The Contract

I spend every summer on pins and needles, waiting for the Faculty of Science to renew my contract. I’ve been on a two-year rolling contract ever since I became a Faculty Lecturer in 2000. Two-year rolling works like this: the contract is for two years (originally from 2000 to 2002), but after the first year, it rolls over for another year (that is, in 2001 it was extended to 2003). This rollover happens in the summer after I submit my Annual Report, which is a summary of everything I’ve done over the past academic year. This report is reviewed by the Chair of the Department, who sends it to the Vice Dean of Science, who decides whether or not to renew my contract.

So typically by the end of the summer, I get a letter from the Faculty of Science, letting me know that, yes, I will actually be teaching this year, and the year after. When the letter comes in, I take my family out for a nice dinner to celebrate. (There is also a clause in the Contract Academic Staff: Teaching (CAS:T) contract that allows the university to terminate my contract with two weeks’ notice. But I try not to think about that.) This year, though, things were different. A lot different.

Starting July 1, 2017, there is no more “Contract Academic Staff: Teaching.” This contract has been replaced by a completely new one; even the name is different: Academic Teaching Staff. (I kinda liked the old name. We referred to ourselves as “CAS:T members,” which made it sound like we were either part of a theatrical troupe or worked for Disney.) Among the many changes in the contract is the creation of a new kind of appointment: Career. There’s no increase in pay or benefits (the ATS contract is not about that), but instead of having a rolling contract that’s extended every year (as in Science) or that is renewed every five years (as in Arts), the contract assumes that you will be rehired the next year.

The Career appointment in the ATS contract meets Objective 2 in UAlberta’s Institutional Strategic Plan For the Public Good (“Stabilize long-term investments in contract academic staff by offering career paths that include the possibility of continuing appointments based on demonstrated excellence in teaching.”). However, although President Turpin has talked about having tenured teaching positions, the Career appointment is not a tenured teaching position--it’s a continuing position.

What’s the difference? Wikipedia says that a tenured appointment is defined as, “an indefinite appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency or program discontinuation.” It’s a common misconception that tenure means, “a job for life.” You can have tenure and still be fired. Becoming a Professor and achieving tenure means that you have consistently made substantial contributions to teaching, research (or other creative works), and service (the academic term for volunteer work). In my case, my job will continue from year to year--as long as I do a good enough job. That’s a pretty low bar; all through my career I’ve tried to do way more than “a good enough job.”

The second issue is that, although this new appointment category has been created, no Faculty is obligated to actually put anyone in these categories. They could continue to appoint “sessional” teaching staff as Term, which could mean that they are hired in September and let go at the end of April--a reality for many contract academics on campus. So far, it appears that the Faculties of Arts and Science are moving Faculty Lecturers to the Career appointment. Many other ATS members will see no improvement to their working lives, unfortunately.

Although I am happy with this new appointment, UAlberta still has a ways to go to catch up with other institutions in Canada that actually have a tenured teaching track, like UBC and UToronto. I don’t need to have the title “Professor.” I don’t need a yuge increase in salary (I will never be on the “Sunshine List”, but I do okay). It would be nice, though, to have the kind of job stability my tenured colleagues have.

Anyway, upon getting the news from the Vice Dean of Science that I will no longer have to wait for my contract letter to come every summer, I took my family out for a really nice dinner to celebrate. I guess now I won’t have to take them out every year!

(I would like to acknowledge and thank the incredibly persistent and dedicated members of the CAS:T (now ATS) committee that put literally years of effort into this landmark accomplishment. There was talk about renegotiating our contract way back when I was a member of the CAS:T committee--before my youngest daughter was born. That’s a long time ago. Thanks for all your hard work and 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 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?

The Lost Exam

In 22 years of teaching, I’ve maintained a perfect record: I have never lost anyone’s exam, quiz, or assignment. Until last week.

There have been some close calls. More than once--despite pleas and instructions--students have tucked their Scantron sheets back into the exam booklet. When the proctors, TAs, and I are madly scrambling to accept everyone’s exams when time runs out, we sometimes miss separating the sheets from the booklets. The student will later complain that they wrote the exam, but there’s no mark for them. That’s when we start digging through the bookets, one by one.

I make the proctors count the number of students at the exam. I don’t want anyone coming to me claiming that they certainly did write the exam, yes indeedy, and the absent-minded prof must’ve lost it, yup, uh-huh. So far, no one’s tried pulling this one on me, but I’ve heard urban legends...

Typically, after multiple choice exams come back from Test Scoring, I carefully go through the results, and note which students are lacking exam data. Maybe they were sick, or maybe they wrote their exams at SAS (Student Accessibility Services). If students write an exam at the SAS office, I have them hand-deliver their exams back to the Department of Psychology General Office. (Don’t worry, the exams are sealed in an envelope to prevent monkey business.) Sometimes, students don’t deliver their exams back until the next day. This is awkward, because I try to get exams scored as soon as possible (I walk them over to Test Scoring myself immediately after the exam). If I wait for exams from SAS, that delays the results for everyone.

Last week, I sent out notices to the students who were lacking data from Test Scoring, reminding them that I need documentation for any absence. One notice went out to a student who wrote the exam at SAS--and they replied right away, saying that they had delivered their exam immediately. I went back to my mailbox to check; nope, no exam. Strange. Was the student lying? Nope--the student had a return receipt with the signature of one of the Psych Department’s admin assistants: the exam had been delivered. It was just...lost.

I scanned instructors’ mailboxes in the Psychology Office. Maybe the student’s exam was put into the wrong mailbox? Nope, nothing in the boxes beside, below, or above my box. Drat. Then I started looking through everyone’s mailboxes: profs, instructors, grad.students, staff. One prof had a big stack of envelopes from SAS in her mailbox. I looked at them, but they were all addressed to her, not me. Double drat.

I went back to my office, where I had three other envelopes of exams from SAS. Was there another envelope stuck to the others? Stuck inside another envelope? On the floor? I spent half an hour scouring my office. Lots of dust bunnies on the floor. But no exam. Triple drat. My mind raced as I considered what I would tell the student. “Someone lost your exam, but it wasn’t me.” “Would you mind writing the exam again?” (Not allowed.) “Your final is going to be worth an extra 22.5%, is that OK?” (Ouch.)

These thoughts led me back to the Psychology Office. If the exam wasn’t in my office, maybe it was somewhere in the General Office. But where? Logic dictated that I look again in everyone’s mailboxes. But I looked already--didn’t I? I decided to look again, more closely this time. What about the prof with all those SAS envelopes in her mailbox?

I pulled the stack of envelopes out, looking closely at them. I saw one envelope had a sticker with the name of the student I was looking for, and then another one envelope from the same student. Both envelopes were hand-addressed to the other prof. Wha--? This one student couldn’t possibly have written two exams for that prof at the same time. Looking more closely, I saw the sticker on one envelope had a different course number on it, and the sticker on the other envelope had my course number on it. There is was: the lost exam.

Whoever had hand-addressed the envelopes at SAS had put the other prof’s name on the envelope containing the exam meant for me. It was simple human error. I was just relieved it wasn’t my errror.

My record still stands: 22 years without a single lost exam.

Why aren’t you studying?

The Awards: 14 (part 2)

I appreciate the feedback you give, and I read all of your comments carefully and think about them deeply. Then, I have a stiff drink and write this blog post. (OK, I read a funny article about evaluations first.)

I’ve got so many comments, I had to split them up into two posts. I’ve already done part 1. Here we go with part 2, for Winter term, 2016. All three of my courses were awarded Honour Roll with Distinction (in the Department, 6 undergraduate courses were placed on the Honour Roll, and 18 on the Honour Roll with Distinction--congrats!). Thanks!

I copy-n-paste your responses from the PDF summary I get (soooo much easier than typing in all your hand-written scribbles in previous years), and I don’t correct spelling or grammar. Well, not unless someone's paying me to correct spelling or grammar. Careful: someone may have written some sarcastic replies below.

PSYCO 104:

“With the reading the whole text book, it gets very overwhelming and almost impossible”

(Well, there’s your problem. In this course, I only assigned 9 chapters (plus the appendix), not all 17. No wonder it was almost impossible.)

“Very thorough material coverage, and easy to follow. The instructor is obviously good at what he does :)”

(Thanks :-)

“U rock lopelman”

(Oh, come on! You spelled it wrong! It’s y-o-u, not U. Also, it’s L-o-e-p-e-l-m-a-n-n.)

“Kirsten was an awesome instructor! He kept me engaged with his humour, while still exhibiting his knowledge. He was born to do this job. Very impressed.”

(Thanks, I’ll pass your comments along to Kirsten.)

“This instructor does not cover much stuff in the textbook during the class notes, but his exam has 50% knowledge that comes from the book. That is unfair to some students who dont purchase the expersive textbook. Also, he does not give any practice questions for midterm and final. I have no ideas what will be on the test. Unbelievable instructor.”

(So, “unbelievable” in a bad way? Yeah, the textbook is expensive. You could buy it used. I also put a copy in the reserve reading room for you--that’s free. I actually do expect students to read the textbook; it is a “required” reading. So I can understand that, not having the textbook, you have no idea what will be on the exam.)

“The proff is good at explaining the concept and is quite hilarious sometimes but his exams are hard and you have to have a throughly understood the concept to be able to apply but if you looking for an A it might be hard to get”

(What? An ‘A’ might be hard to get? What is this university coming to?)

“The instructor was very condescending in his lectures which decreased my motivation for the class.”

(That is a pretty serious accusation. I would agree that my responses to students’ comments on this blog are condescending--duh. But in my lectures? Except perhaps when I am deconstructing pseudoscience, I do not show patronizing superiority. Instead of a vague claim, I challenge you to support that with clear and specific evidence.)

“Also the instructor looked like a comedian who was bombing for the majority of the semester as most of his jokes received silence.”

“The instructor is unbelievable funny and expands on concepts well!”

“The prof was really funny and made lectures more interesting.”

“I believe that the course was interesting and the instructor was great and funny and made re learning easy.”

“he was funny, charming, and obviously knowledgeable and enthusiastic about Psychology, and his lectures were informative and entertaining.”

“Loved the course and the Prof! The jokes and different things during lectures such as memory tests or videos in class was great!”

“I loved all of his jokes (most of which are "dad" jokes- but good ones).”

“Appreciated the enthusiasm, videos, interesting anecdotes and jokes.”

“Dr. Loepelmann was an amazing professor and made a lot of jokes to keep you interested in the material, I would highly recommend him.”

(So...the silence must mean that everyone was laughing internally. Also, I’m not a professor.)

“Posting powerpoint notes would help”

(Would help what? Help make it easier for you? Try Googling “desirable difficulty.” Oh here, just read this Psychology Today article. Now I’ve turned it into a teachable moment.)

“Please make the midterms cover all the material.”

(OK, so you want 1,000 questions on the midterms and a 10,000-question final exam? Agreed.)

“If the required reading from the textbook were made clearer that would be helpful, so we know which information is important for the exams.”

(Well, there is a list of “Required Readings” on the syllabus. Or do you mean that the textbook is unclear? If it’s the latter, I’ll just make sure they rewrite the textbook.)

“Not providing any practice exams on which students can base their expectations and tailor their studying is a cruel joke. It should be mandatory for every professor to provide at least one practice exam per test for every course. It is ridiculous to expect students to magically know how a test is going to be presented and study appropriately for it without any outside knowledge on the format, or style of potential questions, of a midterm or final exam.”

(Yes, it IS a cruel joke. I cackle all the way back to my haunted lair, and then I caper about gleefully some more. Of course, I do tell you about the format of the exam, both in the syllabus and in class. And I tell you that the clicker questions are representative of the questions on the exams. There are also those thousands of practice questions on the McGraw-Hill Connect website. And lastly, by the final exam, I hope you would have seen the two midterms, and gotten some gist of what the questions are like from that.)

“The professor seems very robotic in his teaching, as though he is reading off of a teleprompter. Sometimes it is hilarious in its rigidity, sometimes it is mindbogglingly boring. It would immensely improve the professors teaching if he introduced some spontaneity into his lectures.”

(OK, next semester, no PowerPoints! In fact, no lectures! I’m just gonna talk about whatever enters my head. Kind of a stream-of-consciousness thing. Should be high-larious. Oh, but the exams are also gonna be like that, too. Buckle up!)

“Maybe allow for questions during cl****time
* Inappropriate words were found and removed from this response.”

(Er, wow. You really don’t like clickers, do you?)

“It would be nice if you had more than 1 viewing of the exams once they were marked.”

(You can view your exam during the TA’s office hours, too.)

“Don't give me fill in the blanks online. I payed for the course and you should give me the course that I payed for, regardless if I can come to class or not. Punishing students for getting pneumonia and skipping class isn't helping me come to class, it just stressed me out.”

(Your paid for the course, so if you get pneumonia, I should come to your house and bring you soup. And lecture notes. Or maybe you should ask someone else in class--there were almost 400 other students. Or should just ask me for the lecture notes and I’ll give them to you.)

“Dr. Loepelmann's notes for the course were very informative and clear. He used information from the textbook, and I believe that his exams were fair for what he taught us. He was very interesting to listen to, and I enjoyed going to his lectures”

(Thanks.)

“I do not believe that the final should be cumulative because it seems ridiculous because we have many other exams to study for and much of the material would have already been tested on the other two midterms so I believe it's a poor choice and adds stress for students who are already stressed out enough”

(After you graduate and have become a doctor, or lawyer, or engineer, do you think that your patients, or clients, or customers won’t ask very much of you? Will your boss worry about all the stress that you’re feeling? I could make the final exam non-cumulative. Heck, I could do away with the final completely. Heck, I could do without exams altogether--no, wait, I can’t. GFC policy says so. Nevermind.)

“Prof is so great! Super funny, engaging, and keeps the matter interesting. Would love to grab a beer & converse w/him outside class (in a very very "youre interesting and I think our conversation will be interesting" kind of way)”

(That’s the only way I would want it to be. I’m a married man.)

“If this doesn't work out he should narrate Children's movies.”

(If that’s a job offer, I accept!)



PSYCO 282:

“This guy is a beauty! one of the better pysch profs I've ever had. Clear notes and engages us in class by leaving blanks to fill in. Keeps it interesting with funny videos and jokes are corny but appreciated. GIVE THIS GUY AN AWARD”

(OK, OK, tone it down. Someone is going to suspect something, mom.)

“The notes for this course weren't made available to us unless we came to class since they were filled in the blanks. And it was hard when you'd miss a class or you'd just miss a section just because you looked down for a second and by the time you realize you missed it, he turned to the next slide. I feel he should make the notes available (blanks all filled in) after each class so we have them to study for. Especially because it can be hard and causes immense anxiety having to ask someone beside you for multiple blanks.”

(As I explained in the first class, I leave time at the end of class for students to come up and get any words they missed here and there.)

“The lights being low in the class was frustrating and made it difficult to focus, read, write.”

(This was the worst thing about teaching this class. There was an almost even split between those who wanted all the lights off and those who wanted the lights on. I realize that if you’re writing notes on paper you need more light, and if you’re using a laptop you prefer less light. Turning on all lights also washes out the slides and makes them harder to read. My plan is to talk to somebody about rewiring the lights to turn off more in the first couple of rows, but leaving the rest on. Thanks for your feedback on this.)

“Overall, a pretty effective class, the couple of complaints I has is that one time when I emailed the proff, I was asking for clarification on how that first part of the selfmanagement project should be completed, and he replied back with saying he can't mark it before hand. I felt less comfortable to talk to him after that. I also wish that proff would give some type of reminder's to complete assignments during class, when classes get really busy, even when I am organized and have all my due dates written out, they can sometimes slip my mind.”

(Some students send me email with their answers to the self-management project, asking, “Is this right?” In all fairness to the other 299 students in the class, I cannot “pre-mark” your answers, telling you what’s right and what’s wrong. If I do that for you, then I’m obligated to do that for everyone else, too. Not only do I not have time for that, but everyone will just keep sending me their answers until they’re perfect, which makes the assignment meaningless. And I DO give you reminders: I set up a Google Calendar (and an eClass calendar) with all the assignments. It will send you an email or text (your choice) before it’s due. But you have to subscribe to the calendar for that to work. You’re welcome.)

“I really loved that you (Prof. Loepelmann) showed us examples of products and services that could be used to apply behaviour modification principles. I personally bought the Kitchen Safe and it has helped me immensely to decrease how often i perform certain behaviours.”

(Argh. I knew I should sell some of those Kitchen Safes in class.”

“So I waited till the end of class, to fill in this survey even though you gave us 15 minutes to do it. Just to see how it really turns out. So on Monday, which is today, the course ended with half a video, you simply turned off the projector without any thing to say, like as in "we will finish the video next class" or "see you next class". I observed that you were upset that there are people leaving class early, which might have given you the feeling that students are not interested and were disrespectful. But the fact is, people still sitting in that class till the end, either are interested in the video or is respecting you. Simply, turning it off without saying anything feels like you dont give a sh*t because the surveys are in. Just because some students disrespect you does not make it reasonable to disrespect everyone in your class. Every class would have students needing to leave early because they might have another class which starts with a quiz or a test, or some just have to leave because of personal reasons. Of course, there are some that leave because they just dont care. But as a professor, you are required to keep a better attitude. Its a part of being professional.”

(Hmm, cagey of you. Look, as soon as your surveys are done, I don’t suddenly turn into a jackass. I wanted to show as much of the video as I could, trying to fit it all in (it sucks if I have to split it up between classes). I went up to the last possible second, and then turned it off. Usually, I would say something like “We’ll stop there for today” but most of the class was already on the way out. If this bothers you so much--and makes me appear unprofessional--I’ll make it a point to have a wrap-up comment.)

“Please pick me for W.A.Y.S. Blog comments :)”

(No. Stop asking.)

“For the self management assignment, I found it difficult to figure out a good reward system to use.”

(What about a chocolate-chip cookie? Everyone likes chocolate-chip cookies.)

“Give us practice exams.”

(But in the textbook, there are over 400 practice test questions, and over 700 multiple-choice quiz questions--not to mention the 240 additional multiple-choice questions that I put up on eClass. There are only 50 multiple choice questions on each midterm and 120 on the final. You want more practice questions?)

“Dr. Loepelmann is able to take something very complicated and simplify it so that anyone can understand it and then slowly build it back up to allow you to understand it clearly even in its most complex form. His approach to teaching is obviously very finessed and professional. Everything was so organized and planned that at times it even felt like we were laughing at his jokes on cue.
The only thing I did not like is that he would take about 10 minutes from about 70% of our classes to do iClicker questions which were not worth any marks. They were pretty easy and covered material that we had just learned moments ago. This might be more effective if he asked questions about the class prior to refresh our memory rather than the current class if he insists on keeping his iClicker portion of class. Even with the time set aside for those questions, he still covered everything we needed to without rushing so it wasn't a huge deal.”

(Laughing on cue? I’d call it antecedents-behaviour-consequences. The thing about applying active learning is that it does take away from valuable class time. But if cutting down lecturing and doing something else instead helps some students learn some of the material better, I’m willing to do that.)

“The best professor I've ever had. He kept the material interesting, even the drier subjects, and he answered any questions I needed answered in a very clear and respectful manner. I would take another class with him in a heartbeat. I felt the mid-terms were fair and the self-modification assignment was beneficial for this class as well as my own life. The class reached far past merely elarning information for tests and actually helped my own health and life.”

“One of the best Psychology professors I've had over the years. Use of iClicker was very helpful and I wish more professors would use this technology so they might be able to better gauge exactly where the class is sitting in terms of understanding the course material and even more it is helpful for students to gauge exactly how well we understand the course material.”

“Keep doing what you're doing Loepelmann. It is refreshing to have an instructor who is enthusiastic in their lectures and enjoys talking about them. The iclickers are also a great way to interact with a class as large as this one and can really help clear up confusion on some of the finer details covered in the lecture. In many ways, I think a lot of other instructors should probably sit in and perhaps take a lesson from your style since it is both enjoyable and a well structured learning environment. The tests are incredibly fair as well, focusing on how to differentiate and apply the concepts we've covered in class, when and where not to use em as well as how. This is a much preferred test format (in my opinion) to straight up memorizing tiny details from various sections. Keep up the good work.”

“I took PSYCO 104 with Dr. Loepelmann and loved the class and of course, the instructor. I've decided to take PSYCO 282 with him again and it really has all the features of a great course: 1. Very interesting topics, even for students with minimum Psychology knowledge. 2. Simple content yet require a good to great understanding to score high in the exam. 3. Great assignment project - applies concepts from the course and research. 4. The textbook is very interesting with so many examples that are easy to understand. 5. integration of videos and iclicker participation to make the class less dull (mental break?) 6. Learning objectives are SO GREAT. Students know exactly what they should focus on and expect in an exam. (Unlike so many other courses) 7. THE BEST INSTRUCTOR EVER.”

“I really enjoyed this class, the professor cared about his students' success and placed an effort into simplifying the course material and making the class a fun and enjoyable class.”

“I HAD SO MUCH FUN IN THIS CLASS. I would miss it soooooo much. It's highly applicable and I literally use it in so many situations. I was able to cope well in this class even though it's a 200 level class, and I'm in my first year. The project was amazing and useful and I benefited from it. A lot. The prof explains things so clearly, and those fill in the blank notes are great, I wish all my classes could have them! He's fair in marking.”

“Dr. Loepelmann is a great professor! He was very enthusiastic and intriguing while lecturing. I enjoyed the material taught and how there were blanks missing, this made it somewhat easier to pay attention in class. Also, I believe the self-management project was a good addition to the workload because it helped me learn how to apply material learned in this class. I didn't like how the textbook readings were a requirement, but the textbook was a good resource for additional explanations and examples if there were any uncertainties.”

“Congratulations Dr. Loepelmann, you singlehandedly dethroned the current "top psych professor and class" in my books. I have no words but praise, this class provided me with learning tools in the most enjoyable and engaging manner. I have never tried to access you outside of the lecture, so I cannot really comment on your availability outside of class. Although I'm sure there would be no issues, if I did need help outside of class. It was a pleasure, I'd take more of your classes if I could. May the force be with you and your future classes.”

(Aw, you guys! Thanks! Also, I’m not a professor.)


PSYCO 494:

“This course has a greater workload compares to other 400 level psychology courses. It contains two assignments (one in-field assignment and a research paper with a min. of 12 pages), midterm, and final exam!”

“The work is hard, but it ensures that you get a full understanding of the material. As much as I disliked the way I had to study for the exams and also the amount of work the papers took, it definitely helped me learned the material in a way I have not been required to through the rest of my University education.”

(I agree with both of you.)

“The paper for the course was due on the last day of class and it's very easy to procrastinate since it seems like forever away until the day actually comes. Maybe have a midpoint deadline where you have to have half of your paper done by that date or something like that to motivate us to start it earlier.”

(Learning to avoid procrastination is an important skill that will serve you well for the rest of your life. You really need to work on that. Try Mindtools’ Beating Procrastination page. Based on your feedback--and what’s been happening--I am going to do things differently in the coming term, requiring students to formally submit their term paper topic to me halfway through the term.)

Why aren’t you studying?

The Awards: 14 (part 1)

It’s taken a while, but the Department has finally gotten around to posting the Honour Roll with Distinction for Fall, 2015 and Winter, 2016 terms. (Better 8 months late than, er, never?) This post just covers the Fall, 2015 term.

All three of my Fall courses somehow managed to be placed on the Honour Roll with Distinction. For context, there were 10 undergraduate courses awarded the Honour Roll, and 17 on the Honour Roll with Distinction. Clearly, there are a lot of really great instructors in psychology; I’m honoured to be in such good company--even if it did take this long to find out. Anyway, I have a backlog of comments to go through. (Beware: my replies just may be #unfiltered.)

PSYCO 282:

“Dr. Loepelmann is awesome! Highly recommend him.
However, sometimes wastes class time to show videos that aren't all that relevant/important to the material. I don't need to watch 5 min videos of screaming children or how to toilet train a cat.”

(The screaming child video was 2 minutes and 10 seconds. I did not show a video how to toilet train a cat. I have standards, you know.)

“I trained my cat to use the toilet with the knowledge from this class”

(Sure, but what about your screaming child?)

“Course was okay. Format of notes was kind of annoying. Concepts are dry at times. Please show more videos in class.”

(OK, I have a whole bunch of screaming children and how-to-toilet-train-a-cat videos.)

“Though the tests were difficult, I was very grateful that the instructor was very understanding and accessible, answering questions promptly and made me feel more comfortable and confident for doing better in the course, thank you!”

(You’re welcome!)

“yes”

(That’s all? Just “yes”?)

“Where does that course pack come into play for the course? You haven't really mentioned it when you were teaching the chapters.”

(The ethics coursepack reading ties in to my lecture on ethics. The willpower reading ties in to my lecture on willpower. If you read the syllabus, you’ll see that they are both “Assigned Readings.”)

“It was a little bit scuzzy to take the mandatory text from a company he works for.”

(I do make a full disclosure about that in the first class. I also reveal that I do not get *anything* from the publisher for choosing that book: No money, gifts, nothing. Not even a pen or a coffee mug. I chose that book because I believe it is the best book available for this course.)

“Also, while I really liked the course website, I wish commonly referenced things like the syllabus was on eclass as well, in order to make it a bit simpler to get to and find.”

(Getting to my website and the syllabus takes two clicks from the eClass page.

“You're course website is very well setup and helpful”

(Thanks!)

“I found that the use of examples using people with disabilities sometimes portrayed those people in a negative and incompetent light. It made it seem like all of those people need to be fixed or trained to comply using behaviour modification, which at some times I found inappropriate and frustrating. Both the in class content and the text had issues with this for me.”

(I understand. The goal of behaviour modification is to help people improve their lives, by giving them skills and abilities that allow them to lead more independent lives. If you work with people who have a significant disability, you’ll see how much of an improvement this can make.)

“The course markings I believe are unfair. There are multiple instructors teaching the course in the same semester and their marking styles are very drastically different. I enjoyed my teacher and the class structure however, the class average for my midterms was 10% lower than the other 282 class taught this semester. As the tests are made by the profs therefore this difference does not reflect that one class in on average smarter than the other. It reflects that one prof made the examinations more difficult than the other prof. I truly believe that my prof taught the material very well but his examinations were at a higher level and therefore does not make the faculty of psychology look fair and regulated. It allows certain students to reap the benefits of a non curved class based on their schedule availability to get in a class with an 'easier' professor. In my opinion, this does not help students learn and frankly is unacceptable for a university as a lot of other courses and departments regulate the midterms in a more academic and advanced way. Events like this make me unlikely to encourage prospective students to enter the faculty of psychology.”

(The instructor of the other 282 section was teaching it for the first time. We are not allowed to grade on the curve, so it is difficult to set the cutoffs for grades--especially the first time. I've only taught this course five times myself, which is not a lot. The class median grade has been B+ four times (and a B once). When you took the course in Fall, 2015, the median was B+. GFC wants the median in second-year courses to be B. If anything, I should be worried about grade inflation--not that I'm being too harsh in the grading.)

“The marking for the self-management assignment wasn't very fair... There was a 20% class average difference between two different markers every time, yet Dr. Loepelmann didn't do anything about it”

(In calculating interrater reliability (yes, I actually do that), there were only trivial differences between the markers--certainly not a 20% difference. I addressed every student concern that was brought to my attention. In many cases, the student’s mark increased, although on two occasions I deducted more marks.)

“I would love if the notes were able to be downloaded in PDF format and available on eclass. I would also like the notes to have more colourful, visual pictures.”

(I specifically do NOT use PDF format, because it is less flexible than HTML. You cannot resize text, for example. I limit colour because of previous complaints that my notes were costing students too much in terms of coloured ink refills.)

“More time should be spent on the self-management assignment. I felt really unprepared because we were given ZERO instructions on how to do it.”

(In the lectures, I explain what a target behaviour is and how to measure it. I explained how to find research papers. I explained dozens of different kinds of behaviour modification procedures, what they are, and how to apply them. I explained how to create a bmod graph (and provided instructions online explaining how to create a graph in Excel). I explained all about antecedents and stimulus control. I explained self-management, as well as generalization and maintenance. All of these things I explained directly apply to the self-management project. With these tools, it’s up to you to apply them to your behaviour; I’m not going to hold your hand. That said, I did answer literally *hundreds* of emails during the term, helping students with their project.)

“I had Dr. Loepelmann for PSYCO 104, and was very excited to have a course with him again. He did not disappoint. He is very thorough in his coverage of the material, and is good at explaining it in ways I understand. It's clear he is very knowledgeable about what he is teaching because he is able to explain it simply. He seems to really care about the quality of instruction we are receiving, and tries - and succeeds - at making the material fun and relatable. I appreciate the amount if effort he puts into his lectures and the amount of additional background research he does instead of just repeating the textbook. His exams are challenging but they are very fair. I really appreciate the many opportunities to assess my knowledge outside of exams with all the various practice quizzes and review questions he provided. I'm really excited to learn more about behaviour modification and apply it to my own habits. I heartily recommend him to other students”

(Thanks!)

“I find that I am demotivated to write notes further then the fill in the blanks. It's more helpful when I am consistently writing during class because it keeps me focused and engaged. So in the future leave more information out of the notes to encourage students to make more notes”

“I found that blanking out his notes was incredibly insulting. It's juvenile. Instead of paying attention to what he is saying we are scrambling looking for the "fill in the blank" in his notes, and that really takes away from the course”

(You don’t *have* to use my fill-in-the-blank notes, you know. You can write down as much or as little as you like--it’s up to you.)

“The time it took to mark assignments was excessive (Sometimes 20+ days after the submission date). Receiving feedback one day before the next assignment is due is not acceptable. How are we supposed to grow and learn from our mistakes in one day?”

(I agree. The next semester after you took the course (Winter, 2016), I changed the way the marking was done to decrease the feedback cycle time. Feedback time was much improved.)

“Great job on making a somewhat dull course and dry material interesting with many videos and real world examples. It is evident how much effort you put into creating this course. You are the type of instructor that makes me proud I study at the U of A.”

(Thanks!)

“Terrible style of teaching. I really hope you do something about this prof. You can't read slides for a term and think students will learn anything. Might as well made the notes accessible online, and then I'd never even have to go to class. Complete waste of money.”

“This class was the most boring class I have ever taken, if it did not fulfill a requirement, I would have never even considered it. Did not enjoy the content of the professor.”

“No, perfect class”

(...)


PSYCO 403:

“Although I have comments that I would like to make about the course, for fear of ending up on your blog, I will keep my comments to myself.”

(See what I did there? In all seriousness, constructive feedback is welcome. I respect and welcome your opinions. I don’t post every single comment I get, and they’re all completely anonymous.)

Check out part 2!

Why aren't you studying?