eClass does not keep the order of questions intact, but instead sorts the questions alphabetically. Yup, alphabetically. Questions that start with “A person experiences...” come first, and “Zookeepers demonstrate...” come last. (Why...just why?) I have to spend 20-60 minutes manually rearranging questions, depending on the number of questions on the exam.

Each student, though, gets the exam questions in a random order. Why do I have to rearrange them? In order to keep track of which questions are from chapter 1, chapter 2, etc. This lets another piece of software in eClass called ExamVis produce a detailed visualization of each student’s results. Without the proper sorting, nothing will make sense and ExamVis is useless.

Next, I have to set up a session for ExamLock, and another one for Smart Exam Monitor (SEM). Actually, I have to set up two SEM sessions: a regular one, and a backup in case someone encounters problems or accidentally closes out of the exam.

Then, I have to send out instructions to everyone on how to take the exam, even though I’ve made a video on how to use SEM with ExamLock. (This video is now used by eClass support in their knowledgebase article as a how-to. It’s my most popular video, with almost 5,000 views. I’m a YouTuber!) For those students who only have access to a ChromeOS device, I have to send out a different set of instructions, as ChromeOS cannot run ExamLock.

On the day of the exam, I have a whole checklist of things to do:
   _ have phone ready (a shared, on-call phone--not my personal cell)
   _ open SEM session (done manually, about 20 minutes before the exam is to start)
   _ hide lecture videos in eClass (no cheating!)
   _ remove lecture notes from my website (no cheating!)
   _ check eClass status (see below)
   _ check AWS status (Amazon Web Services is a cloud service that provides back-end storage and processing for eClass)
   _ check Shaw status and outages
   _ check Telus status and outages
Those last two are to see if there are any local internet outages. They are surprisingly frequent. Unfortunately, this only helps me see if there are local students who have problems. Some students are overseas with sketchy internet connectivity.

eClass never goes down, amirite? Cough. There was a major outage on December 11, 2020 that affected one of my classes. eClass was down for so long, the exam was eventually cancelled. Helpfully, every single student in the class emailed me to inform me that eClass was down. There is a protocol on what to do, given an exam disruption. Basically, the Faculty will move the exam to a Saturday. Needless to say, this is not a popular choice--with students, or with me. In the case of my class, each student was given an option to either retain their term mark and skip the final, or go ahead and write the final. In the end, 14 of 123 students actually decided to write the final exam.

When it comes to remote exams, some students are fully prepared--they’ve watched my  explainer video, set up the software, and tested everything by running the proctoring trial (for which I typically give a 1% bonus mark). If these students encounter an issue, they know what to do and can handle it well. Other students are not so prepared: they haven’t watched the video, set up the software, or tested it out--but they manage to successfully complete the exam. The issue for me is the small number of students who don’t know what to do or how to do it, are not prepared--and run into problems. What do I click? Where is it? What software? Who do I call?

I want to ensure a smooth process for everyone--even if they are a mere 1%. So I have given IST/eClass support some pretty harsh criticism over the past two years. There are problems like the “Black Screen of Death” that they say affects only 1-2% of students, so it’s not a big deal (this issue was not even described in any of their troubleshooting documentation). They got quite an earful from me about that. If you can’t fix a known problem, at least acknowledge that it exists and how to handle it.

The recent (and, sadly, continuing) brutal budget cuts have had negative effects across campus; the IST/eClass support team has not been spared. They have lost a great number of people. I get it. To be fair, they have responded to my complaints, even going so far as to set up Zoom meetings with me, and reaching out to my students who were affected by software problems in order to understand them better.

I know students don’t like proctoring software. I don’t either. I hope we’re all done with it for good.

Why aren’t you studying?

The Zero Textbook Cost

There's "free" as in speech, and there's "free" as in beer. Or, according to Wikipedia, gratis versus libre. This post is about free as in beer. (Sorry, no free beer will actually be made available. 🍺)

You might be familiar with the UAlberta SU's Be Book Smart initiative; this grew out of a national campaign years ago, protesting the high prices of textbooks. ("Grew" is probably not the right word, as the current initiative is much smaller in scope than the ambitious national campaign that kind of sputtered out.) Be Book Smart helps students know their options when it comes to textbooks (e.g., sharing books with friends, or looking for textbooks in the library). But it also provides information to instructors to raise awareness about the high costs of learning materials, and suggests lower-cost alternatives (e.g., using coursepacks, putting textbooks on reserve in the library, etc.).

Textbooks, however, are only one cost borne by students. Other learning materials also have a price. For example, some instructors require students to use online homework systems hosted by a commercial publisher. Of course, students have to buy an access code--just to do required homework! This strikes me as a bit of an over-reach.

I am mindful of the high cost of education. For 20 years, I have been using low-cost or no-cost alternatives in many of my courses. For example, instead of for-pay publisher-hosted online experiment websites, I have managed to find free alternatives like the American Psychological Association's Open Psychology Laboratory, which lets students run experiments and gather data--completely free. In some of my other courses, there is no required textbook, just a collection of readings in a coursepack. Even better, due to recent changes in copyright, I can make pdfs of these readings available to students for free.

An idea in academia that's gaining traction is that of Open Education Resources (or OERs). According to Wikipedia, these are "freely accessible, openly licensed text, media, and other digital assets that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes." OERs include things like, well, Wikipedia. Completely free and open, and you can learn things from it.

In educational circles, however, OERs are most frequently brought up in the context of textbooks. Some people, out of the goodness of their hearts, have written textbooks--and have given them away, free. I have used one of these, by OpenStax, in my introductory psychology course (PSYCO 104). Although students were very happy to have a free textbook, I was disappointed in its quality. Sure, under the terms of the Creative Commons licence it was published under, I could have rewritten it--if I had a spare year or three. And although there are OER textbooks for introductory psychology, developmental psychology/lifespan development, abnormal psychology, research methods, cognitive psychology, and social psychology, OER textbooks are not available for all courses and topics. An increasing number of my colleagues are adopting OERs instead of commercial textbooks, and I'm on the lookout for high quality OER alternatives in the courses I teach.

Recently, the Office of the Registrar contacted instructors about a pilot project for the 2021-2022 academic year. They want to indicate to students in Bear Tracks which courses offer Zero Textbook Cost. I went through all six of my upcoming courses, and surprised myself to find that all of them qualify as ZTC. I do not require any paid online homework systems. I have coursepacks instead of textbooks as much as possible. And any required commercial textbooks in my courses have print copies on reserve at the library, or have ebooks available via the library website.

My hope is that by working towards Zero Textbook Cost I can help make education more accessible, and decrease financial strain on students. Do you have any other ideas that I can implement to save students money?

Why aren't you studying?

The Fall and Winter Terms: COVID-21?

Are you going back in person in the fall? This question has been on my mind a lot recently--likely on yours, too. As with everything COVID-related over the past year, I’ve been (hyper-)alert to changing conditions.

The Minister of Advanced Education (Alberta’s Quietest Cabinet Minister™) issued a press release on March 18 to “encourage all post-secondary institutions, students and families to prepare for a full return to on-campus learning this September.” Oh, but there wouldn’t be any extra funding or anything. How encouraging.

In response, the UAlberta President wrote a brief, vaguely worded blog post, emphasizing the importance of safety in the return to campus. Previously, the Provost made a more concrete commitment on February 23, promising that Bear Tracks would reveal which Fall classes would be online and which would be in person on April 26. In other words, not all classes would be in person.

The problem is that there was a bit of a gap: Who would be making the decision to be in person or not? Would individual instructors get to decide? Or would there be some kind of formula, like classes larger than 100 would be online, whereas smaller classes would be in-person in a big room to space people out? No information was provided to front-line instructors at all. No worries, though, I’m sure that would get sorted out in time. Right?

I found that the Office of the Registrar’s website made some promises on behalf of instructors in their 2021-22 Academic Year FAQs for Students (archived; originally posted February 24): “We know that there may be circumstances that prevent you from attending in-person. If this is your situation, please contact your instructor to make alternative arrangements to allow you to complete the course outcomes.”

Er, what? I’m going to digress on this for a bit. If I’ve committed to teaching in-person classes and a student gets sick with, oh I dunno, some kind of nasty virus, I would have to accommodate them. How exactly? One option is that I would then--in addition to teaching the course in person--also record separate lecture videos. That’s a big nope. There’s no way I would have enough time to do that. Then the only other option would require some capacity to record the live in-person lectures and post them online.

I had heard some rumours that classrooms would be outfitted with equipment to do this. It would require a webcam and microphone, as well as some video capture software. Just to be sure, however, I contacted IST about their plans for this. No one at IST knew of any plan, so my inquiry was bumped up until it reached the Associate VP and Chief Information Officer. (For some context, low-level people like me do not routinely have direct contact with people so much higher than my pay grade. So you can imagine my surprise.)

I was glad to hear that there are plans to outfit some classrooms with a camera, mic, and document camera, which would allow Zoom or Stream2 to record and/or stream content. However, “the actual timing is uncertain because the work requires time and effort by tradespeople, and their ranks have been decimated by the cuts. I wouldn't want to have you plan all summer for hybrid delivery, only to have those plans wrecked by labour uncertainties.” So, thanks again, Minister of Advanced Education, and the Government of Alberta. Thanks for nothing.

(I contacted the Registrar about the promises their FAQ made on my behalf, and two weeks later finally got a reply. The FAQs were being re-worded. As of this writing, the promise about “alternative arrangements” has been removed.)

In the meantime, I received an email from the person who coordinates teaching in the Department of Psychology. I had a week to decide (by April 1) which of my Fall and Winter term courses I would like to be in-person, and which would be taught remotely. I reached out to the Associate Chair of the Department, who didn’t have any more information to go on.

But what about students? It’s well-known that many students are struggling through the pandemic. (Hey, I know all about the struggle.) Yet, what if everyone wanted to continue remote learning? Or the opposite? This information would help inform my decision. I set up polls for my classes and asked if students wanted to go back a) in person, b) online, c) it doesn’t matter, or d) don’t know. Here are the results:

Ok, so it looks like a fair number of students would still accept the remote/online option. But an almost equal number would not.

This is like trying to solve one equation with 100 unknowns. For me, one issue is the painstakingly slow vaccine rollout (The Atlantic referred to it as “Canada’s Vaccine Mess”). If everyone could be fully vaccinated by September 1, this would not be such a concern. Another issue is the greater virulence of the COVID-19 variants. How effective are the vaccines against the variants? Another unknown. What about my kids? Will they be vaccinated by the fall, and should they go back in person? Unknown.

For what it’s worth, I made my decision: Remote teaching in the Fall (due to my inherent pessimism); in-person in the Winter (due to my inherent optimism).

Why aren’t you studying?