The Green and Gold Week

With the actual Winter Term Reading Week coming up, here's an update on the proposed Fall Term Reading Week. It now has the name "Green and Gold Week" attached (or, maybe, "Co-curricular Week"). The final documentation was supposed to go to University Governance last month. A recent email was sent around listing some of the main points in the proposal:

The break will take place in conjunction with Remembrance Day (November 11th).

To achieve the break, two instructional days will be dropped and classes will begin one day earlier (normally on the Tuesday after Labour Day).

Winter Term will also drop two instructional days, to ensure consistency between the terms. The timing of these days is subject to discussions with the Office of the Registrar.

The break will [...] be filled with academic and non-academic programming.

The exam schedule and date of the end of classes should not change.

I'm not crazy about losing instructional days. That will mean cutting out lecture material, which is always agonizingly hard to do.

During Reading Week, I'm not usually around--not even for office hours. (I'm not going to spend more time commuting than I am helping students. Oh, and also: no students show up to office hours during Reading Week.)

What would you do during a Green and Gold Week? Attend some of the academic and/or non-academic programming? Catch up on studying? Catch up on sleep?

Why aren't you studying?

The Bookstore

I've had some problems with the Bookstore in the past, but those were issues with the price of textbooks. This year, I had a whole new set of problems.

As you may have read, the UofA changed how it deals with copyright; the deadline for the old regime expiring was August 31, 2011. This change has meant a great upheaval in how instructors prepare coursepacks. Previously, we'd submit a list of readings to SUBPrint, and they would handle the copyright side of things via the UofA's agreement with the licensing agency Access Copyright. But as of September 1, 2011, that agreement no longer holds; SUBPrint now has to contact each individual rightsholder and negotiate an agreement with them. This is probably just as much fun as it sounds. Yeesh!

I submitted my PSYCO 494 coursepacks for Fall, 2011 in early August, and I was warned by SUBPrint that they couldn't simply print off more coursepacks if more students were allowed into my class in September. OK, fine. I asked if it would be a good idea if I also submitted my PSYCO 365 coursepacks for Winter, 2012 before the August 31 deadline. The response was a very desperate, pleading, "YES!" I'd used this coursepack before and hadn't planned on making any major changes to it, so I submitted it, feeling very pleased with myself for being so darn clever. How many coursepacks did I need? Well, the class is capped at 125, so that's exactly how many copies SUBPrint made, and sent them off to the Bookstore.

September came and I ended up with 29 students in PSYCO 494, just one shy of the cap of 30. Whew. Fast forward to January, 2012. The Department bumped enrollment in PSYCO 365 from 125 to 130, but I was confident there would be enough coursepacks; I knew there would be at least 5 students from last year selling their old coursepacks. So I was a bit concerned to hear from an increasing chorus of students that they could not find the coursepack at the Bookstore.

As I was off campus, I called the Bookstore and asked how many copies they had. The nice person who answered the phone went type-type-type and answered "there are 65 left." What the...? Why can't anyone find them? "Hmm," I hmmed to the nice person, "would you mind seeing how many there are actually out on the shelf?" She went away and I waited and waited. And waited. On hold, I killed time by checking my email. She finally came back, sheepishly admitting that there were no coursepacks to be found. As I was waiting, I'd gotten an email from a student who was told by a Bookstore manager that they had "run out" and that the instructor should "get more copies printed." What the...? That's exactly what I couldn't do. And what happened to the ones that were printed off over the summer?

Dialling the phone like a mad-phone-dialling person, I left messages for the SUBPrint manager and Bookstore manager. An agonizing few hours later I got a response: the coursepacks had been located. Where were they? In a box. On the floor. Outside the manager's office.

This ridiculous episode has shaken my confidence in the Bookstore--to the point of me really not trusting them at all any more. There are consistent problems every term getting enough copies of textbooks in (most recently, it happened once in Fall, 2011 term and again this Winter, 2012 term); they usually blame the publisher for shorting their orders. Although I suppose that might happen, I don't know why the Bookstore isn't wising up to this, if it keeps happening.

There apparently is a new director at the Bookstore. Maybe things will improve. I've been told by one of the Bookstore managers that:

"Under our new director, the Bookstore is working on several course material improvements including an enhanced web-based ordering service."

Oh yeah, the crappy web-based ordering service. Don't even get me started on that. My confidence is at a low ebb already.

What problems have you had with the Bookstore?

Why aren't you studying?

Loepelmann's Law

It's one of those weeks. I've been clobbered by a nasty cold, my car had a near-death experience (good-bye old clutch, I'll miss you--good times!), and all this talk of budget cuts has me anxiously looking over my shoulder even though my current contract goes until 2013.

*sigh*

I talk about a number of scientific laws in my classes (oy, there are some crappy web pages out there that fail spectacularly at differentiating between a law and a theory--sorry, Wikipedia, no love for you this time). These include Weber's Law, Fechner's Law, and Stevens's Law. (Haven't gotten around to adding Fitts's Law but that's another show.) These ones stick out in my mind because they're so, well...memorable. That's because they've got the names of the people who discovered them in the name of the law itself.

It seems that people who discover new things get those things named after them. I call this "Loepelmann's Law."

Thank you and good night.

(BTW, if you want to have a mathematical theorem named after you--only £15--check out TheoryMine.)

Why aren't you studying?

The Lecture Notes

If you're not already aware (thanks for joining us), I do put my lecture notes online. (Yes, the ones with blanks in them. But this is not about that.) At the bottom of every webpage of lecture notes, there's a little blurb:

This document copyright © 1995-2012 Karsten A. Loepelmann. All rights reserved. Viewing this page is taken as acceptance of the copyright agreement.

Yup, that's right: my notes are copyright, and they are free--free as in free beer, not free as in free speech. I have control over the content, which, actually, is taken from sources that are themselves copyrighted (e.g., journal articles, books, magazine articles, and so on). I am allowed to do this under the provision of "fair dealing" in copyright law; because these resources are being used for educational purposes. But I don't want anyone to "steal" my lecture notes, which are the product of many, many hours of work.

I also don't want anyone to profit from my lecture notes. Every so often, someone gets the bright idea of opening a "notes exchange" or registry of some kind. It's been done on campus at least twice before. You give them the lecture notes you've taken in class, and they pay you. They make money by selling those lecture notes to other students. I don't want students in my class to have to pay to get my lecture notes, and I certainly don't want anyone to have old, outdated lecture notes from a previous term. Now, however, there are several notes-exchange websites on the Internet.

Unfortunately, last term some students uploaded my lecture notes to one of these notes-exchange websites and shared them with others in the class. This was a violation of the terms of service of the notes-exchange website, the terms of use for the online storage site used by the notes-exchange website, the Code of Student Behaviour, and a violation of the copyright of my lecture notes.

Oops.

The students who did this, said that they did it to be helpful, assisting students who had posted messages on the course eClass message board asking for notes they missed. That is altruistic and commendable. Except for, you know, all of those violations. They could have just posted the fill-ins words on the message board itself, which would not violate anything. Heck, I'm completely OK with that.

If you miss class, you should try and get the notes from someone else in class. That way, you get not only the "fill-in" words you missed, but any annotations or side-notes that the other person has made (look for someone who scribbles coherent notes all over their printouts). For now, though, I've turned off the message boards on eClass/Moodle, sorry.

Why aren't you studying?

The Grad School

At this time of year, graduate school applications are on my mind, because I'm up to my ears writing letters of reference. Yikes, deadlines!

Students often ask me for inside advice on what graduate committees are looking for--how high their GPS needs to be, who to get letters of reference from, that kind of thing. My answer is: I don't know. I've never been on an admissions committee, and things are different (old man voice) from when I applied to grad school back in the day. Ahem.

So, I asked the Department of Psychology's Graduate Program Assistant, Anita Mueller, for some insight into the process--at least, in this department. Here's what she wrote me [I've added the information in brackets]:

It's not GPA alone that determines admissibility. It's true, we do look for the best and the brightest (the closer to a 4.0 the better) and those are the students who typically are offered recruitment scholarships. The minimum to be accepted into FGSR [Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research] is 3.0. In order to be eligible for recruitment scholarships, you need to have a GPA of greater than 3.7 in the last 2 years (~60 credits) of your undergraduate education. The other things we look at is your GRE [Graduate Records Exam], STATS courses and research experience. Research experience is included in our Honours program under [PSYCO] 498 Individual Study. If you are in the regular stream, you can also get research experience, and it would be listed under the PSYCO 496 individual research. You would however have to find your own supervisor to complete the PSYCO 496. Students who are in their final year of their Bachelor’s degree can apply for scholarships (NSERC [Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada], etc). It looks good on the application of you are coming in with a scholarship.

The Graduate program is very competitive, last year we had 65 applications and admitted 8 students. This year, we have 72 applications and our admissions would be about the same percentage. We also look to ensure that there is a supervisor who is willing to supervise the student. There would have to be fit with supervisor/research and physical space available to accommodate new students. With all that being said, we encourage those students who want to continue into Grad School to get their applications in early as our deadline is January 15 for fall admission.

I hope that somewhat answers your question.

AM
Anita Mueller
Graduate Program Assistant

Thanks, Anita, for that information. (Yes, I know that the application deadline has passed. You should be looking ahead to next year.) Here are some other things you should know. The Department of Psychology does not offer a graduate program in professional psychology. That is, you can't train to become a clinical or counseling psychologist. (At the UofA, the Department of Educational Psychology has a program in counseling psychology and school psychology, for example. But I've been told that it's now more competitive to get into professional psychology programs than it is to get into medical school. Eep! Psychiatry anyone?)

Why aren't you studying?

What I Did on my Winter Vacation (2011 edition)

I took my family to Hawaii. I know, right? It’s awesome. Palm trees, warm breezes, sunset dinners overlooking the ocean.

Our hotel, the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani, had a lot of family-friendly activities. Kids can help feed the koi fish, make leis, and ego to a free pineapple tasting. The chefs built an enormous German-themed gingerbread village, complete with two model trains. And there’s free outdoor music and hula dancing every night.

Shopping? We were right next to the International Marketplace, so: check. Took a trip to a “swap meet” (read: flea market) which has 700+ vendors located in the Aloha Stadium parking lot, check. Ala Moana shopping centre? Check. And yawn.

Trinkets and T-shirts are as exciting to me as an Internet outage. Me, I love just going to a grocery store to see what’s interesting. A huge pile of papayas! Key lime pie gum! Haupia yogurt! Macadamia nuts! And of course, that delicious Kona coffee--the only coffee grown in North America.

We saw to the zoo, the aquarium, we even went swimming with the dolphins. Well, we tried to, anyway. Turns out some kids get really freaked out when they are within touching distance of 7-foot aquatic mammals, and have to get out of the water immediately. This brings me to...

The bad news. Before you start to both hate me and envy me, let me tell you that this vacation was not all mai tais and hibiscus. Oh, no my friend. There were downsides.

The cost: Hawaii is expensive. From the flight to the hotel to the meals, everything is pricey--even though the CAD-USD exchange rate was holding steady around $0.98.

The beach: I’m not a toss-my-beach-towel-on-the-sand-and-flop-down-on-it-for-the-day person. I’m more of a sit-in-the-shade-and-read-a-book-while-sipping-an-iced-coffee person. I don’t enjoy spraying sticky sunblock all over me; it makes me feel like a licked lollypop that fell onto the floor. And the sand. It gets everywhere. Just...everywhere. But my kids like the beach, so off I go. Oh, and it rained almost every day.

The catamaran ride from hell: It was pretty windy that day (there was a wind advisory, actually) but I didn’t expect our 1-hour tour to hit 8-foot swells. There were free drinks, but when you’re holding on to a railing for dear life with one hand and holding on to one of your children for dear life with the other hand, it’s kinda hard to sip your drink. Plus, seawater splashed into mine. Yuck.

The hotel: I love to sleep--I really do--whenever I get the opportunity. And what better opportunity than a tropical getaway? Alas, Waikiki is not a quiet place. It’s a tradeoff: if you want to be close to a lot of activities, you’ve got to be in the city, with all of its sirens and car horns and trucks beep-beep-beep backing up. Unfortunately, the lanai doors at our hotel were only single-pane glass, which offers no soundproofing. So when the street performers (including, but not limited to, drummers, singers, and what apparently was a troupe of synchronized shouters) started their night shift, we were forced to listen to them, even with 29-dB NRR earplugs. Hilariously, every night, they started just as we were trying, in vain, to put the kids to sleep.

The kids: Think you’re a seasoned world traveler who can handle anything? You haven’t traveled until you’ve traveled with kids. Well, with my kids, anyway. For example, try having the two-year-old decide to start ignoring you, run away, scream at her 129 dB max volume (yes, I measured that; I’m a scientist), and vomit all over her shirt. And this was in the departure lounge before we even got on the plane. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids. Showing them the diversity of the world is a blast. But it’s not easy. I’m seriously reconsidering Disneyland in 2012, girls.

Finally, I missed Christmas. No matter how much you decorate a palm tree, it ain’t a Christmas tree. I actually started to miss snow. (Really!) And not just that; Christmas is about friends and family. There’s something a bit...hollow about sharing your Christmas dinner with dozens of strangers in a hotel restaurant. Yeah, I’m glad to be back. (Also: the U of Hawaii Department of Psychology has no Faculty Lecturer positions open.)

How was your holiday break?

Why aren’t you studying?

The Heads-Down

OK, I've got my eggnog latte, a red pen, and my big stack of term papers. That means I'm going to go heads-down for the next 6 days; my goal is always to have the term papers marked for the final exam. I've never had so short a window to mark term papers before (who makes up the exam schedule anyway? Hmm, sounds like a topic for another post.), so there's a lot of pressure.

I do have an office hour today, but after that, you're not going to see me around. You can contact the teaching assistant, or if there's something urgent, there's always email--but I won't be checking it as frequently. Why? Interruptions like email have a prolonged effect on task flow. You check your email, but then you might as well check Facebook, and the news, and play "just one game" of Poppit, and make a snack, and...

Wait, where was I? Oh, right. Heads down.

Best of luck on your final exams!

Why aren't you studying?