The Sigmund Freud Action Figure

In my last post, I mentioned waiting anxiously for my Sigmund Freud action figure to come in the mail. I'm pleased to report that it has arrived. Say hello to my little friend!

I am, however, now faced with a dilemma. Do I take him (it?) out of the package? Because then he won't be MIP anymore.

On the other hand, he is a toy, and toys should be played with (as "The Transporter Malfunction" taught us). But, as that Big Bang Theory episode also taught us, toys can get broken.

Out of the package (with the great big "SIGMUND FREUD" label), however, he just looks like an old white guy in a suit--doesn't even look like Viggo Mortensen. Heck, he could be mistaken for Wilhelm Wundt if you don't look too closely.

So in the box he stays. You can see him (it?) if you visit me during my office hours. But no playing with him. Anyway, that would be...weird.

(Yes, you can buy one of your very own.)

Why aren't you studying?

The Lost & Found

Ever felt like you were losing your mind? I sure did. I had a bad week: I lost my mailbox key. Argh! My wife had long ago misplaced the spare one. When that happens, you have to notify Canada Post and they’ll re-key your mailbox. That costs $29. In the meantime, you can’t access your mail. My Sigmund Freud action figure is going to arrive any day now!

Then, I misplaced my office keys. Argh! I can still get into my office--I just have to sheepishly ask my admin assistant for a spare key, and end up looking like some absentminded professor. How embarrassing!

Luckily, I found my office keys, right on the floor at home where I, er, dropped them. And my younger daughter found my mail key, right on the floor at home where I, er, dropped it. Then I noticed I lost my USB flash drives. D’oh!

This wasn’t as extreme an event as you might imagine. No, there was no “sensitive information” on them, just all of my lectures and some backups. Anything important was encrypted with TrueCrypt. I thought for sure I had left the drives in their little wallet in my intro psych classroom, but they weren’t there. Well, no big loss. I had already ordered a new 32 GB USB 3.0 flash drive anyway. More than anything else, it was just further proof that I was losing my mind.

So the next day, I went to my perception class, and a student came up to me and asked me if I had lost my wallet. Whaaaaat? No, not my wallet-wallet, my USB drive wallet. Turns out he gave a presentation in my intro psych classroom and found it where I, er, dropped it. It had some of my business cards in it, so that’s how he knew it was mine (thanks!).

So it turns out that I’m not actually losing my mind, I’m just losing a lot of stuff, and then getting it back.

I’ve found a lot of things in classrooms over the years, and have had a lot of things turned in to me by honest students. Things like wallets and phones I usually bring to the Psychology Department Office, and have the admin staff open it up and contact the owner. Other items without ID in them, like flash drives, MP3 players, and calculators, are usually left in the classroom, in the lockable drawer at the front, or sometimes are given to Campus 5-0. They have a lost & found service; their office is 11390-87 Avenue (Education Carpark). Finally, mitts, sweaters, water bottles, etc. are usually just left in the classroom, until the end of term. After that, I don’t know where they go.

There’s usually a lot of lost stuff that accumulates. Please, people, try to hang on to your stuff.

Why aren’t you studying?

The New Chairs

Check out my fancy new ergonomic office chairs. Woot!

A few weeks ago, we in the department were asked if we wanted new office chairs. It's probably surprising that, in this climate of budget shortfalls, such an extravagant expenditure would be possible. Well, there's "hard money" and "soft money." Hard money funds things that are required, like the salaries of staff and faculty, but soft money comes and goes. The recent (and ongoing) budget cuts affect hard money. (Alarmingly, because I am not a professor, I am apparently paid out of soft money. Eek! Keeping fingers crossed!) Anyway, these chairs are funded out of soft money.

I had the option to decline these new chairs and just keep my old ones. If I had done that, I would have saved the university some money. So why did I opt to get new chairs?

Getting new chairs is not a common thing. In fact, it's become a once-in-a-generation event. Literally. The old chairs I had in my office were around since before my time--they were new before I was an undergraduate. Yup, they're around 30 years old. If I had chosen to stick with my old chairs, new chairs might not come around again for another 30 years. If my contract is not renewed, wouldn't the person who inherits my office like to have chairs from this century?
In case you think I'm a spendthrift, I did turn down the offers of new filing cabinets and new desks. (And I'm still going to use my old gray-and-beige chair--I brought this one from home. It was a birthday present that I used at home, but as a spent more and more time in my office, it just made sense to move it to campus permanently.)

On the other hand, I did accept the offer of a box of paper and some "Department of Psychology"-branded pens. Oh, and then there's my iPad 2 that the university... But that's another post.

Why aren't you studying?

UPDATE #1: My fellow Faculty Lecturer, Dr Jennifer Passey, also decided to get a new desk for her office. That is, she wanted to have a desk--period. Since she was hired, she's only had a table to serve as her desk!

UPDATE #2: Almost forgot to mention--I also got a foam rubber brain with "Department of Psychology" on it. Mmm, brains.

UPDATE #3: It's like Christmas! Today in my mailbox, there was a box of pencils, a roll of tape, a staples, a box of staples, a staple remover, paper clips. sticky notes, a highlighter, a ruler, and two red pens. My desk drawer is stuffed!

The Academic Dishonesty

I spent a whole lot of time this weekend writing a letter to the Dean about a case of “academic dishonesty” (i.e., cheating) in one of my classes. This is not fun for me--I do not cackle with glee, exclaiming, “I’ve got you now!” in a Darth Vader-like voice. (I only do that when I’m marking exams--kidding!)

My TA in the course--who is very sharp--noticed that some answers on a written assignment were, um, identical to those on a website you might have heard of: Wikipedia. Now, there’s nothing wrong with going to the Internet to look for answers to a question--I’m googling and wikipedia-ing (?) all the time. What is important is making the right use of your sources.

First of all, this means deciding, is it a credible source? Is the information presented credible? Is it correct? Does it apply to what I’m even looking for?

If you decide to use that information, it is essential (required, OK?) that you make it clear and explicit that the ideas you are presenting are not your own. You cannot just cut-and-paste your answers. No, no, no. At the very least, you must (again, this is required) paraphrase from the original source. That means that you have to put it in your own words. How do you do that? The UofA Libraries have great information on what to do, and how to do it. Student handouts are available at the Guide to Plagiarism and Cyber-Plagiarism.

Here are examples of good and bad paraphrasing, from the Purdue Online Writing Lab:

The original passage:
Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes. Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. (1976): 46-47.

A plagiarized version:
Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes.

A legitimate paraphrase:
In research papers students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester 46-47).

See the differences? And look how the legitimate version includes a reference to the source of the information. All those names and dates in my courses? Those are citations to who did the research--I certainly didn’t do that study or make up that theory. It would be ridiculous for me to claim that I did.

You also shouldn't, say, hand in another student's work and pass it off as your own. Students may think that's harder to catch, but you'd be surprised. (Sorry, but I'm not going to explain how that works, but it is possible.)

The bottom line for all of this is: Do your own work. There is value in doing that--you’re getting an education. If all you do is cut-‘n-paste (and get away with it), what are you going to do when you’re in a job and have to do work for real? When there’s nowhere to cut from? That’s when you’ll be in real trouble.

Plus, if no one plagiarizes, I won’t have to spend time on the weekend writing letters to the Dean.

Why aren’t you studying?

Suicide Prevention - Getting Help

There were a lot of absences from my most recent exams. Mostly people were sick, although someone did admit to sleeping in (although that was a result of a different problem). So I had to deal with a lot of emails, explaining over and over again exactly what the procedure is when you miss an exam--even though the syllabus has all of that information there. It got to the point where, out of frustration, I just stopped checking my email over the weekend.

When I went back to my email, there were almost two dozen more messages to slog through. One of them, however, was different. It was from the parent of one of my students, explaining how their child had tried to commit suicide. It was quite a sinking feeling to read this email, even though the person didn't succeed. I want to raise awareness about the issue, and the resources that are available to help.

• I Need Help Right Now -- call 780-492-HELP (780-492-4357)
  
  
• SU Peer Support Centre -- "Peer support services for students, or anyone who needs someone to talk to, in-person or over-the-phone"
  
  
• University Wellness Services - Mental Health Centre -- has psychological and psychiatric services available
  
  
• Suicide Awareness & Prevention -- includes risk factors, warning signs, and how you can help

The Electronic Grades

Last term, I submitted my final grades on paper, just like I've done since the first class I taught in 1994. Some things have changed (we're using letter grades now, not the 9-point system, and the format of the forms changed in the 2000s, wooo!), but the process is still the same: I have to take the grades from my spreadsheet file and write them down, one by one, on pieces of paper which I have to physically hand in. It's bizarre to consider that, for courses that have multiple choice exams, the marks live in a digital world from the point that they're scanned onwards. Well, up until the time I have to write them down on paper.

Finally, at long last, we're moving into the 21st century. Starting March 12, instructors can (must!) enter final grades electronically. No more paper forms, no more writing things down. And no more transcription errors. There was this one time that I mis-copied a grade over. From that person's grade down, almost everyone was assigned an incorrect grade. There is a way to fix that--Change of Grade forms--but it was a nightmare for everyone involved. (I was told that this happens often, but that didn't make me feel any better.)

That's not to say that errors won't happen--not all UofA computer systems sort student names the same way. Test scoring, for example, puts Da Silva before D'Allaird, for example. This is opposite to how Microsoft Excel (and the rest of the universe) works. Some advice: if your name has a space, an apostrophe, or a hyphen in it, check your marks very carefully. Even capitals in the middle of the name can throw off the sort.

From the information given so far, it looks like I can click to enter each individual mark or, thankfully, upload a spreadsheet file. The system even allows marks to be imported from Moodle's gradebook. Unfortunately, I think we're still not allowed to post final grades on Moodle. Still, students should notice that final grades will be available on Bear Tracks sooner than before. It's nice to be in the 21st century.

Why aren't you studying?

The BitLocker

On January 5, 2012, the UofA announced new information security policies for the campus in order to comply with Alberta Government requirements that all organizations adopt standard information security controls. As noted on the UofA’s Colloquy Blog, staff are legally required to secure sensitive information. (Yes, I have “sensitive information:” spreadsheets with students’ ID numbers and marks. Potentially, emails are also sensitive information.)

Importantly, this policy is not limited to University-owned laptops (from the memo sent out by the Vice-Provost, Information Technology):

Personally owned and other external laptops storing University personal and/or sensitive information must also undergo disk encryption according to the standard.

That’s right--by UofA policy, I must not only secure, but encrypt my own laptop. This fact has royally pissed off a lot of faculty.

The “disk encryption standard,” according to the Laptop Security and Encryption Standard and Guidelines on the VPIT’s website says:

a) Laptops and other mobile computing devices must run a current, fully patched, and modern operating system at all times.
b) Users must store documents on laptops in a single specific area only (such as a home folder or directory).
c) The contents of the disk storage area specified in b) must be securely encrypted.
d) Laptops and other mobile computing devices must be configured to ask for a password after any period of inactivity, including after resuming from suspend/standby/sleep/hibernate status and on operating system start-up.

Let’s see, a) check, b) check, c) um, no, d) check. Sigh, I guess I have to encrypt my laptop.

The University Encryption Standards and Instructions on the VPIT’s website states:

The University advises that BitLocker must be configured to use the “TPM + PIN” authentication method.

Unfortunately, BitLocker is only available in Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate--and I’m only running Professional. Because it’s a personal laptop, I can’t buy Win7 Enterprise, so I had to upgrade to Ultimate. Naturally, the Bookstore was out of copies of the Win7 Ultimate upgrade disks when the policy came out. Once again, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Eventually, they got copies in, so I was good to go.

Encrypting my 500 GB drive took a while; I let the process run while I marked exams. It finally finished, so I rebooted and...error messages everywhere, apps crashing, WTF? My system runs the OS off an SSD and all my data is on a separate, larger hard drive. BitLocker was supposed to pop up a password request during the boot process, but it didn’t because my system--a high-end Dell XPS, only about a year old--doesn’t have a TPM chip. For that, you have to buy Dell’s business-oriented (and very expensive) Latitude line.

It was possible to “unlock” my data drive, but only after bootup was complete, which is too late to get all my apps running properly--they already started up and crashed. Nothing in Microsoft’s documentation makes this clear. Grr!!

I removed BitLocker’s encryption. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to downgrade to Win7Pro, so I’m stuck with Win7Ultimate. I wasted hours of time and a hundred bucks and still don’t have anything encrypted. I'm still going to encrypt my computer, but with some other disk encryption software. Thanks for nothing, Microsoft. Nice job, UofA policy.

Why aren’t you studying?

The Open Comments: 4

It's that time of term again: I'm marking midterms. So I'm going to open this post up to your comments. Can you hear me okay in class? I SAID, CAN YOU HEAR ME OKAY IN CLASS!?

What about those double screens in the classrooms? Are they driving you crazy? (Do you try to concentrate on one, but then keep sneaking a look at the other one, just to see if you missed something?)

Why aren't you studying?

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?

The Importance of Sleep, Yet Again

Here's an interesting research finding about sleep: if you exercise, chances are that you'll sleep better. If you do an average of at least 150 minutes per week (about 20 minutes per day) of "moderate to vigorous" exercise, you will likely experience an increase in sleep quality, and decrease in sleepiness during the day. Walking briskly counts as moderate exercise, so even rushing from one class to another counts. Bonus!

On the other hand, The Gateway has a silly feature about an editor's attempt at getting more stuff done by dividing the week into six 28-hour days. I think it's telling that the story concludes with the line, "I might try it again sometime...but not until I sleep for a day to catch up." That's pretty conclusive evidence that this kind of lifestyle is not sustainable. If you want to be more productive, maybe you should be thinking in terms of better quality of work, not quantity. More than once, I've been handed a term paper by a bleary-eyed student who mumbled, "I was up all night writing this." You know what? I can tell.

I've posted about the importance of sleep before, and then again. I'm going to be lecturing on it in intro psych, so I't on my brain. Even, like, fantasizing about it. Not dreaming about it, however--that would require actual sleep. I don't want to name names, but someone is still waking me up every night.

There was a blissful period of a few weeks when she decided to sleep through the night, but now she's at the age when she needs more than zero naps, but less than one. (Yeah, try to do the math on that one.) If she takes an afternoon nap, she won't go to sleep until 11:00. But if she doesn't have a nap, it's Miss Crankypants for the rest of the day. Oh, and she'll also fall asleep on the floor in the evening, which means she won't be tired at bedtime. Sigh.

Anyway, in sum: Sleep is good.

Why aren't you studying?

(HT: PsychCentral.)

The Fall Term Reading Week

Argh! I'm up to my neck in a major consulting project, and the deadline is stomping toward me like a rancorous rancor. I appreciate having a couple of days--Fall Term class break and Remembrance Day--to devote to this project, but what if we got a whole week off? The Fall Term reading week idea received 55% approval in a plebiscite in March, 2011. But just because students are in favour of something, doesn't mean admin is going to pay any attention to it. (Lower tuition fees, anyone?) So it's a bit amazing that the fall reading week proposal is actively being considered by UofA administration, a subject of some discussion on the Whither the U of A? blog. There are four possibilities under consideration:

1. Classes start a week earlier, keeping the same number of instructional days. For example, classes would have started August 31 instead of September 7 this year.
Evaluation: This is a bad idea. Classes would start before the Labour Day long weekend, disrupting many vacation plans. And students who rent apartments would have to pay rent for the whole month of August--or just miss the first day of class. (Guess which one students would pick.)

2. Start classes a day earlier, there would be one fewer day between the last day of classes and start of the exam period (so-called "study break"), and instructional days would be decreased by one.
Evaluation: This is better--less disruption of summer. But I think students wouldn't like one fewer day to prep for finals, and I wouldn't like losing one class in Fall Term.

3. Like option #2, classes would start one day earlier, but there would be no reduction in study break days; instead two instructional days would be lost.
Evaluation: I would not like to lose a classe. Either I'd have to talk faster, or cut out some content. But what to cut? It's all important; otherwise it wouldn't be in the course. Also, if I teach the same course in both Fall and Winter terms, due to the different number of instructional hours, I'd have to have two different sets of lectures and two different sets of exams. Confusing much?

4. Start classes on the same day as always, and just cut out three instructional days.
Evaluation: WTF? Why is this even on the table? Having a break is not a good tradeoff for losing that much in-class time. Bad, bad, bad.

Interestingly, even the Edmonton Public School Board is considering a week-long fall break. This is an intriguing possibility, as I have two kids and don't like to pull them out of school just to go on a vacation. So if the UofA has a week-long break at the same time that my kids are out of school, we could go on a guilt-free family holiday that is not during the most expensive time of year (e.g., Christmas, summer), for once. But if the two fall breaks are at different times, or if the EPSB decides to implement a break and the UofA doesn't (or vice-versa), that would suck.

Which of the four options do you prefer?

Why aren't you studying?

The End of Perception

I'm sad to report that at the last Department of Psychology council meeting, despite my arguments, my colleagues voted to kill PSYCO 365: Advanced Perception. Not only that, but PSYCO 267: Perception is also not long for this world. A moment of silence, please.

I like to think of Advanced Perception as "my" course. One year, I took it as an undergraduate (it was PSYCO 466 back then); the next year, I was a graduate student and TA for that same course. Back then it was taught by Dr Charles Bourassa. When he retired, I was assigned to the course. Since 1995, with only two exceptions in 1999 and 2000, that course has been mine, all mine. At first, it looked very much like Dr Bourassa's course (steal from the best, right?), but I gradually shaped it into something that I wanted, adding topics like face perception, synesthesia, and perception and art. It wasn't easy--there's no textbook that's really appropriate for a 300-level course. I tried using one, but it was generally loathed by students, so over several years I assembled readings here and there to support my lectures. I like to think that I was successful in shaping Advanced Perception: my evaluations steadily improved from "meh" when I first started out, to Honour Roll with Distinction in the past three years.

Unfortunately, with a reassessment of the "streams" of courses available in psychology, it was proposed that, because no 400-level course in perception existed, Advanced Perception had to go. The motion passed by a wide margin.

But--wait. There is a loophole. I can teach the course (modified a bit--maybe including a term paper requirement) as a "special topics" PSYCO 403 course. Not only that, but the Department has a policy that any special topics course that is continually taught over a number of years will get rolled into an official numbered course, and put into the UofA Calendar. Heh heh. So maybe it's not dead after all--maybe the hundreds and hundreds of hours I put into doing secondary research won't all be wasted. There is a downside: instead of being able to accommodate 125 students (with lots more wanting to get in), I'll only have 30. Sorry, everybody.

And what of PSYCO 267? The Department wanted to do away with the perception course stream, so that means that Perception is also a goner. But--wait. It's not being killed outright, it's being renumbered to PSYCO 367. That means it will have to be modified--no multiple-choice-only exams, and I'll have to review appropriate textbooks--but it will live. It seems a bit strange to retain this course, because it's sort of "stranded": there's no 200-level perception course (the prereq will be PSYCO 275 or PSYCO 259 258, the newly renumbered Faculty of Science Cognitive Psychology course), and there's no (official) 400-level perception course. Oh well, whatever. The other change will be to downsize it from 200+ to 125. I generally like teaching smaller classes, but there's no way to accommodate the strong demand that PSYCO 267 currently generates. Sorry, everybody.

If you're reading this and freaking out about your course planning for next year, relax. These changes first have to be approved by central admin, and then they won't go into effect until 2013-2014. So I still have a bit of time left with two of my favourite courses.

Cherish your loved ones, you don't know when they may be taken from you.

Why aren't you studying?

Update: These changes won't take effect until the 2013-2014 Calendar year, so Advanced Perception will still be offered as PSYCO 365 in Winter, 2012 and Winter, 2013.

Update: The Faculty of Arts course PSYCO 258: Cognitive Psychology will NOT be renumbered to PSYCO 259, but starting in Fall, 2013 it WILL be a Faculty of Science course.

Update: PSYCO 403: Advanced Perception has been offered in the Winter term since 2021.

The Open Comments: 3

It's midterm time, and that means it's also time for me to ask you for your comments. Feedback is a really important component of improvement. And it makes no sense to wait until the end-of-term evals if there's something I can be doing better now. (Yeah, I know my intro psych clicker "experiment" is not going like I'd planned. I'm working on it...)

So, how are things going this term? Got a handle on things? Can you hear me in class?

Why aren't you studying?

The Right Way to Study

Do you know how to study? Yeah, that's obvious. But do you know the best way to study? Here's a quiz, from Chris Chabris' and Dan Simons' The Invisible Gorilla blog:

Imagine you’re taking an introductory psychology class and you have to study for your first test. You’ve read the assigned text, and now you three more days to prepare. What should you do?
1. Re-read the text once more each day.
2. Spend each day studying the text to identify critical concepts and the links among them.
3. Quiz yourself the first day, reread the text the second day, and quiz yourself again the third day.

Before you answer, don't try to guess what the right answer is, think about what you actually do. OK, now make your choice. (The answer is below.)

Do you know what you know? That is, are you able to make an accurate assessment of what you know (and what you don't know)? Let me explain. Take an intro psych course. You go to class, you read the textbook, you learn stuff. But how well have you learned it? With your gradually coalescing knowledge about psychology, do you have the ability to assess that knowledge? It seems like a paradox. Chabris and Simons call this the "illusion of knowledge": you believe that you have a better understanding of something than you actually do. This false sense of security is given by your feeling of familiarity with what you've read (and can be explained by fuzzy trace theory).

There are two ways are to get around this illusion. One, you take an exam. No, seriously. Exams (especially midterms) are not meant to be completely evaluative (judging your understanding), but are also formative (indicating what things need more work). Not surprisingly, students focus on the former at the expense of the latter. But exams can provide you with valuable feedback on your progress--as long as you actually check out your exams, going over each question to see what you did. If you just check your marks online, you're limiting yourself to the evaluative side of it.

The other way is to do what it says in choice 3 above. If you quiz yourself (before the exam) by trying to answer learning objectives or sample multiple choice questions, you are shifting the balance from evaluative to formative; you are giving yourself a chance to improve on weak areas before you get evaluated by an exam. Multiple quizzing can help you determine what's working, and what's not. Unfortunately, students tend to go with choice 1, even though it's more work with less of a payoff.

To put the quizzing together with the studying, you can apply the SQ4R method (survey, question, read, recite, relate, and review).

(HT: The Invisible Gorilla and research by Karpicke and Blunt, 2011.)

Why aren't you studying?

Exam Prep I: "Do I have to know this...?"

At this time of year, students are starting to prep for exams, which is good. How do I know students are prepping? By The Question I get asked. The Question is: "Do I have to know this...?" This is not a stupid question. I'd love to say that there are no stupid questions, but one like "Is this going to be on the exam?" is close. Er, why don't I just give you a copy of the exam so you can see what's on it?

Sorry, sorry. Sometimes I get snarky when that one comes up. Don't take offence at my snarkiness. It's just that I'm tired of answering certain questions over and over. That's why I've decided to write a post about it--so I don't have to answer it over and over. I hope.

And don't think that I'm writing this post because you were the one who asked me The Question. Lots of people have asked me The Question over the years. And lots have asked it already this term. In fact, I planned on writing about The Question this week a long time ago. So get over it.

I know what's happening when The Question starts to form in a student's mind. They're reading the textbook and increasingly getting overwhelmed by all the names and dates in the first chapter. There so much stuff--most of it not even mentioned in lectures. "Gosh, I'm getting tired. It's going to take me a long time and a lot of effort to commit all of this information to memory, and to understand all the different names for things. Hmm, maybe I'd be wasting my time learning about all of this. I better check with the instructor and see." Aaaand The Question is born, and gets sent off through the Intertubes to me, landing in my inbox. Ping!

Can you see my frustration with The Question? There are a couple of things. First: No, there will not be exam questions on everything--that's impossible. I cannot test every single concept presented in the textbook and in lectures. The test would be thousands of questions long. The best I can do is take a random sample of those questions. If you've learned everything in the course so far, it shouldn't matter what content the questions address. On the other hand, if you've been a bit...intellectually lazy and skipped over things that were long, complicated, or hard, there will be gaps in your knowledge. Exams should be designed to reveal those gaps, in order to differentiate among students' learning.

Second, the little vignettes and stories at the start of every chapter will not be on the exam. But that doesn't mean you should ignore them. Why did the textbook author spend time writing them? To help you understand the context and reason for the chapter? To illustrate an important concept? So, do you need to know that specific story or not? Probably not. But by reading it, you'll better understand the concept it's trying to teach you.

Third, names and dates. Yes, I'm deliberately wasting your time, sir. Or, wait. Am I? Is an important part of learning about psychology to know the contributions made by philosophers, scientists, and psychologists? To know their names? And to know when in history those contributions were made? If you want to become a psychologist, is all of that important? In the science biz, the way that we refer to important research is not by where it was done (although the media love to report the institution for some reason), but by who did it, and when. One psychologist will sling around names like "Smith, Shoben, and Rips", "Treisman and Gelade", and "Ramachandran and Hubbard, '07" and another psychologist will know instantly what the other is talking about. But then, psychologists know all about psychology and you don't. Not yet. You get to know a lot about psychology by reading and remembering it, not by skipping over a bunch of it. On the other hand, from a pedagogical standpoint, is there value in evaluating students on their ability to rote memorize what seems like a meaningless string of names and numbers?

So, in answer to The Question, "Do I have to know this...?"

No. No, you don't.

You also don't have to pass the course, or get an A. Students who do, will know...

Why aren't you studying?

The Syllabus Poll - Results

The results (from last week's poll) are in. It looks like the majority of you like to have not only the online PDF of the course syllabus, but also a hardcopy. OK, that's good to know. The last time I ran this poll, the results looked a bit different. Only 7% wanted online only, 6% liked hardcopy only, 80% preferred both (and there were 6% who were psychic--yeah, right). There are interesting trends: decreasing preference for paper and an increasing trend towards preferring soft copies online.

There is also a caveat: out of the approximately 600 students in my classes this term, less than 100 votes were cast. A possibility is that those who were strongly motivated to vote were the only ones who did so. That is, this sample is not representative. *sigh* Any stats majors out there care to do an analysis?

Still, maybe I can use these numbers to show that some students do want to get a piece of paper handed out in the first class. And maybe they can find some funds. (How 'bout if I put the exams online? That would save a ton of paper.)

Why aren't you studying?

The Syllabus Poll

Because of the University’s recent budget woes, the Dean of Arts has “strongly encouraged” instructors to post their syllabi online. This will 1) save money, 2) save trees, and 3) “save face”. (I think that last one means “move into the 21st century, already!”) It’s not like the copying budget has officially been cut; that’s for individual Departments to decide. (I haven’t heard of any policy changes from the Faculty of Science, but Psychology is mostly funded by Arts.)

I’ve been posting my syllabi online for, well, a while--ever since the third course I taught, in 1995. That’s not a big deal. But cutting out a hardcopy syllabus...I don’t know.

This year, I decided to help out my Department--I went to Staples to copy and pay for the syllabi myself. (Meh, it’s no biggie: it took an hour and $140.38 for about 600 syllabus copies across three courses.)

So, I’ve continued to provide a hardcopy of the syllabus on the first class. But is it still necessary? I’d like to get your opinion on this. Is it good enough if I just go over the syllabus in detail in the first class (which I do now anyway)? Or do you think it’s still valuable to have a piece of paper to look at on that first day?

I'd like your opinion (but, please, vote only once):

(Poll is now closed. Thanks for voting. Results are here.)

In January, 2010, I ran an online poll asking my students about their preferences. I don't want to give the results here, because that may bias the voting. I'll post those numbers after I close the current poll.

Why aren't you studying?

The September 11th

I remember September 11, 2001. My wife was out of town with her sister, and I was alone at home working on (what else?) lecture prep. I don’t turn the TV or radio on when I’m working--don’t want any distractions--but I was working on the computer. I needed to get some information, and went to Google.

I distinctly remember an unusual thing on Google’s home page: a picture of the World Trade Center towers on fire, and a link to more information. I followed the link, thinking it was a promotion for a movie or something, but then I quickly realized what was Really Happening. That’s when I turned on the TV...needless to say, I didn’t get any more work done that day. And I was much relieved when my wife got home that evening.

I recently found a screenshot of Google’s actual home page on 9/11. It did not have a picture of the towers, but it did say, “Breaking news: Attacks hit US” and there were links to several news sites. How could I have misremembered something that seemed so clear to me?

Many people report having very vivid memories of a highly emotional event--not just of the event itself, but also of their personal experience (where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, etc.) when they first heard about the event. (These are called “flashbulb memories”, as if these memories are seared into our minds by the bright flash of emotion.)

But research has shown that these memories are not as veridical as we feel they are. 9/11 provided a unique opportunity for psychological scientists to do a sort of natural experiment on flashbulb memories. For example, Dr Elizabeth Phelps and her colleagues found that people did remember significant things about the 9/11 event quite well (80+%, even though these eroded over time), but only remembered about half of their personal details surrounding the event correctly. This means that you would swear you saw a picture of the burning towers on Google’s home page even though that never happened.

Incidentally, I did have a class to teach in the late afternoon of 9/11. I went and taught the class and didn’t say a word about the attacks. I felt that, as long as students were showing up, I’d teach them; I’d do my job. If they hadn’t heard about what was happening, I didn’t want to be the one to tell them. I imagined that would make it hard to concentrate for the rest of the class.

Now that I have children, though, I think I would handle things differently. I’d probably cancel my classes, take my kids out of school/daycare, and just hug them for the rest of the day. In fact, I think I’ll go hug them right now.

Why aren’t you studying?

What I Did on my Summer Vacation (2011 edition)

In no particular order, here's a random assortment of my summer experiences...

• On a sad note, one of my teaching assistants from last year, Matthew Ian Helgesen, died suddenly over the summer. My condolences to all his friends and family both here and back in Minnesota.

• Took the family to Calaway Park for the first time ever. Was it fun? Well, if you like going on the Egg Ride over and over and over... The weirdest activity is the fishing pond (barely mentioned on their website), where you can catch real trout, have them cleaned, and take them home. Yup, at the end of your day of going on rides, seeing magic shows, and eating cotton candy, you can take a dead fish home. Has Disney heard about this!?

• Calgary Zoo again. You know, I’d really like to see a polar bear one day. Just sayin’.

• Oh, and Sylvan Lake of course. Sadly, there seems to be less and less beach every time we go. (Maybe it was just all the snow melt this year?) At this rate, there won’t be any beach next year and I’ll just have to sit in the Big Moo drinking iced cappuccinos. Which, come to think of it, doesn’t sound too bad.

• Festivals, of course. But it’s tough to plan, say, going to the Heritage Festival when someone (not to name names) has to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Sustainival at the Fringe was something new. And I learned two things: 1) my eldest daughter loves the Tilt-A-Whirl, and 2) it makes me nauseous. Really nauseous. Where’s the iced coffee?

• Which reminds me: Had way too many of those $1 iced coffees from McDonald’s. There must be something, like, addictive in those. I mean, apart from the sugar, cream, and caffeine.

• Swatted mosquitos. A lot of mosquitos. Had to mow the lawn wearing heavy jeans, long socks, T-shirt, jacket zipped all the way up, and a hat--then sprayed Deep Woods Off all over. And: not a single bite! But when I went inside to take a shower what happens? A mosquito lands on me. Slap! Grr!

• Got a new custom desktop computer. (Geek alert: ASUS P8Z68-V PRO, Core i7 2600K, 8 GB 2000MHz DDR3 Kingston RAM, EVGA GTX 570, 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD, 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD. Not cutting edge, but then I’m not Fatal1ty.) On the plus side: SSD (Solid State Drive--kinda like a hard drive made up of flash memory) is wicked fast; on the minus side: SSD drive caused BSODs (*sigh*). Flashing the firmware was a bit hair-raising, but it fixed the problem and I didn’t even lose any data.

• Was so impressed with the SSD, I installed one (OCZ Vertex 2) in the empty drive bay of my laptop (Geek alert: Dell XPS 17 L701x). It didn’t work--the BIOS wouldn’t let me change the boot drive from HDD to SSD (*sigh*). Called tech support (How’s the weather in Chennai?). They didn’t know how to change the boot order either, so I had to tell them: the boot drive has to be the one in drive bay 1. They were very grateful for the info. I didn’t even charge them.

• I’d like to get a new computer for my office now. My current Core 2 Duo E6400 is a bit slow. (I know there’s a budget crunch, but if UAlberta can afford $250,000 for a new website, can’t I get a new computer every 4 or 5 years? Please? I’ll install it myself--no charge.)

• Ate a few of Fat Frank’s cheddar jalapeno dogs, tried Filistix’s pulled pork bun, and had an Eva Sweet waffle--all on campus. Allowing food carts on campus was a great idea. Will they still be around in January?

• Oh, and I made cake pops. And a cherry pie--with cherries from the Evans cherry tree in our backyard. And avocado-lime ice cream. (How was it? Meh. Green. See below.)
  

• And of course, did a lot of work, including: went to seminars on Moodle and i>clickers, enhanced the branding of each course website for greater consistency and esthetics, and went through all my lectures to improve the flow and increase understandability.

• The branding I did means that each course will have a consistent visual style, from website to syllabus to exams. Getting everything to look right on my Website was the most difficult. Although I downloaded some cool Javascript to render custom fonts, I couldn’t get the font drop shadow to work inside of a rounded-corner/drop-shadow CSS3 element. I banged my head against the wall for a week or so on that until I gave up. Still, I think it looks OK (example here).

• Got Honour Roll with Distinction (modestly) for teaching the two courses I taught in Spring Term. No separate post for that because I don’t think I did the best possible job with one of the courses. I updated my lecture notes extensively, but my Web notes didn’t match the PowerPoints in class a few times. I’ll do a better job next time.

• Analyzed the research data I collected earlier this year. Hmm, looks like using ebook-textbooks shouldn’t have a negative impact on your grade

Yeah, that’s all. Now I’m craving an iced coffee. What did you do over the summer?

Why aren’t you studying?

The Research: The Results

In this series, I've been describing my latest research, looking at how ebook use affects academic outcomes. In my previous post, I described the process of data collection. The next step: analyzing the data and seeing the results for the first time.

As a graduate student, I took a lot of advanced statistics courses (in a couple educational psychology stats courses, I even had to learn APL. Eep!). This fact does not mean that I am in love with the field of statistics, and the mathematical process of analyzing data. It's just a means to an end. Still, it's an important means to an end. Not all science relies on quantitative research, but a lot of it does. If you don't know how to analyze your data, er...then what? All you've got is a big file full of (meaningless) numbers. Bottom line: It's important to know how to adequately analyze your data.

Here's a story. From 2001 to 2003, I was the statistics advisor for students in the Department of Psychology's Internship Program. After working out in the Real World collecting data, students would come to me with a file full of (meaningless) numbers. Many students were up to speed on their stats, had planned their data collection and analysis in advance, and just wanted to run their stats by me to make sure they were on the right track. Some others, however... Others...oh dear.

Others had not planned their data analysis in advance. They just went about their jobs, collecting data here and there--like they were meandering through a field picking daisies whenever and wherever they wanted. They'd come to me, give me their data, and expect me to work a miracle. This, not surprisingly, did not go well. You can't perform any kind of meaningful, valid analysis on 15 data points collected from one participant over various different time periods. With no independent variable (other than time, sort of). Yes, you've got a file with numbers. That's...great. But numbers do not statistics make. The moral of the story is: Take a statistics course. Then, take another one. Then, take one more.

Results
I'm happy to say that a large majority of students in my class opted to allow their data to be included in my analysis--almost 200 people. Unfortunately, I had to exclude data from a small number of students (they were randomly assigned to receive an ebook, but chose not to use it; that kind of self-selection may throw off the results). I collected a lot of different kinds of data, which will require a more sophisticated analysis, so what I'm going to present is a bit of a "cheat", but I couldn't help myself--I really wanted to see the bottom line right away. So here it is: r = -.035. Neat, eh?

Discussion
Er, OK, so here's an interpretation of the results: students who used the ebook got lower grades than students who used the printed textbook (negative correlation). But look at the size of the correlation--it's basically zero. The analysis also shows that there was no statistically significant difference between ebook and printed textbook users (p = .620). This means that, all other things being (hopefully) equal, using an ebook should not cost you any marks; or, reading material on a screen does not impair outcomes, at least in this perception course.

I'll need to sift through the data some more, to see if that's because ebook users spent more time studying than textbook users, or if there are other variables that also account for the results. In the meantime, I won't have any trouble recommending that students use an ebook instead of a textbook--and hey, seeing as ebooks are typically cheaper than paper textbooks, you'll even save some money. You're welcome.

Why aren't you studying?