I am honoured to have achieved the Department of Psychology’s Honour Roll with Distinction for my
PSYCO 104: Basic Psychological Processes and
PSYCO 494: Human Factors & Ergonomics courses. I also got on the Honour Roll for my Fall PSYCO 282: Behavior Modification course. Thanks to all who gave their feedback on these courses--good, bad, or ugly!
Although my rating for
PSYCO 282: Behavior Modification was high enough for Distinction, not enough students completed the online surveys for it to qualify. I appreciate the time you spend doing the evaluations. I do take them seriously. I read every comment and make changes in my courses based on your feedback. Your voice does count!
Warning! My parenthetical responses to selected comments below may contain sarcasm. Please avoid if you have an allergy or sensitivity.
PSYCO 104
notes are hard to study
(Comment is hard to understand.)
if there is more picture in the lecture notes that will be more helpful to the visual leaner person
(There is
no evidence supporting auditory and visual learning. I include pictures where they are relevant, but I do not include extraneous clip art.)
he keeps us all very engaged by relating to real life situations that are relevant to students. very funny! by far the best psychology professor i’ve come to contact with
(I try NOT to come into contact with students, as I've been told that is inappropriate.)
dislike.
This is a great class, and I think instructor is good professor.
This was an awesome course taught by an awesome instructor, will be scouting to take classes from this professor again for his enthusiasm to teach us objectives that would otherwise be deemed as boring
This prof. was my favourite of the term. He was very knowledgeable and passionate about psychology and I enjoyed that about the course; he was the reason I showed up to this class and I would loooooovvveeeeee him to teach all of the rest of my courses forever.
(Okay, so one "dislike," one "good," one "awesome," and one "loooooovvveeeeee.")
I thought my professor was very good at teaching in the lecture times. My only issue was with the style of the exams. I found it hard to study for since we were not provided practice or example questions from the prof. The questions provided with the textbook did not help prepare me for any of the exam questions and overall I found the textbook incredibly useless. In the future, I would strongly recommend that the emphasis on the textbook (ie 50% lecture, 50% textbook) on the exams be reduced. This was too much information to be studied thoroughly and as a result, made the exam much harder than it needed to be. Perhaps if study guides or at least practice questions were provided with the exam would've been much more achievable.
(If you get the Connect online content, you will have access to literally thousands of practice questions based on the textbook, presented as
adaptive testing. This is an incredibly powerful tool that changes the difficulty of the questions you get to suit your learning. Evidence has shown that this improves learning and exam performance significantly. It's frustrating that more students do not take advantage of this option.
The textbook pages were messed up and didn't match the glossary in the back which made trying to learn a concept from the textbook extremely difficult.
(Thanks for letting me know. I will pass this along to the publisher.)
The professor was very interesting to listen to, which made the topics he was educating the students on much easier to understand and learn. His examples often came from personal, humorous experiences, which also added to the overall course experience. He is very intelligent and I would love to have him for all if my psychology courses!
The instructor was fantastic he always made the class interesting and tried to connect to the students. He made the class enjoyable and always made us laugh a bit. He also had really good example of the material to show us.
The class was very interesting and the way Loepelmann taught it was filled with enthusiasm, passion and interest. He provided great study material that helped on achieving good on the exam. His iclicker quizzes were helpful and even funny. He was so passionate about the material he made coming to class fun. Best prof this semester.
Karsten was an excellent teacher, he made the class interactive and fun. I have told my friends if they have an option to choose him for an instructor for one of their courses to definitely pick him. Tests were fair, you needed to read the text book for sure to do well on the exams. Overall a very good course.
(Thanks!)
Overall my professor was outstanding, he’s a great speaker and most of the time the class was entertaining, but there we’re a couple things that stood out to me as kind of unacceptable during the course. First of all he said he wasn’t going to do review classes, which I think is very inconsiderate as a teacher; I understand wanting students to come for more than just a review class but I don’t believe he has the right to make it harder for the students who do come to class and just want to know what to expect going into the exams. I also don’t think that it’s his decision to make whether or not students attend his class considering we are paying him to teach and it’s the students own waste if they do not attend. One more thing that didn’t sit well with me was the fact that he would just start class without any warning, no hello, no welcome, he would just start talking which would sometimes lead to missed notes or missed comments. When 200+ people are all talking at the same time it can be hard to recognize that the one we’re here to listen to has already started.
(Thanks for your detailed feedback. No, I don't do review classes, as I've
explained before (it's not because I'm lazy, inconsiderate, or trying to make things harder). It sounds like what you're looking for is not a review, but a preview of the exam, which is a very different thing.
Each class, I did say "Good afternoon" and then said "Last time..." and briefly summarized where I left off. I do this to give the class a moment to settle down before actually starting the lecture. I'm sorry that you weren't able to hear me over the noise of the class.)
I really enjoyed being in the class as you taught us in a way in which we could remember things. I also appreciate how you are really patient with students leaving early. Would like to be in one of your other classes in future!
(I understand that students often have good reasons for leaving a class early.)
Instructor could cover more material in the textbook. A lot of the textbook material was never mentioned in class
(No, I can't cover more material. I filled the classes covering what I could. And you do NOT want me (or any instructor) to cover all textbook material in class. If you thought it was boring before...
it was very boring and the instructor often just read from his powerpoint slides
(See? Boring. Maybe next time, I'll ignore my PowerPoints entirely and just do freestyle rapping.)
I usually hate taking 100 level courses because they're often tedious and hard to appreciate. Doctor Loepelmann changed that for me. He incorporate's humour and anecdotes into his lectures, which make the course material fun easier to learn. He has a genuine love for teaching and wants to help the students share his love of psychology. His personal website is also incredibly useful for navigating the course. One of the best instructors I've ever had.
Dr. Loepelmann is a great instructor. Even though the class had ~400 students, it was one of the most engaging I had this semester purely due to his enthusiasm and teaching style! I hope to take PSYCO 282 with him in the future!
(Thanks!)
Can I just say... wow! Completely LIT COURSE WITH LIT FRIENDS AND A LIT PROF. The textbook was half lit, the physical version would only become lit if someone LIT IT ON FIRE. But the online version was fantastic and the questions were wowza! Completely recommend the online, would only recommend the physical copy if... idk you get the electronic when you buy the physical current edition copy but you can't access questions as fast in the physical edition. The in class activities and iClicker and jokes were LIT. If this prof taught math I'd probably take it, the jokes are your classic dad jokes but well thought out so you'd remember the jokes and examples on the exams. His name is a little hard to spell, but shoutout to Loepelmann the mann and looking forward to Yummie Treets being trademarked or patented.
(Whoa. Now I wish I was teaching English Lit. Geddit?)
PSYCO 282
great lectures with excellent examples. Instructor disagrees with textbook a bit and it seems like there must be a better textbook option.
(Nope. I've picked one that is one of the best in the field, with helpful pedagogical features, and at a
great price. You can check ratings of behavior modification textbooks
on Amazon and see that Miltenberger is the most highly rated one at 4.5 stars.)
Very interesting course material with lots of relations to real life examples. Excellent course. One complaint is that the assignments are marked so finely, so specifically, that I lost marks for not italicizing a title and journal number and for having an axis labeled as "Days" instead of "Time (Days)" even though the textbook uses "Days". Another complaint is that when I emailed Dr. Loepelmann asking a question, he merely replied with a riddle and did not help me find the answer at all, and I ended up failing that assignment because I didn't know what he was asking or what he was looking for. In the future, it would be great to answer students questions directly or maybe providing some examples.
(Science is about precision and accuracy; I explicitly pointed out the requirement for labels and units in the lecture. To your second point, I sometimes get questions from students about the assignments, along the lines of "Here's my answer to question 2. Is it right?" Of course, I cannot answer that. Do math profs say if you got your answers to calculus homework sets right? If I "pre-mark" someone's answers to the assignments, I am obligated to do that for the entire class. That, of course, is impossible. The point of an assignment is to assess your learning. If I give you the answers, it obviates the pedagogical intent of the assignment. Sometimes, the answer to your question is going to be "I can't tell you.")
This was my favorite class. It made me love psychology so much more. The prof made all the difference.
This course was amazing! I looked forward to it every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. The professor was enthusiastic and made the subject matter interesting and easy to understand. The notes provided for the class were thorough and the blanks in them kept me coming to class. The iClicker questions helped review material and engage the class. Marking on assignments were fair and midterms were the appropriate level of difficulty.
This course was awesome to come to. The project component was interesting and valuable because we were able to directly apply what we learned in class to real life behaviour modifying.
Prof is fantastic, the website is extremely handy and easy to use, the textbook is essential if you wish to do great in this class. Self-management project was also interesting and quite fun to do, a different take on learning outside the classroom. I would definitely recommend this course to other people.
Passionate prof, made his classes enjoyable and learned something new everyday.
(Thanks for all the kind words.)
This course was taught in a very effective way. The fill in the blank notes used were helpful and made it easy to take notes while still listening to the professor lecture.
The way student notes are given is somewhat unhelpful. Having a ppt or pdf with blanks in it would be much better than the text based notes that were provided.
(These two comments were literally right next to each other. *Sigh*)
Overall the course was excellent, the only comment that I have is to be aware of using person-first language, especially since the research in this course focuses primarily on people with disabilities.
(Dang it, I really tried to
do this. I will go through my lectures again to correct them. Thanks for your important feedback on this.)
It was great and there should be some sort of assigned readings
(Er, what? Like the assigned readings in the syllabus you mean?)
I appreciate the fact that the notes could be easily pasted into a word document for easy note taking (as opposed to notes posted in PDFs)
(You may be the first person to thank me for that. I'm glad it worked for you.)
Manipulative and obnoxious instroctor. I won't take any class with again.
(I know, right? I'm so obnoxious, manipulating you into taking my class, reading the textbook, taking exams.)
Loepelmann is not very approachable. Seems slightly obnoxious and cold when asking questions. Get the feeling he is offended at questions getting asked, since it could mean he did not explain a concept clear enough. Cheerful personality when presenting/teaching and a good prof, but has some underlying attitude issues when one-on-one.
(When did you ask questions? At the end of class when I'm trying to pack up my stuff and get out of the way of the next instructor while dealing with a line of students all asking questions? Or during my office hours, when I don't have to rush through my answers in a quiet atmosphere? I'm sorry if I gave you the impression through our interactions that I have a bad attitude. I respect students, try my best to answer questions, and try to learn and improve by paying careful attention to student comments.)
Karsten was an excellent and engaging instructor. I have told all of my peers to take this course with him along with any other courses he may teach. This course has inspired me to widen the scope of my degree and look at extra certifications in the subject area.
Karsten Loepelmann is an excellent instructor, and my designated TA taught me things about APA formatting I should have learned a very, very, very long time ago. Thank you both for that. I really appreciated all of Karsten's supplementary materials on his websites, which helped me extensively on the Self-Management Project. While I wasn't extremely interested in the material, the structure and enthusiasm in lectures made them easy to attend.
Karsten was very successful in creating an amazing classroom experience. I never missed a lecture because he made them so interesting and enjoyable!
The instructor was really good and always replied to emails promptly. He was always very helpful and answered questions in a meaningful way.
Karsten Lopelman is a God" Okay, but actually. Karsten is the most pleasant professor I have ever had a course with. He is caring about his students, he lectures well, he gives great examples and has clear notes. Karsten's exams are fair, the textbook is a very useful resource (I read it religiously) and the fill in the blanks are the best idea since peanut butter. I would take absolutely any course Karsten teaches and when anyone tells me that they might take PSYCO 104 or PSYCO 282 the first words out of my mouth are " You have to take it with Karsten". I truly enjoy that you start every chapter with a research focus, it helps centre the idea and focus on where these ideas might be going. Once again another amazing course taught by Karsten, Bravo !
Dr. Loepelmann is a very nice professor and accessible outside the classroom. I have encountered some professors who refuses to answer students' question through emails and will refer them to the TAs but Dr. Loepelmann always answers my emails promptly and with detail and care.
(Thanks!)
PSYCO 494
What can I say? I am obsessed with human factors and ergonomics, now! I think about it every day and in almost every situation. I may actually devote my life to this topic. Aside from the captivating lectures, however, I wasn't terribly drawn to the textbook or the required readings. They seemed to be more "supplemental learning" and I honestly found myself forgetting to read the course pack. Thank you, Dr. Loepelmann, for the wonderful term! I am excited to take more classes with you in the future!
(I'm constantly looking for better readings; thanks for your feedback.)
This is my second course I have taken with this instructor. I thought he did a great job of making the course engaging and explaining concepts clearly and with humour. There was a lot of lists of things to understand within each topic, but I thought the exam format did a good job of examining these. I studied really hard for the first midterm and didn't do as well as I had hoped, but the instructor was great about being willing to discuss how to improve for the final. I am actually enjoying writing my term paper as the instructor gave us the freedom to choose a topic we are interested in. Overall, I enjoyed this class and would recommend this instructor.
(Thanks. I recommend me, too.)
The timing of the Macewan exercise around thanksgiving weekend was tricky. Procrastination=closed buildings. Excellent use of recent research. Like the independent topics for paper, would love a formal draft date to encourage getting it done early.
(Sorry about encountering closed buildings. I'll mention that to future classes. I don't want to have a formal topic-selection deadline, because to enforce it, it would have to be for marks--and I don't want anyone losing marks for something like this.)
A bit more guidance/discussion on the term paper would have been appreciated Overall a very interesting course with a lot of parallels to real life. More class interaction maybe would be something to consider to improve the class
(I am willing to work with you one-on-one if you need help with your term paper, but you've got to reach out to me via email or during office hours--otherwise I don't know what you need.)
Dr. Loepelmann did an amazing job with this course. I wasn't 100% what to expect with this topic but he was able to spark my interest by always coming to class well prepared and delivering lectures with enthusiasm. The two written assignments in this course were well though out and were effective ways of making sure we actually understood concepts and were able to apply them. I really enjoyed how the Loepelmann was able to link course concepts to real-life situations with videos and case studies that helped break up the lecture time. I would encourage you to continue using these and perhaps adding more, if possible. I also appreciated that you were able to offer us feedback on the Term Papers before final submission; that was super helpful!
(Yup, I am working to include more active learning content.)
Why aren't you studying?
