The SPOT (Winter, 2025) Part I

By popular demand for my...um, ones of followers! Here is feedback I received in my PSYCH 258: Cognitive Psychology course in Winter term. The SPOT tool asks for a lot of feedback, so below is a sampling of the responses I got. I have not edited them for clarity, spelling, or grammar at all.

⚠️ Warning! Some of my comments may contain sarcasm. My intent is not to belittle or humiliate anyone. (Of course, all of these comments are anonymous.) Sometimes student demands are impossible to fulfill, and that can be frustrating. Like getting comments of “course is too easy” and “course is too hard” for the same course. So I let off some steam via sarcasm. I think the world of my students--you are smart, hardworking people, and I highly respect that. But pleasing everyone is really, really hard.

Course Design

at times it was difficult to attain notes from the class if a class was missed due to outside reasons because although a discord was set up I wasn't able to access it for the duration of the course.

(I don’t understand why you weren’t able to access the Discord. I understand there was quite the thriving community of learning there.)

Getting to lectures is stressful because of the blanks in the notes when I need to ask questions in my other class before this one. I felt like it was mostly read off the slides and reading the notes was too complicated and hardly made sense going over them.

(“Stress” does not equal “bad”. Like eustress, which is actually good stress. Stress makes us focus on things. Like coming to class. Yes, I actually want students to come to lectures. As I have explained, the fill-in lecture notes style is my way of doing that. If you miss a word here or there, I’m happy to help you out with those at the end of class. I will not demoralize you or make you feel stupid, I promise.)

This course is my worst course, the access to notes, writings, and clarity is harder than average for a student, who by the way is working! The note packages he expects us to follow entirely through fill-in-the-blank, which is awful for missing one key detail and the concept's entire meaning. If you miss, you're EXPECTED to email classmates, but no one here wants to assist anyone and why would they? His exams are off-topic and don't have direct detail to what is taught in class and studying is a shotgun of textbook, textbook slides, the slides, and more than needed information. He emailsafter every exam what the top student did to improve their score, and its almost like saying "fuck you, do better", with emails stating talking in class is "frankly pissing him off", but back to my point of missing one part and trying to beg someone to give you information is absurd. - make the slides accessible - make the tests fair to what you test, contrasting the slides you teach in class. If I wanted to learn the entire textbook, slides, and more I wouldn't be in school asking some wanna-be professor for information. - he's unapproachable for questions, demoralizes you, and makes youfeel stupid for asking after class like I should already know it. - overall this class is awful, and you should look into a new scheme for it. - also what the hell, a minute per-question exam? what is this? My LSAT? give me time to read the question and debate on it, I've never taken full time for exams and I seem to be a part of the last 2/3 of this class finishing with 20 seconds left on the clock. It's not only me, more than half of this class is still writing at finish.

(Whoa, take a moment and touch grass. I want to address your concerns, and some errors.

• No, my exams don’t have “direct detail” questions because that’s just memorization. My exams assess a deeper understanding of the material, an approach that some students may not be familiar with.
• Yes, I share success strategies from the student who earned the top mark on every exam. Your reaction to this is truly sad; I am sorry for you.
• Yes, I posted a message about the egregiously rude behaviour of two students who had conversations that went on for the whole class time, several times. I posted the message because I got complaints from many students about this incredibly disruptive behaviour. You wouldn’t be one of the chatty people...would you?
• You don’t want to learn from a textbook--or  me--because that’s not why you’re in school? I’ve been teaching and reading about pedagogy for 30 years, but I guess I’ve been doing “school” wrong all this time. I realize that many first-year classes do not have required textbooks any more. But maybe they’re the ones that are doing school wrong.
• No, the end of the exams, 50-66% of the class were not still writing; about 10% of the class had not handed in their exams. This is typical of nearly every course I’ve taught in my career. Some students will just stay to the end, no matter how much time is given.
• No, the exams were not one minute per question. There were 45 questions in 50 minutes, so you actually got more time than previous classes, who actually did have 50 in 50. If you know and understand the material, that should be enough time. The questions are not long so there is not a lot of reading required. If you need accommodations (e.g., for more time), that’s a separate issue that is handled by the Academic Success Centre.)

The design of this course leaves much to be desired. The instructional materials could be significantly improved. The notes are visually outdated and lack engaging elements

(Some people say that books are outdated. But many people love reading books. Even books without “engaging elements” whatever those might be. Irrelevant pictures? Cartoons? Help me out here.)

I feel as though the course is designed in a way that is almost too straightforward compared to other psych classes. There is an overarching topic, and then there are studies talking about concepts. I would appreciate it if there was a shift in focus towards more explanation of concepts, rather than the studies used to conduct them.

(I feel you are missing the point of, y’know...science. Doing research studies is how we describe and explain phenomena. I wish I could tell you exactly why, say, people’s cognition follows the normative model instead of the descriptive model, but I don’t know. No one does. All we know is what we get from the results of research studies. That’s why the course is the way it is.)

The structure of each lecture feels very intentional and beneficial, no topic seems too rushed and the experiments used really enhance the learning experience.

I found that splitting the content 50/50 textbook and the lecture was smart. As doing so allowed me to elaborate and have other examples for the concepts learnt in class. However, putting it together for studying was a bit tedious. Overall it was good.

The course structure is well designed with relevant assignments following learning of content in lecture.

He encouraged reading the textbook by incorporating questions based on the textbook , it was a lot of work but I feel it really encouraged my learning

It is a very well designed course and I thorougly enjoyed it

(Thank you for your feedback! I’m glad the course worked for you.)

Course Resources

there are no interactive elements such as discussion boards, tutorial videos, or external links to enhance learning.

(But what about the, er, discussion board on eClass? What about the videos I posted on eClass? What about the web page of over 250 external links to websites relating to cognitive psychology? The uniquely interactive online textbook? You can see that I have a really hard time swallowing criticism when it is detached from reality.)

The textbook sometimes did not match up with the material in class and on exams.

there was alot of overlap between the textbook and the content presented in class.

(There’s never going to be complete overlap in any course--ever. There’s never going to be a complete difference between textbook and lectures in any course--ever.)

always think it is great when tophat is an option for the textbook material, as it has practice questions available, and the website is very user-friendly.

I found the textbook to be slow to load as there were so many additional resources (A.I assistant and retrieval questions), and not the most user friendly to navigate. Would not recommend using this text book again.

Tophat was very glitchy as and app and website

did not like the textbook, the site is not organized in a way to make it easily navigable by students. The AI integrated into the textbook was more of a hindrance then helpful. The questions the textbook provided were not helpful for studying as they were too easy.

Tophat textbook seemed entirely unneeded for this course, and the fact that 50% of material on exams are from an $80+ textbook is wild.

(Tophat was new; I wanted to try something different. Thanks for your feedback on it, it is valuable. What’s so “wild” about $80 for a textbook? Print textbooks go for around $200. When I was an undergrad, I paid around $80 per textbook, which is--calculate calculate calculate--$207.92 today. Did you want more exams questions from the textbook? Or fewer?)

the TA that graded my work took off marks for absolutely ridiculous reasons like not having the proper line on a graph, this was a common complaint and prof refused to do anything about it when asked.

(It was not the TA’s fault that you were deducted marks--this was in my marking guide. Graphs must have an X- and Y-axis. All required components for the graphs were specified in the labs document. I “refused to do anything about” this because it was a requirement.)

We spent 20 minutes just talking about the definition of a car/vehicle; considering that the course has so much content, I would prefer for that time to be spent covering actual content.

(But, see, see? You remembered that. That’s because of: active learning! Many students had a misconception that we worked through, which led to a deeper understanding. It worked!)

Dr. Loepelmann was constantly asking for our feedback, however he never actually took any of it into consideration. The whole semester he talked vert fast, barely projected his voice, and did not give us material to help prepare for our midterms or final exam. Being in his class made me feel very inhumane, as he barely even acknowledged us, he would start the lecture without even a simple "Hi."

(I asked about the pace of the lectures, and the vast majority said it was good. I also asked if I was loud enough, and again almost everyone said it was fine. And maybe you missed it, but I started every class with “Good morning!” Every. Single. Time.)

Course Delivery

In all, it was the sort of class where if you put in the effort, you did well.

Exams were on the harder side, but the questions were all fair and applicable and the difficult exams were made up for by the grading scheme of the class.

It required us to think beyond memorization.

The labs were graded very fairly.

Labs were straightforward with clear instructions, which I appreciated. I think a rubric would be more helpful and less ambiguous

Honestly one of the most engaging profs I've had (...I am a just first year student, but can confidently say Dr. Loepelmann has been one of the best). I've always looked forward to attending lectures, as Dr. Loepelmann covers the content very well, but also makes sure to sneak in a joke or funny comment to keep us all interested and listening. There have also always been some sort of little activities to get everyone actively participating. Dr. Loepelmann's delivery of the content, as well as overall lecture environment made the course one of my favorites this semester!

Dr. Loepelmann's tone is very enthusiastic and easy to follow. He is very knowledgeable and kind.

Made sure to ask if the speed if he was going was okay at the start of the semester, which was very helpful and admirable for communication sake.

His explanations of each concept was incredibly helpful, along with little activities to keep us engaged but also to help further understand the material being covered. All the videos he showed were also great in helping understand what we learned during lectures! Going off of that, the online labs were incredibly helpful but also very fun. All of the activities were fun to do, and even more interesting while analysing my results and applying content covered in lectures to explain the outcomes.

The strong focus on different actual studies allowed for many different examples of applications of the material, as well as the instructor's own examples and sometimes interactive demonstrations.

I really like his approach on teaching and how involved it is. The e polls are quite nice and I like how he does them immediately after we finish a topic. They aren't graded for marks, so I feel like I'm encouraged to learn from my mistakes in a stress free way. I really appreciate it.

An EXCELLENT instructor who stays focused on a research backed approach, and presents studies in a fun and understandable format.

Really liked the Professor's lectures. His mode of delivery was very engaging. He was also very nice to talk to during his office hours and gave me thorough feedback on my work when needed.

(I can't really come up with any snarky, sarcastic responses to any of this. That means I should just keep my mouth shut and say thanks.)

Class Climate

Often missed hands that were in the air to ask questions.

(If I missed hands, it’s because I didn’t see you. I wasn’t trying to ignore you. It’s a big classroom. It's kind of dark. I’m genuinely sorry!)

I’m not sure why it felt like the prof acted like he was better than us? It bothered me a lot.

(I'm not sure why, either. I don’t know what to make of claims like this. There’s no specific evidence or examples. Was it just a “vibe” you got? I don’t know what to do with that.)

The amount of talking that occurred during the first 3/4 of the semester was overwhelming and made class a really horrible experience. This is not necessarily the fault of the instructor but I feel that he should have done something about it much sooner. I honestly dreaded coming to class and felt exhausted afterwards due to the amount of talking that was going on and changing where I sat made no difference.

(Although I did eventually notice it, if it’s bothering you to this extent: let me know. I’m not so young anymore. I listened to a lot of loud 80s music. I cannot hear every whispered conversation in the classroom. Do not make the fundamental attribution error and assume that I’m not doing anything about it because that’s my personality and I don’t care. The fact that a very small number of people were so incredibly rude and wouldn’t stop made me honestly dread coming to this class, too. And that is a profoundly shitty feeling for an educator. I’m sorry for your experience.)

prof was so proud of himself when he was talking about tomato not being a vegetable when it literally is, a vegetable is defined as any plant that we eat

(That was a...joke. I was...joking. I know what a tomato is, and I know the difference between botanical and culinary categories.)

I appreciated that Dr. Loepelmann dealt with issues that arose in class (ie. students taking in class) and did maintain a proper and respectful classroom environment for learning.

have felt welcome in this class since the first day because of his joyous and funny spirit that he always brings to the classroom, I thoroughly enjoyed his class

The material was difficult, but I would absolutely listen to Dr. Loepelmann talk shop any day of the week. Very engaging and funny

Very supportive throughout the class and encouraged talking with peers, haven't needed to, but I believe he was pretty easy to reach if questions did come up. I actually ended up liking the class itself a lot more than I thought I would. It was like a breath of fresh air after having a lot of previous professors that would drawl on and on monotoned and uninterested. I went in thinking that he wouldn't be that good of a prof, but I ended up liking his style more than other professors I had previously.

Professor Loepelmann was absolutely hilarious, gave great examples, and made sure to have fun with us. He addressed problems very well and I would definitely take his class again.

Dr. Loepelmann created a casual and relaxed environment, while also maintaining respectful boundaries (I appreciated the email being sent out to address disruptive classmates during lectures to maintain expectations and a respectful space during lectures.) There were always little jokes being made that kept things feeling relaxed while learning, making the experience so much more enjoyable. It was an environment of mutual respect, and always feeling welcomed in classes. Thank you for the great semester!

(Right back atcha: thank you so much!)

The design and structure of the course is based on actual research of what makes for most effective learning, which I think is awesome.

The use of the interactive textbook allowed for good at-the-time practicing when going through the material, and the labs forced us to actually apply an active understanding of the material in order to complete. Overall, the distribution of resources supported learning well.

absolutely loved the examples you gave in class, always fresh and funny which helped my learning. Doing lots of the experiments we talked about with us was fantastic and lots of fun and knowledgeable as well.

(I put these comments at the end for a reason: they all mentioned the process of learning. Although I am gratified that so many of you find the course interesting, engaging, and fun, my main purpose is to facilitate learning. The thing is, learning is typically time consuming, effortful, and difficult. Whether or not you enjoyed the course, I hope you learned something about cognitive psychology. Best of luck in your future learning journeys!)

Why aren't you studying?

The SPOT (Fall, 2024) Part II

There were too many comments to fit into one blog post, so here are the remained from Fall, 2024 term. ⚠️Caution! Someone could have hacked this post an inserted snarky, sarcastic responses.

First up, PSYCH 367: Perception:

While Dr. Loepelmann was open to some questions there was more than one occasion where he was condesending to a question asked by a student. Also, have you seen his blog and his responses to student criticisms? https://whyarentyoustudying.blogspot.com/

(I wish you had given specific examples of me being condescending. Without knowing exactly how I offended you, I don’t know how to respond to this. I never set out to try and belittle a student, or be patronizing or arrogant. Miscommunication can occur in the sender, the medium, and the receiver. In other words, it’s not just me. If I came across as condescending in response to your question(s), I apologize fully and completely.

BTW, I have seen that website! It’s neat because it shows that he actually reads student feedback. It’s also clear that it’s impossible to make everyone happy, no matter how hard you try, and how good your intentions are. But OMG, his responses are so condescending. But he never, ever uses ad hominem arguments.

I’m wondering, are you drawing attention to my blog to try and get me in trouble with my boss, who reads all of your SPOT comments? LOL. He actually posts student comments on his website, too, and did that years before I even started this blog.)

It was a safe space to ask questions and Dr. Loepelmann was very responsive and on-the-ball for answering questions or fixing mistakes! One of my favourite profs of all time!

(See what I mean? I can’t possibly be both condescending on more than one occasion but simultaneously also be a safe space.)

Despite the mistakes in the textbook, I loved this textbook! It broke things down in an incredibly straightforward way, especially for a course that can get complicated. It used many examples, and the ISLE examples on top of everything to play around with and get hands-on experience with what certain illusions (for instance) looked like, were immensely inclusive.

make the textbook cheaper plz :,(

I didn't find the textbook to be overly helpful. Professor Loepelmann was honestly better at explaining the course material than the textbook was. For the first midterm I read the textbook and for the second midterm I did not. I scored about the same on both exams.

The textbook is very important in this course and has a lot of information that the lecture doesn't cover. Do I wish the lectures covered more stuff? Yes, ofc! But then again, I realize that there is simply not enough time to cover everything in the lectures alone. The books adds on to and compliments what's already talked about in the lectures.

The textbook was very helpful for my learning and reinforcing what we learned in class.

kindly provide a downloadable version of the textbook

(This was a new textbook that I was trying out this term. Thanks for the feedback. Sorry, but I don’t have a downloadable version of the textbook, and if I did I won’t break copyright law by giving it to you.)

I like the course theory but I honestly don’t care about the 29374783 studies that prove each theory and each studies problem

(I know, right? Well, that’s science for ya!)

Maybe just let the students that are being distracting know that they are and respectfully make them stop. For example there is this group who would always talk while he is explaining the epoll questions and it was incredibly hard to make sense of what he is saying. Or they'll just be making loud sounds while he is explaining the material. It is very annoying

Some people are very loud which distracts from my learning and affects my ability to focus on the instructor

(I don’t insist on absolute silence. And during ePoll questions, there is frequently chatter about the question. I’m fine with that, if it’s on-topic. If it was bothering you so much, you should have let me know before the end-of-term evaluations so that I could have addressed it.)

LOVED the fill in the blank notes! Anyone else who argues is silly. As someone who usually is frantically taking notes and unable to really pay attention to the content because I am trying to write down as much as possible, this helped me develop a baseline so I could actually listen and absorb what you had to say. Then, if there is anything that I wanted to write more about to clarify, I could.

(Shockingly, in this class not a SINGLE person complained about the fill-in-the-blank notes. This may be a first.)

Thanks for giving us an actual break during reading week!

(I have a bit of a beef with this. Not with the comment, but with instructors who make assignments due on weekends or during reading week. What’s up with that? My promise to you is that I will never do that. Never have, never will.)

Highlight the words on the slides that are fill in the blanks in the student slides

(Yes, yes, I know. Here’s my story on that. I did this once years ago, but the class became so noisy and chatty that I had to threaten to walk out of the class. That’s the one and only time I’ve ever had to do that. Things are way better now (take that, students-were-better-in-the-olden-days trope!) so I am starting to do this. When I do it, though, I carefully review whether it’s even necessary or logical to have a particular blank. So it’s taking me a while, as I have to review every single lecture in detail. Thanks for the suggestion.)

Professor Loepelmann seemed to enjoy tricking students with his ePoll questions. I understand that the motive is to get students to apply the course content instead of just recalling it, but it lead me to constantly second guess my answers. I 100% agree with the ePoll questions at the end of each chapter, but making them tricky and complicated can effect a student's confidence in knowing the course material.

(You’re right, I do and I admit it! I want the questions to be tricky and challenging; I want them to show you what you think you know but maybe actually don’t. The ePoll questions are not there to stroke your ego and show you how smart you are, but to facilitate learning. You don’t learn much from things that you get right--you learn from things that you get wrong. I create these questions intentionally and use them in ePolls, which are very low-stake assessments: they’re only worth participation marks. Better you find out what you don’t understand before an exam than during one!)

I liked the labs, they were fun and engaging!

I really enjoyed having the lab components! They all were simple to follow, and you provided us with several resources and links to learn how to do things like make a graph if we still needed to learn how.

I honestly really enjoyed the lab assignments, some of the questions were more critical thinking based. I enjoyed the fact that I got to think outside of the box!

The online labs were instructional and reinforced my learning without being overly difficult and adding stress to the semester.

I ejoyed that the labs forced you to look at concepts in ways that we might not have considered.

The labs were easy to follow and feedback was useful if I am being honest the labs could be longer for better review of material.

The online labs were instructional and reinforced my learning without being overly difficult and adding stress to the semester.

I prefer to have more assessments that are worth less. For example, have 8 labs but only take the top 6 marks. This also gives students a opportunity to replace a bad lab grade.

i don't understand some of the lab questions or maybe they don't understand me

(It’s a lot of work to find free websites that actually tie into course content and create labs that are resistant to answering by AI chatbots. Thanks. I’m not a big fan of making students do work that may not count toward their final grade. Then there’ also the increased marking burden. The mean on the labs was 83% (A-), so that’s pretty great overall.)

The first midterm was incredibly difficult, the second one was more reflective of what we had learned and the course material.

once again the exams were poorly written.

could see how carefully crafted each question was and I appreciated any changes to the exam that may have been super confusing (ex. taking out that one question since so many people got it wrong).

(The complexity of the material being tested does vary within the course.)

The instructor was wonderful and funny!

I'm so glad that you took a course that gives you the ability to include lots of photos and video examples and included them into your lecture content!

Dr. Loepelmann always used extra resources to help us understand concept and theories better, which I was a very big fan of. Even though theories might be hard to remember outright, the extra resources used in class like the different videos/gifs/jokes helped us understand and remember them better.

The biggest thing that helped my learning in class was the videos/examples in each topic because it made the topic much more memorable when I looked back on my notes.

As a more visual learner, I really appreciated the amount of videos shown throughout our lectures. I would like more links to suggested YouTube videos that will help supplement my learning.

(I have a unique opportunity in a perception class to present unique stimuli. I hope you also enjoyed the mini candy canes that I gave out as an example of a “cool” taste illusion. And thank you again for the kind and generous gifts of chocolate that you gave to me!)

I loved how it felt like the prof was telling a story in each class that really helped with the flow of logic

I enjoyed the lectures. Getting used to balancing textbook content took a bit of time as my previous classes did not make use of the textbook much if at all. The division between tested readings and lecture content was fair.

Excellent lecturer Funny, very engaging and enthusiastic which makes class fun and the content more easy to digest Fair late policy Helpful in answering questions Makes fair exam adjustments

This Professor knows how to teach and is good at it. The course content is complicated, and I think I would struggle no matter who was instructing, and I think he did a good job.

I found your lectures to be the most engaging of all of my classes.

(Thank you. Here’s feedback from PSYCH 494: Human Factors & Ergonomics:)

Dr. Lopelmann's mini circular curriculum provided excellent scaffolding.

(Not many people notice that.)

The textbook for the course just felt a little lost in the overall class. Norman's book was relevant for the first part and then after a while it just kind of disappeared and we never talked about it after the midterm. I read it for the midterm and then after I never touched it again because all of a sudden we started talking about disaster analysis which somehow fit into this class for some reason. Not at all what I thought I would be learning about in an ergonomics class. The book did not help for this part which is why I say it kind of got lost in the overall content after a while.

(I only assigned readings from the book in the first half of the course. There are a few chapters that are just not relevant, so it didn’t make sense to have you read them. Yup, understanding large-scale technological failures is an important part of human factors, if not physical ergonomics.)

He also then complains about how much marking he has to dobut there is a TA in this class and maybe if he didn't make us write this huge term paper where the minimum is 12 pages he would save some marking time by using smaller and easier to complete assignments

(Correction: there was no TA assigned to this course, and there hasn’t been one since 2017. I beg and plead just to get a marker for the applied project paper, but everything else is all me. Having a minimum 12-page term paper is absolutely appropriate for a 400-level course. My requirement used to be a minimum of 15 pages, which is what it commonly used to be pre-Internet. Now, you have access to all of the materials you need online, slick word processors, and all the Google; it's easier now than ever before. Some other instructors have their TA mark the term paper, which I do not think is right. Also, many profs cap the size of their class way below the 30 that I have. Yes, the marking is enormous, but I strive to give you detailed, accurate, elaborate feedback on your term paper to help you improve as a writer.)

Dr. Loepelmann provided excellent feedback, and so did his TA! I appreciated the high standards set for the assignment, and how the grades were set up to enable this feedback without tanking our grades. I saw this as an opportunity to challenge myself in an environment with a safety net when I looked at the syllabus, but I don't think all students caught onto this, and I think it maybe caused them some anxiety when they got their midterm grades back. I think highlighting this opportunity may be helpful.

Dr. Loepelmann's delivery of the course is and has been an absolute delight. His engagement with the class was always inclusive and highly interactive, and always left a smile on my face, while still maintaining a focus on the major points that we had to cover in class.

Notes, videos, readings and lectures all provided good info, enabling nuanced understanding and strengthened learning through requiring synthesis. The Syllabus and course website made following the schedule easy.

I really appreciated how easy the access to the notes were, and the format of the notes themselves. Having them provided before the class allows me to look at the concepts before and tie them to the readings. The fill in the blank was nice as well as I don't have to worry about taking a bunch of notes down while trying to listen, but rather worked as checks to keep me focused, and writing in the important terms helped me remember them.

Thank you for making coming to class consistently enjoyable. Your passion shows through, and has greatly inspired my passion for academia. classmates seemed

(Thanks to everyone for taking the time to give me their feedback: good, bad, or ugly!)

Why aren’t you studying

The SPOT (Fall, 2024) Part I

I asked for a lot of feedback in PSYCH 258: Cognitive Psychology in Fall term because I was using a new textbook so this one’s gonna be extra long--I got 13 pages of feedback comments. Here are some carefully selected ones. And ya know what? There may be some degree of sarcasm contained in my responses. Ya never know.

Kinda hated the whole second website thing for the extra steps that the students have to do.

(The extra step of clicking a link? That's nothing! You should see all the extra time and effort it takes me to maintain that whole second website! I hate that! Boo! Boo I say!.)

The discrepancy between the layout of the professor's fill-in-the-blank notes and the textbook was quite confusing, making it harder to know what information was important to learn for the exams.

(I literally rewrote all of my lecture notes over the summer during my holiday time so that they would match the chapters in the textbook. No, I didn’t lecture on every single thing in the textbook. Does anyone? Plus, sometimes learning is hard; it is effortful. That doesn’t mean it’s not working; in fact, the opposite is true.)

The textbook is expensive and it is impossible to get a good grade (above 60%) without it.

If the professor wanted to take at least 50% of the exam questions and lab readings from textbook-only materials, he should have had the tuition cover the textbook fee as well, rather than forcing students to purchase an expensive subscription to an online textbook. I should be using a textbook as a supplementary tool to help me understand lecture materials, not to learn new materials that the professor did not cover or mention during classes.

Not a fan of all the required readings, majority of which were in an online resource that cost 60+$, however if I didn't pay the money for it, I would be at a disadvantage on exams were part of the questions came directly from readings which weren't covered in class.

I just hate how the textbook was a big part of this class. It was so inconvenient.

Awesome textbook -- really appreciate the integrated practice questions

(As usual, I get a lot of complaints about having a required textbook. Firstly, not to put too fine a point on it: you signed up for this course. I can only assume that means you want to learn about cognitive psychology. So I want to do the best possible job teaching that. I can only present a very limited amount of the breadth and depth of the field in lectures. Textbooks provide a valuable second perspective on things. Please don’t ask me to teach everything that’s in the textbook. That is literally impossible--and would not be enjoyable for anyone.

But I get it: a textbook means that more work, time, effort, and “inconvenience” is required. If I didn’t have a textbook, boom, less work! But I think some students don’t consider why I have a textbook at all. To make your life harder? To make the course harder? Why on earth would I do that?

Could it be that there is some value in, say, reading a textbook? Maybe…developing your skill in reading long-form text? This is, after all, how psychologists communicate with each other. Research studies are written up into papers that are published as articles. Improving your ability to read complex material like a textbook is a scaffolding to reading actual scientific journal articles. This is something you will certainly do in higher-level courses. Do you just want your first experience reading about psychology to be an incredibly complicated, dense, technical article? You’ll probably look back and be pissed off that no one helped you get to this point.

Most university-level courses require a textbook, especially science courses (French et al., 2015); OnCampusResearch has found that the majority of faculty require some kind of learning materials. This means that I am not an outlier.

The online textbook costs $83.50. This is one of the costs of attending university. It’s nothing new or different. I told you in the first class that if you are not able to afford that, you should talk to me and I’ll work something out. Exactly one person took me up on this offer. I was able to give them a free access code to the textbook. I know that textbook are expensive; I have been sensitive to this for a long, long time. (Check out this post from 2013). The print textbooks that I used to use in this course costs over $200 for the print edition; the ebook is $75. I wanted to try something different and hopefully better when I switched to my current choice, TopHat. It includes an AI tutor, and dozens and dozens of interactive questions based on textbook content. (Retrieval practice FTW!) It’s also written at a lower level (read: easier) than the previous textbook, and it’s also shorter. I figured it was worth a try. I do not take these decisions lightly.

Maybe we should consider the counterfactual. That is, what if I did not have a required textbook? My exams would still be the same number of questions. Now I would have to drawn on more and more obscure and less and less relevant material as a basis for my exam questions. In other words, the exam would get harder. I don’t think anyone is asking for that--but that’s what the result would be.

I could (and probably should) also bring up the fact that I have oodles of data on the multiple-choice questions I use on my exams (point-biserial correlation, anyone?). If I have to write a bunch of new exam questions, I don’t have any data on them. They may be especially difficult (newly written exam question tend to start out being too difficult, as opposed to too easy). Again, I know that no one wants to take a course in which the exams may be unreasonably hard (i.e., low averages).)

The tests were hard. I would not say they were unfair, but I get why the cutoff for an A in this class is so low.

The tests are difficult relative to Farley or any other instructor’s class, but it’s scaled accordingly such that an 83 is an A. That’s pretty fair. Loepelmann’s classes are for learning, not GPA padding, and despite the rigor I’m always pleased to retain more applicable knowledge.

The exams seemed far to hard for the students. The average was constantly in the 60’s. To compansate for this the grading scale was pushed down so far. Anything above a 87 was an A+.

Tests were difficult but fair. I think if you put in the study time, it is possible to do really well on them.

The exams helped me realize that I needed to change my studying strategies for this course.

I felt like Obi-Wan taking on a Sith Lord while writing the midterm exams. That may be a slight over exaggeration but what I am implying by saying that was that they felt challenging but in a satisfying way that really encouraged me to carefully think through the different possible answers instead of purely relying on rote memorization and regurgitating information.

(In the emergency remote teaching and learning during Covid, I restructured all of my exams according to best practices. I pared down the basic memorization questions and replaced them with more challenging application and conceptual questions. Yes, the exams are hard. They’re supposed to be. I’m teaching at one of the top-five universities in Canada. Should the exams be easy? (Have you had a lot of easy exams in your courses so far?) The exams are designed and structured to increase your learning. They do take effort to prepare for, and to write. But, fittingly, in this course I am giving you the tools you need to success: retrieval practice, spaced learning, interleaving, elaboration, generation, context effects. In this very class over 20% of students got a mark in the A-range. Less than 3% got an F (and that includes four students who just did not write the final exam).

Yes, I have adjusted the grade boundaries to ensure that my challenging exams are not punitive in terms of grades. You can get a D with a total of 40%. You can get an A-range grade with a weighted mean of 79%. You’re welcome.

You have much to learn, my young apprentice.)

I don't enjoy being tested on both the textbook and the lectures equally. Essentially this means that there isn't enough time to cover all the material in class, so the student has to learn the other portion by themselves, which takes up more time than is fair for this course.

Requiring a $80 textbook to be tested 50% on top of paying $800 for the course is extremely financially unfair.

(You’ve literally made me look up a definition for the word “fair”. Here it is: “based on or behaving according to the principles of equality and justice; kind, considerate, or reasonable.” You don’t enjoy being tested. My friend, here’s a secret: No One Does. Would the exam have been a joyful delight if it had tested on the lectures alone? And I’m sorry that tuition costs as much as it does. If tuition is high, there are a number of reasons for that. The UofA spends has a disproportionately high amount on salaries for administration, at the expense of paying front-line staff. (Faculty salaries at the UofA are at the rock bottom of the U15 comparators.) But I do what I can: I vote in every provincial election. The UCP government has choked off funding since 2019 to the tune of $222 million and counting. So: I’m sorry about the tuition thing. One of my kids is in a post-secondary institution and another will be soon; I feel your pain.

But am I being “unfair”? Unreasonable? Inconsiderate? Unkind? What if I make you buy an $80 textbook and it was tested only 10%--is that unfair? What if it were 90%? Then you’d say that the lectures are not worth it for the money you’re paying. You may not like the way things are, but they are not “unfair.”)

I also found it astounding that a textbook I paid $80 could be filled with so many typos and errors. As someone who is not in Psychology it begs the question of how many content errors there were that I didn't notice if they couldn't catch these typos.

(I really hate to be a pedantic ass, but a leopard cannot change its spots. It’s actually “raises” the question, not “begs” the question; here's an explanation by an actual book editor. Anywho, I agree with you completely. I mean, I give out a toonie for each error that a student finds. That book has nearly four dozen errors. That’s expensive for me, and embarrassing for the publisher. At least with this online textbook I can go in and make changes to almost everything, but still. My evaluation of the textbook is ongoing, and this factors into it prominently.)

Wish expectations were set more clearly for first midterm

(Like, what exactly? I told you how much time you would get; how many questions there were; that there was a 50/50 split between textbook and lecture; that I don’t favour memorization/name/date questions; and that the number of questions was proportional to the length of the corresponding lectures/chapters. The textbook contains embedded questions, and I did dozens of ePoll questions in class to direct your attention to important concepts. What, exactly, are you looking for? What was unclear or vague?)

It's preferable to not have a final exam on the whole course, which is hard and overwhelming with the lectures in class and the chapters of the book, and if that's the case, we should at least have access to a cheat sheet on the final exam.

(It’s preferable to get an automatic A+ without attending class, reading a textbook, or writing exams at all. But here we are.)

I think the labs could have been slightly more challenging.

The labs though? a bit insane. They are described to take "10 minutes of your time, they are not that hard" and then half the class struggles with them.

The online labs were marked hard. The TA's seemed to take off marks for things not included in the rubric and not stated clearly enough. There should really be a way to discuss with the professor or make it known if we are allowed to ask the TA's about the marks dropped. They were also not helpful during midterm reviews.

The labs were fun and really helped my understanding of some of the concepts.

(What’s wrong with struggling? That’s learning: “Embrace the struggle.”

Here’s some objective data on the difficulty of the labs: the class mean was 78.5%. Over 13% of students in the class skipped doing one or more of the labs. So, if they had actually attempted them--even if they ended up doing poorly--the mean would be even higher, as it currently assigns a zero to missing labs. In my grading breakdown, 78.5% corresponds to A-. I don’t think that’s too low; the labs are increasing the grade of the vast majority of the class.

Um, yes, you can discuss things with me. There’s email, my weekly office hours, or talking with me after class. I am working on a comprehensive Teaching Assistant Manual than will help TAs be better prepared for exam viewings, and give better feedback on assignments. It’s just taking a really long time to write.)

I especially found ePolls to be beneficial and engaging, with explanations as to why each option was either correct, not fully applicable, or wrong, being given, further aiding in my deep understanding of course content.

(It’s good to hear that you see value in them.)

I felt that the assessments in the course served no purpose.

(I’m sorry--what? Exams, assignments, ePolls all…pointless? Really? FYI, they are how I assign final grades. Hope this clears that up.)

need midterms worth less

(No problem, I’ll just make the final worth more. Thanks for your feedback!)

[...] felt that the 133 pages of Google docs notes + the entire textbook is a bit excessive and think there could be some cutting down of the unnecessary material

(First, not the entire textbook. I did not assign the chapter on language. But what is unnecessary? It really hurt to cut out that chapter. I do feel it’s valuable. Those who go on to take higher-level courses on psycholinguistics or the psychology of language may be at a disadvantage. I actually have less content in my course now than I did six years ago: I had to cut a bunch of things out to make time for ePolls. As for what's left, again, what is "unnecessary"? Maybe material that doesn't overlap with the textbook. But I guarantee you, you don't want me to just lecture directly out of the textbook. What's the point of that?)

The lab due dates were spread out a few weeks apart from each other which gave plenty of time to complete them. The instructor was always well-prepared and started class promptly at the top of the hour. There was never a single occasion of there ever being a time where there was an extended period of silence or the Professor being flustered or incapable of explaining something. The ePolls presented at the end of every major topic kept motivation high and helped people stay present and attentive during lectures.

Karsten is an entertaining and excellent lecturer.

It was great! So fun I love all the in class examples/mini experiments!

Great lectures, I genuinely enjoyed them, some of the material was boring but he does try to keep the class engaged with jokes!

Love his classes and teaching style, sometimes moves in too quickly in slides

His genuine interest for the material was contagious. He’s also very witty and it’s just really mentally stimulating/lighthearted fun to attend class.

I appreciate the professor asking the student with the highest mark to give advice on studying, however I feel like there wasn't enough review and the style of note taking is very specific and may not work for everyone.

The single best prof I have had at U of A. Brilliant engagement with students, excellent comedic timing and so good at answering questions and maintaining student attention. I don't know how much Dr. Loepelmann makes, but he needs a raise. Also answered emails so fast and so thoroughly. Seriously, outstanding instructor!!!

Dr. Loepelmann is the greatest prof I have every had. He is so confident in the things he's teaching. His lectures are incredibly engaging and feels well planned and thought out. Very often profs feel like they just are reading from the slides. It never feels like he is just reading from the slides. I hope he gets to read this because he should be very proud of the effort that he has put into teaching. You can feel how much he cares in how organized and excited he is to teach this material. Thank you for being you Dr. Loepelmann!!

I really enjoyed being part of Professor Loepelmann's course this semester! He is a really amazing teacher and I find that he is very easy to listen to (which is surprisingly difficult to find). He explains things really well, allows us to do interactive activities in lecture, and has a great sense of humour. I always look forward to his lectures.

No surprises here. This is my second course with this instructor and will not be my last. His use of labs, tests, epolls, as well as the examples he puts together for lectures are so well done, it's rare that I don't understand a concept once he's explained it.

Professor Loepelmann is very diligent at answers questions and giving additional feedback when necessary. With the class sizes he instructs, this is impressive feat.

Approachable during office hours, and by email (even on weekends). Thank you!

He always answers my emails/questions with depth, even if the questions are a bit abstract and not directly in the course material. I enjoyed learning from him a lot. I’ve also noticed that whenever my peers ask questions, if he doesn’t know something, he acknowledges that and then will answer the question later in a discussion post on EClass. Just overall very respectful and level-headed—many professors get a complex when they don’t know something/make students feel out of place for asking a question that may go beyond course material. He’s very good at fostering intellectual curiosity.

Your method of teaching is absolutely amazing. I took a course with you last year, and am taking one with you next semester as well! Your way of teaching is incredibly insightful and you are clearly very knowledgeable in this field. My only suggestion, and I do not know if this is even applicable, is I think you would benefit from understanding the neuroanatomy and chemistry behind the field. Essentially, explaining the science behind why the brain works the way it does would be greatly beneficial to you as a professor and your students. Note that I am not saying you don't know theyinformation - I am just saying to include it in class more.

(Thanks for all the kind words and suggestions. I made the deliberate choice to teach this course based on a traditional approach to cognitive psychology. I have to be careful not to overlap too much with our PSYCH 375: Cognitive Neuroscience course.)

Why aren't you studying?

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 New LMS

LMSs are boring. Or rather, they should be boring--the less excitement, the better. First: What the heck is an LMS? A Learning Management System is used by institutions to deliver courses. They can deliver a course fully online, or be used to supplement an in-person course by hosting the syllabus, allowing assignments to be submitted, and deliver marks. So eClass is the UAlberta LMS. At least, that's our name for it. Our LMS is an instance of the open-source LMS Moodle. I'm not completely sure why "eClass" was chosen, but it's likely because no one knows what a "Moodle" is. It sounds like a cross between a muddle and a noodle, which makes no sense. So it was probably coined to make it clearer that it's the system for Electronic Class.

Previously, we used other LMSs: WebCT and a later version, called Vista (Microsoft Windows Vista was released around the same time, and boy did that lead to some confusion). At the time, the provincial government bought a license for WebCT for every post-secondary institution in the province. (I know: hard to believe. This was at a time when the government actually gave a shit about post-secondary education.) After everyone had gotten used to WebCT, the company was taken over by Blackboard, who wanted to phase it out. At that point, about 10 years ago, the University of Alberta faced a decision: force everyone to go with a new, unfamiliar Blackboard LMS or force everyone to go with a different, unfamiliar LMS. That's when we Moodled! (Ugh, sorry.)

In 2000, I taught a hybrid course (part online/part in-person), when we didn't have any LMS. I had to use a lot of hand-coded HTML. There were no lecture videos back then, just online notes and discussion forums. I wasn't interested in continuing that, and had no use for LMSs. I grudgingly learned how to use Moodle, but still relied mostly on my own hand-coded website. Again, this was before assignments were submitted online: students still handed in labs and term papers on, well, actual paper.

Grudgingly, I learned how to use eClass, gradually putting more assignments online. Some people used eClass to make MOOCs (massive open online courses) like Dino 101. But there was just no need for me to learn more. I mean, it would take something like a global pandemic to make me--and everyone else--re-examine boring old LMSs.

Oh, right. Pandemic. That's why we need an LMS.

When Covid hit, many of us instructors were in the same situation: I need to know how to do everything online, and I need to know it now. Lecture videos. Assignments. Exams. Grades. This was one of the most difficult aspects of the abrupt shift to remote teaching and learning. Many of us were constantly pinging eClass support, and when they became overwhelmed, we turned to each other for help.

By no means do I consider myself an eClass expert, but I was able to help a graduate student who was teaching their first class online. They even bought me a very nice bottle of wine as a thank-you present! So now that I'm fluent in eClass, now what? This is what: the email that sent a cold shiver of fear down my spine in September: "Transitioning to a New Learning Management System." Wha--?

That's right, starting in Fall, 2024 (and rolling out to everyone by Fall, 2025) is a new LMS. Moodle will be no more.

There are a few good reasons to ditch Moodle. There were several high-profile outages of eClass during the worst possible time: during online final exams. This even hit me in December of 2020, when eClass crashed right before my PSYCH 367 final exam. (Students were given the option to write the final at another time, or allow their term marks to serve as their final grade: 14 out of 123 students chose to write the final.) Also, even though Moodle is free open-source software, the university has to pay for servers to host it, and for developers to maintain it (fixing bugs, adding new features). All of these costs start to get pretty expensive, so going with a hosted option looks like a better option.

A company hosts the LMS, running and maintaining the servers. They may add features (maybe). And they will covert existing eClass sections to their new format so we don't have to create new ones from scratch. This last one is a verrrrrrry sore spot for a lot of instructors. We spent so much time over the last 4 years learning the ins and outs of Moodle, and now we have to learn something completely different!? There are some existing custom plug-ins that may not work in a new system. (Departments like math & stats and physics use custom software to manage their grading workflow, for example.) Most other universities in Canada that are similar to the University of Alberta have already moved to other, hosted LMSs. Even UCalgary uses D2L. I mean, c'mon. Even Calgary.

So, it's going to happen, no matter what. What's the new system going to be? I don't know; it hasn't been decided yet. But the timeline is pretty short--we should all know by the end of the month. And then the new learning curve begins. A note to students: please, please have patience with us. We're all going to be trying our best to learn this new system, and there are going to be glitches.

(One final thing. The University of Alberta provides tech support to MacEwan University, who are also using Moodle. If we ditch Moodle, it kind of puts MacEwan in a difficult spot. Maybe they'll end up hiring the eClass support staff who will inevitably be let go.)

Why aren't you studying?

Update 2/26/2024:
After much delay, it's finally been announced: we're moving to Canvas. Yay?

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?