The New Prep 1: The New Course

A few years ago, I developed a new lecture on synesthesia for my Advanced Perception course (formerly PSYCO 365, currently offered as a  PSYCO 403 “special topics” course). To give some insight into the lecture development process, I wrote three posts describing the behind-the-scenes making of that lecture in a three-part series of posts called Anatomy of a Lecture.

Now, I want to go behind the scenes again--not into the making of one new lecture, but twenty-one lectures. That is, an entirely new course. Or in the lingo of instructors, a “new prep.”

In June, 2010, I was asked by then-Department Chair Doug Grant to meet to discuss a new 200-level course that Faculty members in the Comparative Cognition and Behaviour (i.e., “learning”) area were considering. They thought I might be “a very effective instructor for this course.” At the time, the Department of Psychology had another Faculty Lecturer in the learning area, so this was quite a flattering offer.

Here’s the rationale for the new course. The proposed PSYCO 282: Behavior Modification course would replace PSYCO 281: Learning and Behaviour. That course included a lot of material that overlapped with PSYCO 381: Principles of Learning, usually taught by Prof. Chris Sturdy. Students would keep telling him how they already knew everything he was talking about, because they learned about it in the prerequisite class. (Yeah, I can understand how that would be frustrating--for both instructor and students.)

I met with Professor Grant, and found out more about the course: it was to be about behaviour modification, or “b-mod” for short. Although I had taken courses in learning as an undergraduate student (including some taught by Prof. Grant), this is not exactly my area of expertise.

Because I work on contract, it’s not in my best interest to say no to people who play an integral role in getting my contract renewed. Also, I enjoy a challenge (er, don’t I?). So I said yes. It’s easy to say yes to things that won’t actually take place for several years.

Immediately after my meeting, this is what happened: nothing. Hey, administrative things can move pretty slowly, and there are procedures that have to be followed. The next major milestone was at the Department of Psychology Council meeting on October 19, 2011. That was a significant meeting for me. Not only was PSYCO 267: Perception (I course I regularly teach) renumbered to 367 and eliminated as a core requirement, but PSYCO 365: Advanced Perception--my Advanced Perception course--was killed. And the new course was approved. Here’s the official course description:

PSYCO 282 – Behavior Modification

*3 (fi 6) (either term, 3-0-0).

A study of applications of learning principles and laboratory findings to behavior problems in educational, clinical, and social settings, with emphasis on empirical research demonstrating the effectiveness of behavior modification and cognitive/behavioral techniques. Prerequisites: PSYCO 104 or SCI 100.

The course would still have to be approved by higher levels of administration, but that would be basically a rubber-stamp. For me, approval by Council meant the course had gone from being a concept--something in the far-off future--to a real, actual course that would be taught to real, actual students in Fall, 2013. (Like I said, things move slowly; procedures have to be followed.)

Gulp!

Coming up next: The New Prep 2: The Textbook.

Why aren’t you studying?

What I Did on my Summer Vacation (2013 edition)

Typically, when students hand in their final exams at the end of term, they say, “Have a good summer!” Ha! If only.

Because of the Provincial Government’s disastrous budget, I had a lot of worry about my contract being renewed over the summer. The relief I felt when my contract was renewed for another year was short-lived, because it’s not looking good for next year--even more budget cuts are on the way. And some of my colleagues have already been laid off. So any joy I got from my contract renewal was diminished by seeing the toll the cuts are taking on the post-secondary education system--on people, and on the quality of education. Thanks, Government of Alberta: way to invest in the future.

Assuming that I had a job to return to in the fall, there were two major projects I had to complete over the summer. Not only did I have a secret project (OK, not so secret any more) to work on, but I also had a new prep. “New prep” is instructor-speak for “having to write lectures and develop an entirely new course from scratch.” This is the kind of thing that takes over your entire life for months and months like a face-hugging, multi-tentacled monster. Any spare time I had, I was prepping. In fact, here’s a picture of me at the beach, prepping on my (Faculty of Arts-issued) iPad:

Beach? What beach?

(This new prep has been such a massive endeavor, I’ve got an upcoming series of posts about it in the next few weeks.)

My family did expect me to spend some time with them, too (I know: selfish!). Usually, our summertime holiday routine includes going to Sylvan Lake. Unfortunately, the water level is so high and the beach has eroded to the point where, well, there really is none. (If you’ve got young children, a lake has to have three things: a beach, a playground, and ice cream--usually in that order.) Faced with the prospect of only two out of three, we explored some other central Alberta lakes.

• Miquelon Lake. Did you know that the lake is high in sulfur? Yup, it smells like a skunk eating garlic during a natural gas leak. And farting. My younger daughter gagged whenever the breeze blew in off the lake. Also: no ice cream. Okay, cross that one off the list. Next!
• Gull Lake. I remember going here as a kid when I lived in nearby Lacombe. The lake is shallow and has a nice big beach--and a really nice concession stand. Too bad we arrived right as some ominous black clouds rolled in. Who expects an extreme thunderstorm at 11:00 in the morning? Obviously not us.

• Ma-Me-O Beach. On the way home from Gull Lake, we stopped here--at the “summer village,” unfortunately, not the actual beach. (We should have gone to Pigeon Lake Provincial Park.) I blame my wife, who was driving. And me, who was supposed to be navigating--but was actually nose-down in my iPad, prepping.
• Gull Lake (again). We tried Gull Lake again on another weekend with better weather. This time, the extreme thunderstorms held off until right before bedtime. We watched helplessly out the window of our motel in Lacombe as hail came down on our vehicle in the parking lot, and winds ripped branches off trees. The next day, we checked out my old home, school, and the storefront that held my dad’s Thriftway grocery store. Enough nostalgia, let’s find us another nice beach-playground-ice cream stand!
• Alberta Beach (Lac Ste. Anne). Consistent with our luck all summer, the beach was almost nonexistent; our sandbox at home had more sand than Alberta Beach. My older daughter stepped on some broken glass that littered the beach. Also: blue-green algae advisory. Sorry, but Alberta Beach is now crossed off our list. (The restaurant across from the beach did serve excellent pizzas, though.)
• Rochon Sands (Buffalo Lake). Advisory: swimmer’s itch. Of course. No ice cream. Next!
• Ol’ MacDonald’s Resort. Hmm, this is also on Buffalo Lake, but they told us there was no swimmer’s itch. It was fun to spend the day with some of my daughters’ friends and their families. Nice beach, but they never opened the concession stand or the ice cream stand.

In between beach trips and prepping, I managed to fit in some other summer activities:

• my cousin and her family visited from Germany for a few short days, before they all jumped into a motorhome and drove to Vegas. They loved the World Waterpark. It’s my kind of beach: no sand, no swimmer’s itch, and no blue-green algae.
• volunteered to help out on a fieldtrip to the zoo my younger daughter took with her daycare. You don’t know cute until you take a bus full of 4-year-olds to the zoo.
• got stuck in my office for a few hours during a tornado warning 
• spent an afternoon on the midway at K-Days (Seriously, does anyone like that name? It’s Konfusing.)
• Heritage Festival, as usual. The German pavilion even offered leberkäse this year, yum!
• inspired by UAlberta's new DINO 101 MOOC (massive open online course), we went to Drumheller:
  

• put up a couple of sheds and, in a mad scramble before summer finally ran out, my wife and I painted our deck--whew!

But mostly, prepping. But maybe a good summer after all. What did you do on your summer vacation?

Why aren’t you studying?

The Pause

For me, it's the end of the 2012/2013 academic year. Stats, please:

• 11.5 months of teaching in a row (July, 2012-June, 2013)
• 8 classes
• 1,285 students taught
• 21 exams
• 56 terms papers marked
• 1,000 meetings

(OK, so maybe the last one is an exaggeration. But not by much.)

Thanks to everyone who took my classes. Congratulations to all graduates, and best of luck!

I'm going offline for a while, mostly to recover from dental surgery. (Third root canal on the same tooth. Hope the third time's the charm!)

But I've also got a long to-do list before fall term starts: there's my not-so-secret Secret Project, my other slightly secret project (a psychology MOOC), and the big one: the new course I'm teaching starting in the fall. There will be an upcoming series of behind-the-scenes posts about that.

Of course, all of this depends on my contract being renewed for another year. Here's hoping. The provincial government's budget cuts have been brutal, and there are still more to come.

Why aren't you studying?

The Updates

Occasionally, I get new information about something I've posted about before, and usually update the original post. Unless you go back and reread those, however, you may miss out on that info. Sometimes, it's hardly worth it to do an update. So here are some updates to things I've previously written about:

• The New Colleague: After the brutal Alberta budget was released, our potentially new Faculty Lecturer decided not to come to the UofA. This is probably not a coincidence.
• The Budget and the Clocks: I wish the clocks were the only thing affected by the devastating provincial budget. There's talk that the University may invoke "Article 32," a clause in the Faculty Agreement that allows the University to eliminate programs--in effect, cutting tenured positions. This would be a very bad precedent, and would substantially affect morale. (Oh, also? The brackets on the wall where the clocks used to be have been removed. And I may lose the phone in my office. Do you think the Premier has a clock and a phone in her office?)
• The End of Perception: The end is near. I'm teaching PSYCO 267: Perception for the last time this term, and taught PSYCO 365: Advanced Perception for the last time in the past winter term. On the other hand, I will teach PSYCO 403 (LEC B2): Advanced Perception in Winter, 2014. And I will try to teach PSYCO 367: Perception in Spring, 2014.
• The Udacity Partnership: Massive Online Open Course provider Udacity, with whom the UofA signed an agreement last year, has decided to concentrate on one discipline (Computer Science). That means all of our MOOCs (including the psychology one I'm working on as well as DINO 101) will have to find a new home. Stay tuned.
• The Secret Project: ...is still moving ahead. I've been consulting with some people who have given me some great ideas about how to improve student engagement. Plus, there's a cool new learning technology that I'm going to be using. All of this will be tested in my Fall, 2013 PSYCO 104 LEC A3 class.

Why aren't you studying?

The Open Comments: 7

It's the Spring term edition of open comments. I'd like to get some "formative feedback." That means if there's something you want me to know about my courses, tell me now while I have a chance to do something about it. (Don't wait until the teaching evaluation to tell me to speak up, for example.)

Comments can be anonymous, so you don't have to worry that I'll find out where you live. Unless you want me to.

Why aren't you studying?

The Google Calendar

I took an informal poll of one of my classes this term, asking about students' use of Google Calendar. I was shocked (shocked!) to find that only a small minority of students used it. (Although a few did promise to start trying it out.)

For every class I teach, I've been creating a separate Google Calendar containing important dates and deadlines. For example, I include the due dates for assignments. There are also reminders that will be emailed to you a day before each exam, as well.

I have a hard time keeping track of all the stuff going on in my life--and that of my family. Who has dance class today? Where is the soccer game? When is my dentist's appointment? There's no way to remember these in my head. (Some of my colleagues can really harness the power of their mind, memorizing the first 100 digits of pi, which is great. Me, I don't trust myself to be so organized.)
My wife has used a paper calendar in our kitchen, but that system is flawed. I can't book an appointment for myself if I'm not standing in the kitchen looking at the calendar. I don't know when the dance recital starts unless I'm standing in the kitchen looking at the calendar. It's very awkward. The solution: Google Calendar.

OK, it doesn't have to be Google--any online calendar that synchronizes to your devices will work. I've been using GCal since it came out in 2006, and it works well. You can get to it via the web, but it also syncs nicely with my Android phone and iOS devices.

You can "subscribe" to a whole bunch of different calendars, too. In addition to your personal calendar, you can subscribe to Canadian Holidays, UAlberta's academic schedule, or even the Department of Psychology's events calendar.

Here's a sad story. Despite my Google Calendar--and Bear Tracks, too--giving the time, date, and location of the final exam, one student last term forgot/missed the final, and ended up with a terrible mark. Don't let that happen to you!

Google has killed off other products that don't make it any money, and I can't see the revenue stream for Google Calendar. But the good news is that GCal is part of Apps@UAlberta, so it will likely survive future purges.

Why aren't you studying?

The New Colleague

I’d like to welcome the newest member of the Department of Psychology, Dr Catherine Ortner!

Dr Ortner, who is currently at Thompson Rivers University, will be a Faculty Lecturer (in Arts), starting on July 1, 2013. She will be responsible for teaching courses in personality, abnormal psychology, and clinical psychology--courses which are very popular with many students. She gave a fantastic presentation when she was here for her interview earlier this year.

Although it may seem incongruent that the UofA is hiring someone new in a time of significant budgetary shortfalls, this position is actually not new. The previous Faculty Lecturer in this area, Dr Doug Wardell, retired in 2010. We’ve been looking for a full-time replacement ever since.

I’m looking forward to working with Dr Ortner, and I hope you enjoy her courses!

Why aren’t you studying?

Update 5/24/2013: Unfortunately, Dr Ortner has decided to pursue other options and won't be coming to the UofA. (Understandable, considering the uncertain budgetary future here in Alberta.) Best wishes to her in her future endeavours!