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
