College Undergraduate Teaching of Psychology

Adjunct of the Year

2010-04-14T07:39:00.000-07:00

I was nominated for Adjunct of the Year at SCC. Here is a copy of my nomination:

Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Award

Nomination Form

Fall 2009 – spring 2010

Nominee: Mitch Harden

Division: Social Sciences; Psychology

Has this person taught a minimum of four semesters at SCC? Yes, Mitch began teaching in the fall08’. _______________________________________________

Why is this person deserving of this award? (Reasons for nomination could include, but are not limited to, quality of instruction, innovative teaching, concern for learning and for students, and accessibility to students. This material will be includedon the ballot.

Mitch Harden has been with SCC since the fall of 2008. He taught as a temporary full-time faculty member in the spring 09’. He has taught 19 sections of PSY-101 over the last five semesters. The need we have at SCC is primarily for adjuncts to teach the General Intro to Psychology course. Mitch has met and far exceeded the work of an adjunct instructor. He teaches his classes with hands on views of psychology and makes the class the most interesting and enjoyable experience he can for his students each and every class. He utilizes humor and YouTube clips into just about every concept he depicts. He is research oriented and well versed in his field of neuropsychology. Mitch developed a new Special Topics course last summer, The Mind, Brain, and Behavior. He made a very difficult course understandable and interesting to the novice learner. He also is developing another Special Topics course this summer, Psychology of Film and the Media. This course will likely be a big hit with summer students looking for an interesting psychology elective. They do not yet know they are in for an amazing ride. Mitch also offers to do seminars on campus. He presented at the Scary Movie Marathon and had over 250 students on an evening for a Psychology of Fear talk. The feedback from students was commendable. Mitch has taken on the role of mentor to other adjunct faculty that he has helped to recruit and train from UMSL graduate school programs. He takes the role very seriously, observing their classes, offering feedback, giving suggestions for improvement and sharing with the Program Coordinator. I can’t say enough about what a worthy adjunct faculty member Mitch Harden is and how is so deserving of this honor as Adjunct Faculty member of the Year for Business and Social Sciences.

Name: Beth Finders, Psychology Program Coordinator

Course Evaluations Fall 2009: Mind, Brain and Behavior

2010-02-24T08:44:00.000-08:00

Psychology 290-40: Mind, Brain, and Behavior	Average Score (out of 5)
Demonstrates knowledge and skills in the subject area	4.90
Makes classroom presentations that are understandable and clear	4.65
Is enthusiastic about the subject matter	4.85
Treats all students in class with respect	4.95
Deals fairly with students in this class	4.90
Makes presentations that enhance learning	4.75
Is prepared for each class session	4.65
Is concerned that students learn something meaningful in this class	4.75
Encourages student participation and questions	4.80
Returns tests and/or assignments quickly enough to help me in the rest of the course	4.65
Uses appropriate teaching tools effectively	4.85
Coves the topics that are listed in the syllabus	4.75
Gives tests that correspond to lectures, discussions, assigned readings, and other course activities	4.80
Uses allotted class time effectively	4.85
Is available for help during his scheduled office hours	4.81
Starts and ends class on time	4.95
The student has acquired knowledge, skills and/or abilities in this course	100%
I would recommend this course to others	100%
I would recommend this instructor to others	100%
I actively sought assistance from this instructor outside of scheduled class times	35%
This Course is a requirement for my degree or certificate	70%
My Grades reflect the effort I put into class	84%
My level of effort in this class was	3.65
Absences	2.06
Expected Grade	2.71
Actual Class Average	2.78

Open ended Student Comments:

1. Please write any comments you have about the instructor, the course, or the text to explain or expand upon your ratings:

"Very Interesting class. I learned a lot. It was my favorite class"
"Best teacher I have had. Funny."
"I enjoyed the instructors method of teaching. The course was very fun but I must say I did not even use the book, I didn't need to, the instructor was very thorough."
"Funny instructor, boring course material, and decent text book. Without the comedic interjections and anicdotes [sic] from the instructor, the class would have been unbearable. Good job linking the extremely dry and boring material to real life scenarios and interesting stories."
"The instructor is knowledgeable in subject he is teaching which helps in learning the material."
"Your tidbites [sic] of extra info are very helpful."
"Instructor was very educated in the subject and was very easy to understand and could relate the subject well to students."
"Instructor is well informed, good sense of humor."
"Mitch you are the best instructor. You crack me up."
"More time for papers."
"Teacher is very passionate about his field and is an awesome teacher."
"Great with talking to younger people."
"Fun instructor."
"The instructor made this class fun which helps keep you interested in learning the material."
"Good teacher, humorous. Course was tough, but good. Text: Ok."

2. What elements of this course were most effective for you as a learner?

"The slides/notes being online + videos."
"Having the slides on WebCT did help."
"The stuff about mental Disorders."
"The relation between class material and the real world."
"Teacher was informative and entertaining"
"Presentations as a visual aide helps to communicate the material effectively."
"Lectures are awesome power points could use some work."
"The science reviews, although difficult to reada t first, were very interesting."
"power points"
"ALL"
"The lectures"
"I liked having notes available online, then I could take them to class + add to them"
"The way Mr. Harden tought [sic] each day."
"Text book"
"The environment and personality of the instructor =)"
"Quizzes ppt his personal experience + lectures"

3. Please provide any suggestions you have to improve this course.

"go a little slower"
"When it comes to the brain we know alot about it, but there are more components in the brain than we know. So please take it slow."
"less hard words + tests."
"Loose the requirement of the book."
"Give a more narrow test matter. Star powerpoints so we know what's more important."
"Just have one written assignment."
"If possible, grade tests/assignments quicker and keep WebCT grades up to date."
"handouts - return info on papers"
"Not a fan of short answer questions."
"maybe have study guides each test."
"All good!"
"Have slides available on WebCT before lectures so we can take notes on them."
" =) "
"Online quizzes were helpful. You should do those for all chapters b/c it forces us tor ead for content for specific topics. Better choices in the science reviews please. Interesting none the less. Some were hard to interpret but they are necessary for any psychologist's / scientist's future. Work longer on first chapter. Stress all the structures and have more reinforcement for that chapter. (e.g. more wks in class focus)"

4. Other comments?

"great class!"
"Loved the class even though I might not have done so well?"
"nope"
"More assignments, b/c I suck at taking tests with my whole test anxiety issue"
"Maybe more review for tests? =) "
"Keep it up. Best teacher I've had. By far the funniest and most exciting."
"You rock, can't wait for the summer."
"Awesome."
"Make review sheets! This is a hard course. But good. Review sheets will definitely help."

SoTL Teaching Log #4

2010-02-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

This week I got to put on my mentor cap again. This time I observed another friend of mine who I will refer to as Virginia.

This is Ginny's first teaching experience (maybe she TA'd before) and so I was prepared for the usual batch of rookie mistakes. But she did really well. Her voice was shaky which she later explained was because of me. She apparently was really nervous about being observed. I had tried to prepare her by talking about how I'm not judging her, and that the goal is only to help her improve. None of my observations are for punitive purposes. I try hard not to be intimidating but I guess it makes anyone nervous to be evaluated.

One error that Ginny made several times is walking to the opposite corner of the classroom to turn off lights when the light switch is also right behind her on the wall. Ooops! Minor to be sure, but I think it also highlights a lack of exploration in the classroom. For college professors we often don't get to use the same classroom every semester, so I think it is important to familiarize yourself with the technology in your room(s) at the start of each of semester.

Ginny did very good at engaging her students; she use analogies and metaphors well and gave plenty of practical implications for information presented. This sort of connection is essential to pull students into the class and make them care about the content. Psychology should be exciting for all students (not just psych majors) and Ginny certainly did a good job of that. I did notice that she taught some material entirely differently than the way I teach it. Although I really like the way I do it, I think that Ginny's approach was perfect for her style. It can sometimes be difficult to discount my personal bias for the way to deliver certain material, but objectively speaking her way was effective and engaging so I can't honestly find any fault with it.

When showing video clips Ginny did a good job of setting up the clip and then discussing the clip afterward. Her clips were relevant and tied to lecture and so students stayed engaged through the clip and were interested in participating int he discussion.

In fact, Ginny's students were very comfortable with discussion throughout the class. They interjected, and worked together to formulate better questions; in general a good group of students. I don't credit the students entirely with the quality of the class, to some extent the way Ginny handles student questions fosters the environment in which they are comfortable engaging in such discussions. It can be very difficult to draw students in an d get them talking but Ginny has done a great job of responding and encouraging student questions.

Ginny did run into some problems with her powerpoint slide. She was using the default slide show that came from the publisher and it was easy to see that it was holding her back. The slides drew her back, disrupted her pacing, and ultimately impaired her lecture. After interviewing Ginny about this she is well aware of the limitations of her slide show but doesn't really know where to begin making changes. I suggested to her that she start by cutting out bad slides and content, and trust herself to use the whiteboard and lecture to fill in any gaps this might create. I also suggested that she take printouts of her slides with her to class so she can makes notes about what works and what doesn't and be able to make changes before next semester.

In any event, Ginny did a great job and I'm sure she is going to impress our boss when she is observed later in the semester.

SoTL Teaching Log #3

2010-02-09T09:35:00.000-08:00

This week was my students first test. It is pretty lightweight, and I spend a lot of time talking about how to study for the test as well as what to study. For many students this is their first college assessment so I want to be sure they understand how to prepare.

My test is structured as a multiple choice section, a matching section, and 2 short essay questions. I try not to be "tricky" in the multiple choice, and I think the matching is relatively obvious. But writing is difficult for many of my students. They struggle with spelling, grammar, and penmanship. So in the interest in getting better papers I let my students take home this part of the test. I gave them a choice to work on any 2 out of 8 questions for two days before the test. This semester their answers seemed better, and the overall test score was up 4 points over last semester. I think I'll continue to allow take-home essays as long as they continue to show quality work given the extra time and resources.

Test scores still fit into a bi-modal distribution. This means there was a cluster of scores int he B range, and a cluster of scores in the D range. Compared to a normal distribution with scores clustered around a C. My sense of it is that only some students actually prepare for the test (the B students) while others figure they'll do fine without studying (the D students). The 2nd test has always shown a normal distribution (mean = 78.2) which tells me that after getting burned on first test some students changed their behavior.

What I would like to find is a way to convince these under-prepared students to put an effort into studying BEFORE they bomb the first test. This semester I tried having a tougher chapter 1 quiz before the test, but that didn't work. My plan for next time is to give the test over two days, so they will do one essay question and 25 multiple choice one class session, and the next class I'll return those with feedback, and the session after that will be the remainder of the test. I'm hoping that this assessment structure will help them realize the need for test-prep without penalizing them as much as they get right now. On the other hand, the lack of penalty might lower the test scores on future tests, so... I guess I'll find out when I try it.

I generally don't go over the test in class either. Mainly it is because I don't have time to waste. This is why I often don't even hand back test papers (since it doesn't matter) but this has led to another problem. I don't know the names of any of my students. It's 4 weeks into the semester and I can name less than 10% of my students. It is my plan to hand back test #2 in an effort to link names to faces. I'm not good with names but I really think it helps my students if I can call on them by name so we'll see what I can do.

Instead of going over the test, I make out a key and leave it up at the front so that after students turn in the test they can see what they missed. Lots of students do take advantage of this as they are dying to know the answers to one or two questions on the test. Others want to calculate their score and this lets them do that. I do kinda wish there was an engaging, time-efficient way to let students get corrections on their tests without relying on the students' own conscientiousness, but... I haven't thought of anything yet.

SoTL Teaching Log #2

2010-02-02T12:35:00.000-08:00

This week I had the opportunity to observe a colleague at SCC. In addition to teaching three sections of Intro Psych this semester, I am also the faculty mentor for two new adjunct professors (both of which were hired after I recommended them). So today I sat in on Grant's (names have been changed) class to give him feedback before the division chair comes for his first review. This is not the first time I've observed other teachers so I felt prepared enough to gather some notes and provide useful feedback. Not only that, Grant was lecturing on my specialty: Biological Psychology.

Watching Grant was like looking back in time to my first semester. Grant is a very good public speaker and seemed comfortable in front of the class. His growth area is student engagement. He made all the same mistakes I made my first semester. He taught psychology the same way that psychology had been taught to him; I talk- you write. I teach – you learn. A very teacher-centered approach.

Examples, diagrams, and clarifications were all lacking during his lecture. Students often have problems engaging in the biology of the brain, it is thick material that they often haven't been exposed to in any detail. Putting info on a slide and saying it is generally not engaging enough for students to “get it.” If Grant would repeat himself, draw diagrams on the whiteboard, make real-world connections with the material, or otherwise clarify the content present in the slides his students could greatly benefit. I made the same mistake my first semester when I was focused on “covering content” instead of on “facilitating learning.”

As class progressed I could see Grant losing his students; by the midpoint one-third of his class had sent at least one text-message. The two brief video clips that he showed, while illustrative, seemed only to cue students to check their phones. Few students wrote notes (although several had brought print-outs of the slide-show which was presumably provided to them before class) and fewer still asked questions. These symptoms were all too familiar to me, as I dealt with the same problems when I was just covering content.

The first change I made to my class was to strip out content from the slide-show. This way my students wouldn't transcribe the slides, and I told them that printing the slides isn't enough information to even pass a test. I try never to lecture for more than 20 minutes in a block without switching to a different activity (I often use the think – pair – share style activity). With each concept I try to draw a picture, and connect to a real-world application. I often use multi-media tools (videos and audio clips), but I spend a few minutes explaining what they will learn in the video, and I insist on some discussion after the clip (I also put questions about videos on tests and quizzes).

For example, Grant described the sympathetic nervous system thusly: “This system prepares your body for action. It's the fight-or-flight response. That speeds up your heart-rate and breathing and also dilates your pupils. You may have had the experience of lying in bed and you hear a noise and your heart-rate speeds up and you are suddenly awake. That is the sympathetic nervous system.” An accurate summary, but even this example fails to make the connection between WHAT it does and what FUNCTION it has. Students may have enough information (if they were listening) to answer a question on a test but unless they are psych majors it is unlikely to be valuable to them beyond that.

When I describe the same system I list all the physiological changes (heart-rate etc.) and then also explain why those changes help you in a fight-or-flight scenario (dilated pupils let you take in more light so you can see better). I explain that this is system's role is to help you survive a stressful situation. Then I link that to scary movies and how the good ones trigger the sympathetic nervous system. I ask my students if they've ever been to a haunted house, I pick one to tell about their experience, and as a class we talk about sympathetic activation in the story. Ultimately I've described fight-or-flight three times using lecture, example, and student connection. No one leaves class without a better understanding of their body and how it functions under stress; useful information for every student regardless of major.

The other interesting thing I did this week was to take a class to see Jane Elliot speak at our college. If you didn't know she is the teacher that gave third graders the Brown-eye/Blue-eye experience in the 60's and 70's. Her presentation was tremendous! She was full of energy and quite feisty. She talked about how if she had recognized the repercussions of her classroom exercise that she may not have done it. She engaged the audience in several critical thinking exercises examining some of the more subtle forms of prejudice, and she even had students share their thoughts on the unfair distribution of power. There were some problems though. A student rudely interrupted her at some point and she reacted harshly. To be sure the student deserved reprimand for his behavior, but her anger seemed a bit out of control and made the audience uncomfortable. She also singled-out a student that self-disclosed her support of Sarah Palin. While I certainly understand the need to educate Palin supporters, I don't think that it is okay to ostracize a student for their political views. Speaking of which her talk did get a bit preachy about issues towards the end, but none-the-less was a valuable experience for myself and my students. If you ever get the chance to see her talk I would highly recommend it.

In a related issue I've described elsewhere an exercise I do with my class about operational definitions in which students define what might make a city 'unhappy.' This week a student offended several members of the class and I intervened. I'll end with a transcript of our conversation.

Student: Appearance of the city?
Me: Oh you mean like if there are lots of run-down vacant buildings the city won't look as good?
Student: No I mean the people.
Me: So it makes them unhappy to see the ugly buildings?
Student: No! Like if there are a lot of fat people!
Me: …
Student: No fatties please.
Class: [Hackles raising among some] what's your problem... who are you... ha ha ha... fat people are sad... etc.
Me: Firstly we [fatties] are jolly. Secondly it is not ok to judge people based on physical characteristics. Even if YOUR aesthetic sensibilities are offended that doesn't give you permission to generalize your opinion to everyone. This is an issue very near and dear to my cholesterol clogged heart. A person's outward appearance is not indicative of their inner character. No matter if a person is fat, fit, tan, or smoking a cigarette it tells you nothing about their intelligence, willpower, or personality. The connection you are describing is prejudice just like racism.
Student: Sorry.
Me: It's all right, now you know. So can we agree not to voice comments like that?
Student: Yeah.
Me: Everyone?
Class: [mutters approval]

SoTL Teaching Log #1

2010-01-26T07:53:00.001-08:00

This semester I'm taking another class for UMSL's Certificate in Undergraduate Teaching (CUT) program. The class requires weekly log postings and I will cross-post those to this blog. Enjoy!

This week was the first week back for the Spring semester at SCC. This is my fifth semester teaching Introduction to Psychology and I'm teaching three sections Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. I begin with my office hour from 0800 until class begins at 0900, then it is two sections back to back in SSB1404, then an hour break, and one more section from 1200 until 1350 in SSB1403. The first day of class can be a conundrum; students know nothing and are often unprepared to learn, and yet I don't want to waste class time and dismiss early. Several of my colleagues hand out a syllabus take role and dismiss class in all of fifteen minutes. I thought this was lame when I was a student (and skipped the first class as a result), and I would feel lame if I did that as a teacher. So instead I try to come up with some exercises to set the pace for the course; what we do on the first day echoes through the semester.

First I don't print out a syllabus to hand to my students. This might be a mistake but it feels so wasteful to print so much paper that many students will never look at after the first day. Instead I put the syllabus on-line, and use the projector to go over it in class. There is very little value in reading the syllabus to my students and I only read-aloud the sections required by the college. The sections I feel are most important are “Attendance” and “Assignments, Quizzes, and Exams.” In each of these sections I have the opportunity to clearly state my expectations and how my students can meet those expectations. As teachers we sometimes forget how unprepared for personal responsibility our freshman are when they first arrive on campus. While I want to give my students the freedom to fail, I also want them to clearly understand the target behavior and the consequences for missing that target.

I mentioned the freedom to fail and I should probably explain what I mean there. Up until the first day of my class many of my students have been pushed forward one way or another. Either they haven't made choices or their choices didn't matter much as they follow scripts issued by parents or high school. It is often the case that the only reason they are sitting in my class is because someone told them they had to go to college and someone at the college told them they had to take PSY-101. On day one I'm going to tell them that not only do they not have to come to my class, but also that they don't have to go to college. I want to impress upon them that it is their choice to go to college, and if they don't want to be here then they should quit and do something else. But if they do choose to continue, then that choice means coming to class everyday, not because I'm going to count off points if they miss, but because it is what college students do to learn the material. So for good or ill, my students are empowered to make their own decisions about attendance and thus the consequence of their choices is their own.

So after our little “dare to succeed” moment, I go on to introduce myself and tell students a bit about my career as a researcher and as an educator. I'm fortunate enough that my students are interested in my research and often ask some great questions even during my introductions. Of course those questions are set-up by the way in which I speak. For example when I say, “I depress some rats, then give them salvia and see if they cheer up” it begs the question, “How do you depress a rat?” That gives me the opportunity to say, “Oh what a great question, that is exactly the kind of question that a psychologist should ask!” Then I answer the question directly to the student as if we were at a cocktail party. This sort of effusive praise and conversational exchange is my attempt to encourage students to engage directly with lecture. Although I don't have data to support it, my sense of things is that by engaging students one-on-one they are more comfortable and thus more likely to ask questions and discuss topics.

Next up I talk about what they should do in class in order to pass. I express to my students the fantasy I have about how they will learn the material: They will not copy the text from the powerpoint outline (there isn't any real content their anyway), instead they will jot down what I say. After class they will re-read these notes and try to pull-out key terms that might cue them to remember the topics I discussed. Later when they read their text book they will look at these cues and know which parts of the text should be highlighted as relevant. Next they can re-write parts of their notes using the relevant material from the text to summarize key terms into statements. Okay. I know that my students aren't likely to use the Cornell note-taking system. But I do hope that students realize that should process what I say in class, they should use that as a guide on what to read, and then integrate the two sources before a test.

Anyway, that is what my first day of class is like. If I have time I do student introductions, or a tech walk-through of how to get to the on-line components of class, but I didn't have time this semester. I did get one interesting email from a student about purchasing the textbook and I'm including both that email and my response here:

From Student:
I have had several friends buy books for classes that they never even took out of the package, I was just curious if we will actually use the textbook or not in your class before i spend money on something that may only potentially gather dust. thank you

My reply:
Buy the book. You can sell it back at the end of the semester.

A note on etiquette: Teachers always expect you to get all of the materials for class (especially the ones we list as required on the syllabus). I do agree that there are many classes that you can pass without purchasing the text, but it generally isn't a good idea to broadcast that to your professors. Keep in mind that college isn't required. There are thousands of C-students that are so intelligent that they can pass classes without texts and a minimum of effort. The rare cases are the A-students that are so diligent that they never turn in an assignment late, or with anything less than their best effort. You can imagine which type employers prefer to hire, etc. Asking if you HAVE to buy the book implies you are the former, and you don't want to imply that.

Texting

2009-11-16T09:49:00.000-08:00

Some students text in class. While this is rude and disrespectful towards me, it doesn't really disrupt class or the learning of students nearby so for the most part I let it slide. There have been two incidents this semester that have been to a higher degree of rudeness and I thought I'd share.

During a test I noticed a student texting. I tend not to assume my students are cheating, and simply told her that there is no texting during the test. Not only did she apologize and put her phone away, several other students put their phones away. I was shocked that several people had been texting; doesn't everyone recognize that communicating (whatever the medium) during a test is verboten? The real issue is that 15 minutes later I had to tell the first student a SECOND time to stop texting.

M: You understand why it is not ok to text during the test right?
C: But I wasn't texting about the test
M: That's even worse. If you were cheating at least I'd know you cared about the test!

The second incident involved a student who came to me outside the classroom just before a test. She explained to me that she wasn't going to be able to stay the whole time because she has a doctor's appointment scheduled opposite class and she wanted to know if she could take the test another time. I was about to tell her that she should've told me sometime sooner because she COULD have taken then test early, and that test or no it is a bad idea to schedule a doctor's visit during class. I was about to tell her that. But I didn't get the chance because as soon as I started answering her she whipped out her phone and began responding to a text message she had gotten. I stopped mid-sentence and went on in to class.

I think it is unreasonable for me to expect them to turn their phones off entirely or to ignore text messages they get in class. I mean this is the new thing, and phones (for good or ill) are integrated into their lives. Fortunately not all is lost, as MOST of my students are very responsible with their phones. Just... don't be rude.

Evaluating media reports of science

2009-09-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

I was recently linked to this post from PETA's blog from June of 2008. This is a great classroom exercise in evaluating media reports.

1. Meat increases the risk of breast cancer. A 2007 study of 35,000 women published in the British Journal of Cancer found that women who ate meat were far more likely to develop breast cancer than women who consumed none. Will Jessica's next t-shirt will say, "Real Girls Smoke 3 Packs a Day"?

The referenced study reports: "... risk of breast cancer to increase with consumption of total meat, HR (Hazard Ratios)r =1.20 for high consumers vs. non-consumers." In interpreting statements like this it is important to know what a Hazard Ratio means. HR in this case is the proportion of breast-cancer incidence between the meat-eaters and the vegetarians. So if 10 out of 100 vegetarians get breast cancer 12 out of 100 meat eaters get breast cancer. For observational studies, such as this one 1.20 is not likely to be meaningful. Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine remarks, "As a general rule of thumb, we are looking for a relative risk of 3 or more before accepting a paper for publication." The exception to this rule might be for well-controlled double-blind studies. Such controlled methods can increase our confidence in results. Lastly of note a recent study came to the opposite conclusion: "None of the meat or meat mutagen variables was associated with breast cancer with strata of age, body mass index, parity, alcohol consumption, smoking, menopausal hormone therapy or intake of fruits and vegetables, and there were no significant interaction between the meat variables and these factors." But I would say, as a general rule, results from these giant observational studies are dubious at best. If anything they should drive better, controlled experimental studies. Unfortunately the media LOVES them and is very cavalier about reporting the "results."

2. Real girls don't support animal abuse. Compassion is super sexy, if the huge number of hot celebs ditching meat is any indication. Young women turn vegetarian in droves when they learn that the meat industry cuts the sensitive beaks off newborn chicks and cuts off the tails of baby piglets.

If the only reason you are compassionate is to associate yourself with hot celebs, then you need to re-evaluate your life. Celebrity endorsements and appeals to our need to fit in are not new in marketing and advertising; by now you should know better than to trust these statements. While I am moderately pro-compassion I would also note that hospitals cut the foreskins of newborn babies all the time. I think our compassion might be better directed toward inhumane treatment of humans.

3. The meat industry is destroying the Earth. The only thing that's hot about the meat industry is that it's toasting the planet. According to the United Nations, raising animals for food causes more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, SUVs, planes, and ships in the world combined.

And yet we've been raising meat for over 4,000 years and cruising around in SUVs for the last 50, maybe the greenhouse gases come from the factories, tractors, and other meat packing machinery. In which case the problem is caused by all industries not just meat. I would imagine the fruit industry produces a lot of greenhouse gases trucking orange up from Florida every winter.

4. Meat will make you fat. All the saturated fat and cholesterol in chicken wings, pork chops, and steak eventually leads to flabby thighs and love handles. I hope the upcoming "Jessica Simpson's Intimates" line comes in plus sizes! Going vegetarian is the best way to get slim and stay that way.

How you choose to manage your diet is up to you. Meat or no, If you take in more calories than you use in the course of a day, some of the remainder gets stored as fat. A balanced diet (which can be achieved with or without meat) and a healthy activity level are the best way to get slim and stay that way.

5. Eating meat steals food from starving kids. Jessica's trip to help kids in Africa got a lot of media buzz, but by gnawing on meat, she's essentially stealing food from the mouths of starving children since it takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat. If more people went vegetarian, we'd free up enough grain to feed every person in the world.

Wow. That is harsh. First the stats, I see that 16:1 ratio thrown out a lot without a reference but According to the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, an average of 2.6 pounds of grain is used to produce a pound of beef in developed countries. I think that is a lot more manageable considering the complete proteins you get from meat. I heard a researcher in neuro-morality remark once: "If you were to see a baby drowning in a mud-puddle and you didn't wade in to save him because it would ruin your $200 Italian leather shoes, we'd call you a monster. However, if you spend $200 on shoes instead of buying cheaper shoes and donating the surplus to charities that could feed dozens of starving children in Africa ... no one even notices." So I would argue that whatever you can do to live with thrift so that you can contribute to organizations like OxFam, will do a lot more to help starving kids than going vegetarian.

Note: I don't have a problem with you being a vegetarian. If that's how you want to live your life go for it. This post isn't designed to dissuade you from your lifestyle, or even to promote meat-eating. Rather it is to examine the way the media often does a poor job of representing science, and that if you want to apply the Method to examining media claims this is one way to do that.

Taylor, E., Burley, V., Greenwood, D., & Cade, J. (2007). Meat consumption and risk of breast cancer in the UK Women's Cohort Study British Journal of Cancer, 96 (7), 1139-1146 DOI: 10.1038/sj.bjc.6603689

Kabat, G., Cross, A., Park, Y., Schatzkin, A., Hollenbeck, A., Rohan, T., & Sinha, R. (2009). Meat intake and meat preparation in relation to risk of postmenopausal breast cancer in the NIH-AARP diet and health study International Journal of Cancer, 124 (10), 2430-2435 DOI: 10.1002/ijc.24203

Welcome to CUTOP

2009-08-12T08:36:00.000-07:00

I have found recently that my career as a scientist focuses on two principal domains. The first is research, which i blog about over at Somatopsychic. The other is Teaching which I will blog about here.

So I'll go ahead and introduce myself and let you know a little bit about what to expect here. I'm Mitch Harden and I have a Master's degree in behavioral neuroscience. I started teaching last fall (2008) at St. Charles County Community College (SCC; for some reason they leave out the other two C's when abbreviating). Over the last year I taught 9 sections of PSY101 Introduction to Psychology, and I also taught (as a TA) the lab section of a research methods class. Right now I'm still pursuing a PhD (also in behavioral neuroscience) at the University of Missouri - St. Louis (UMSL) and hope to be done by May 2011. Additionally the Educational Psychology (EDPSYCH) department of UMSL offers a Certificate in Undergraduate Teaching (CUT) that I am working towards.

Being a new teacher was a bit daunting, but I love it. I love it way more than I ever would have expected. It is my goal to always be teaching and to continually improve my lecture and classroom technique. This fall I am teaching two section of PSY101 but I am also teaching PSY290: Special Topics in Psychology: Mind, Brain, and Behavior. At other institutions this class is called Biological Psychology or Physiological Psychology. This is the first time the class has been offered at SCC and it is my first time teaching it so I hope it goes well.

You can expect to see posts about classroom experiences, behind the curtain posts about teaching, and my experiences with the CUT program at UMSL. That should cover teaching, preparing to teach, and becoming a better teacher respectively. It is my goal to post at least once a week (on Mondays I suspect). As you can see I've already imported CUTOP related posts from my other blog, so you can get a feel for how things will go around here.

Classroom memory activity

2009-03-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

When teaching about memory I use all of the standard activities, where I read lists of words, letters or numbers to my students and have the repeat them back to illustrate serial position effect, chunking, and the passive organization of long-term memory. But this semester a student and I stumbled onto another illustrative exercise.

Lecturing on memory and forgetting and a student questions me:

Student: You asked me earlier what I had for breakfast and I told you a bagel, and you said it was an example of automatic encoding, and it was long term memory, which you said you keep forever. But I can’t remember what I had last year for breakfast…
Me: I think I see what you are getting at, but remember when we talk about forgetting from long term memory we are often talking about retrieval failures; the information is there, you are just having trouble accessing it.
S: Whatev.
M: … How about this: What did you have for breakfast in 7th grade?
S: What? I don’t know.
M: I’m not talking about a specific day, but maybe you can recall just the gist of what you ate.
S: Nope.
M: You do remember 7th grade right?
S: Sure.
M: Do you remember what your school looked like? The Building? The Lunchroom?
S: Yeah.
M: Good. How did you get to school?
S: On a bus.
M: A BIG yellow bus right?
S: Yeah.
M: Can you remember the smell of the bus?
S: Oh yeah, it was weird; the seats smelled.
M: Gross. How did you get on the bus; did it pick you up at your house, or did you walk to a bus stop?
S: I had to walk to a bus stop.
M: And you were the only kid there?
S: No there were some other kids from my neighborhood.
M: Do you remember your house? Your room?
S: Sure.
M: Great! So in your room, in your bed, did you wake up on your own? Or did you mom or dad wake you up in the morning?
S: I had an alarm clock.
M: Cool. Very independent. So you woke up and … you groomed and got dressed?
S: Yeah first thing, I had a perm and had to take care of my hair.
M: I don’t know anything about that. But you do remember what your hair was like. And you remember what kind of clothes you used to wear?
S: I do, I made bad choices.
M: Fair enough. But after you got dressed did you watch TV?
S: No, there wasn’t time in the morning.
M: You might miss the bus? You felt rushed?
S: Yeah.
M: Did you have time for breakfast even?
S: Yeah I had toast with grape jam.
M: Jam and not jelly?
S: Yeah I hated jelly.
M: [To the class] Okay, so in the space of about two minutes we went from “I don’t know” to “Toast with grape jam.” And I think that illustrates several of the concepts we have talked about. First, Student clearly had trouble retrieving information about her usual 7th grade breakfast, not surprising if use the Decay model of forgetting. It is likely that she hasn’t thought about 7th grade breakfast since… 7th grade. Second, by activating other memories from 7th grade we increase the likelihood of activating other memories similar in context, just as suggested by our semantic network model of long-term memory organization. What we did there is also shares many elements of a cognitive interview, like we discussed when we talked about hypnosis, right? We had context, extensive retrieval, varied retrieval, and multiple representations.

I repeated this exercise successfully in each of my four other classes. In each case they went from “I don’t know” to something they were relatively confidant about.

Philosophy of Teaching

2009-03-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

I teach at a local community college. Last semester was my first semester teaching and one thing that has stuck out to me is the number of people who have told me about my students. That is to say people say things like, “You must really dumb it down for them” or “Most of SCC students are in remedial English, so don't expect them to read the book, let alone write a paper” or any number of statements of low expectations. It is important to know your audience, and I suspect that is what has motivated these comments. I don't want to prep my lecture based on where students have been when they entered my class, bur rather on where students will go once they leave my class. To that end I have grouped my students (with a guess as to the percentage of each type in my classes) into three outcomes which I use as a guideline for my lecture prep.

Type One – 14 or less years of education (50%)
These students are not going on in higher education. At most they will complete their Associates degree and enter the workforce, but others won't make it even that far. It is likely that my class will be their only exposure to the concepts of psychology presented in any sort of scientific fashion. I think the most valuable information I can give these students comes from the child development section of the course; they might possibly pick-up some useful parenting skills. Very few of my students disapprove of corporal punishment and fewer still consider the impact of exposure to violence in video games, tv, and other media. I would also like these students to come away with enough exposure to 'crank' science to be able to recognize charlatanism. Lastly,this may be the only opportunity to de-stigmatize mental illness and treatment-seeking behavior for this group of students.

Type Two – Non-Social Science Majors (40%)
These students will at some point transfer to a university and complete at least a bachelor's degree, although not in social sciences. In a lot of respects they are similar to Type One; these students may never take another psych course so the above exposures should be just as important to this group. But I think there is great value for these students in learning about learning. If they intend to continue academically then developing effective study habits will be beneficial. When I cover the learning, memory, and IQ chapters I have the opportunity to teach these students about effective study skills and how to use metacognition to enhance their own learning not only in my course, but all of their future classes.

Type Three – Psychology Majors (10%)
These students are going on in psychology. Even if they weren't psych majors when they enrolled in my class, they have been hooked and will continue on if not in psychology then in some other social science. The content of my course is likely of little importance to these students. Everything I teach them will be taught them again in greater detail in a later class. In fact, the only important issue in regards to content is not to sacrifice accuracy for convenience. Intro psych text books are often a bit behind the times, and they tend to over-simplify some concepts and if I didn't expand the curriculum offered by the text then it would hurt these students in the future. These students, like the Type Two students, will benefit from learning how to learn, but hopefully they also learn how to think about psychology. More than just recognizing charlatanism these students should be able to APPLY the scientific method.

There is one more concept that many of my students (independent of type) need to master: professionalism. High School has failed to train them how to comport themselves in a professional setting. To be professional they should attend class on-time every time, they ought focus their attention on the class during class time, they must complete assignments on time, and ultimately they need to accept the consequences of their behavior. On the first day of class I talk about the importance of attendance, I mention that it is rude to use your cell phone in class, and I explain what I mean by due date. Even so attendance hovers around 85%, I see my students text messaging during lecture, and weeks after an assignment is due they ask if they can still do it. Unfortunately due to the nature of professionalism, it isn't something I can teach to a student that isn't professional. My only option is to reinforce the idea that a student's behavior, regardless of motivation (excuse?), comes with consequence. The message I try to deliver to these students is, “You don't have to be here. Not everyone goes to college, maybe this isn't for you.” Last semester this seemed to sink in for some of my students, and at mid-term they made an effort to change their behavior. Being professional shows me that a student wants to be here, wants to learn, wants education to be meaningful.

Of course I would like to think that I have the power to encourage students to move from group to group, but unfortunately there are a lot more factors influencing their outcome than my teaching. So instead I can use these broad-stroke categories to steer my lecture, tests, and classroom activities towards the most valuable experiences for my students. There is no reason my class cannot meet the needs of each of these student types; I'm committed to providing value to all of my students without compromise.

I use a variety of strategies to engage my students in learning. I think the most effective is to use a human voice in my lecture. I try my very best to divorce myself from the institution as I talk. All too often students regard professors as the mouthpiece of academia. Never in their lives (and probably not in yours either) has an institution (corporation, government, academy, etc.) ever said anything meaningful. Whenever I use an example I try to tag it personally (I talk about my dog Ruby when we talk about conditioning), refer to researchers and not just their research (I talk about Watson's personal life when we talk about Little Albert), or at the very least use a real person's experience (We watch this video when we talk about diet and neurotransmitters). I also occasionally use the institution's voice to set-up a contrast. For example after talking about THC and sleep apnea, I'll state, “Of course it is the official policy of your professor and SCC not to condone the use of any illegal drugs.”

A few weeks into class I introduce the in-class group assignment. Generally these involve synthesizing information from both lecture and the book into some deliverable that they can turn in. The first of these assignments is well defined (create a table with the following information...), but it introduces them to self-selecting into small groups, and I explain how they will be evaluated (rank ordered where the best two get 100%, the next two get 90% etc..). But as the semester progresses they are assigned increasingly ill-defined problems to encourage them to work together to figure out how the assignment should be completed. When they are trying to write an essay about how day-care might influence a child's physical, social, cognitive, and moral development they have to understand each of those four domains, how they relate, and the time-course of development before they can even begin to discuss influences.

Lastly I try spend some time discussing how to take notes, how to use the textbook, and how to prepare for an exam. They may get this information elsewhere, but learning how to learn in the context of the actual content of my course will stick better. I'm always shocked when I see students trying to transcribe information from the slide presentation, not using their books in class, and apparently not knowing how to study. It is my intention to weave even more of these study-skills practices into my class in future semesters; it is my goal to see evidence of at least some students improve as students through my class.

The Importance of Operational Definitions

2009-03-04T07:33:00.000-08:00

This morning a colleague of mine was discussing a recent survey from Business Week that ranked America's Unhappiest Cities. I decided to use this in my intro classes as a critical thinking exercise to recognize sensationalist media claims and the importance of an operational definition.

So I began by telling my students that St. Louis was ranked #2 on a list of unhappiest cities in America, and asking them what they thought about that. What does it mean to live in the #2 most unhappy city? My students wanted to know who was #1 and who was #3 (Portland and New Orleans respectively). Several students thought that the study must be bogus because they themselves are not unhappy. Finally someone hit on the issue, "What do they mean by unhappy?"

So we listed how we might measure unhappiness. My students had a lot of great examples:

Depression (number of people diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder)
Education level
Sports teams performance (measured in World Series wins)
Suicide
Divorce rate
Unemployment rate
Obesity

Not a terrible list, but in each case could one make the argument that the measure is both valid (the score means what we say it means) and reliable (the score is 'true' ; consistent). For example with depression (as defined by my students), there is a clear bias based on cultural acceptance of treatment-seeking behavior. The large Hispanic population of the American southwest are less likely to seek treatment for depression (and are thus less likely to be diagnosed), compared to the pacific northwest where there is far less stigma associated with depression and therapy. Incidentally Business Week used a weighted amalgam of depression rates, suicide rates, divorce rates, crime, unemployment, population loss, job loss, weather, and green space.)

This ultimately led to a discussion towards the purpose of such a survey. Should this encourage St. Louisians to engage in marriage counseling? Build parks? Put bars on the windows? Buy some football players? My students decided that the survey did not in fact measure unhappiness and even if it did it wouldn't be a reliable measure that could be used to compare cities. So ultimately it means very little to them. Good for them!

Anyway, here are the "top" 10 unhappy cities:

1. Portland, Or.
2. St. Louis, Mo.
3. New Orleans, La.
4. Detroit, Mi.
5. Cleveland, Oh.
6. Jacksonville, Fl.
7. Las Vegas, Nv.
8. Nashville, Tn.
9. Cincinnati, Oh.
10. Atlanta, Ga.

Compliments from students

2009-03-02T07:23:00.000-08:00

This morning I got the following email from the Division Coordinator of Psychology at my community college teaching gig:

"I ran into a girl that was a student last semester in your 101 class. She told me that it was the best college class she has taken so far. She said you are interesting, funny, and share great information about psychology. I thought the same thing when I sat in your class. She did not realize that it was your first semester. Great job!!"

Great news right? Except, I can't just take a compliment. Often times I have heard professors bemoan the course evaluations that students submit. The three common arguments against this process of evaluation I've heard are:

Students that get bad grades rate teachers poorly in vengeance.
Students evaluate the personality of the teacher instead of teaching ability.
Students don't have the qualifications to evaluate good or bad teaching.

I don't know who the student was or what her grade might have been in my class so I can't speak to point 1, but points 2 and 3 do concern me.

One of my teaching philosophies is to be human and to speak with a human voice to my students. I think that allows my personality to come through in class. While I don't have a necessarily strong personality - I don't often say things like, "I'm sorry, I've broken a glass here. Is that expensive? I'll pay for it. I'm sorry." I am a funny guy and a geek, so I think as the semester progresses students get to know my personality and perhaps this student just likes funny geeks.

Then of course, DO my students have the requisite abilities to judge me? I think it depends entirely on the questions that you ask them. I wrote about the SCC teaching evaluations back here, and you can see that I didn't think the questions were very valuable. Here are the equivalent (in that they satisfy the Missouri Senate Bill 389) questions from UMSL:

The syllabus clearly expressed the goals, expectations, and the nature of the course.
The instructor of this course has given my adequate ways to contact him or her, via email, phone, discussion board, office hours, or appointment time.
The course required that I come to class ready and prepared.
The instructor provided timely and useful feedback on my academic performance during the semester.
This course expanded my analytical thinking, my technical skills, my creativity, my knowledge, and/or my competence.

I think that any student has all the necessary abilities to accurately evaluate all of these items. In fact I'd also say that the first 4 are also proof against personality, and grudges (providing the grudge holder would still be honest). But then I think the answers to these questions would be of little value to me. Question 5 ("Did you learn anything? Anything at all?") is the only one that might mean something to me, but even then the bar seems very low there for me to feel like I did my job if I got anything less than Strongly Agree.

What about compliments like the one I got, that isn't in response to any survey? I'm glad that a student last semester enjoyed my class. I'm glad that she enjoyed it enough to share with my boss who in turn shared with me. But I'm afraid to take too much pride in this positive review lest I am forced to take all negative comments to heart as well. I suspect a number of my students have muttered angrily about my PowerPoint slides, or the rate at which I speak. Maybe they've complained about my tests, or quizzes. Does this mean I should change my style? It seems unlikely that I will even if I should. More immediately should I keep doing what I'm doing because a student liked it? I guess.

So what do you think? Not about what I should do, but rather:

Are the evaluations of a teachers abilities by students worthwhile?

My first teaching evaluation

2008-10-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

This week was the first time my teaching skills have been evaluated. As I've mentioned I'm teaching Intro Psych at a local community college. This is my first time teaching and as such it has been a learning experience for me as well as (hopefully) for my students. In any event this week I looked at both the mid-term reviews from my students, and the review of an in-class observer (my Boss).

The evaluation that my students submitted was web-based and fairly anonymous. However, I feel that the survey itself was relatively weak. This was a five question questionnaire with three possible answers (Yes, No, No Opinion). This format is apparently mandated by the state Joint Committee on Higher Education as established in Missouri Senate Bill 389. In any event here is a table summarizing the questions and my results:

Table 1. Summary of Student Responses on Mid-term Evaluation
Summary	Yes (1)	No (-1)	No Opinion (0)	Average
communicate in a clear and understandable manner?	20	6	3	0.48
instructor helpful and responsive to students?	26	0	3	0.90
gain knowledge skill or ability?	25	2	2	0.79
create a positive learning environment?	27	2	0	0.86
recommend this instructor?	21	6	2	0.52

As you can see It was a relatively positive review. One concern appears to be my ability to communicate in a clear and understandable manner. But what does that mean? Am I talking to fast? Am I just spouting out non-sense? Are my analogies more confusing than clarifying? This question, while I think very important, doesn't have enough information for me to know how I should change my behaviour. The other question that got a lower response was, "recommend this teacher?" Again, I'm not quite sure what to do with this information. Are they not recommending me because I'm unclear? Because my tests are too difficult? Because they think I'm a 'bad' teacher? Clearly they feel they are learning in my class, and that I am helpful and responsive... so, it must be some other dimension of my teaching that is holding me back, and should I care about recommendations? So ultimately, while I feel I had a 'good' review I'm not sure that it was a very useful tool for gathering feedback. I think at the end of the semester I will give my students a more tailored review form that they can use to give me more helpful information.

My peer-review was great. I was floored at how positive it was and it really does wonders for my teacher-self-esteem. I credit much of the positive regard to Peggy Cohen who is my professor for EdPsych7647 which has really been a useful experience towards preparing me as a teacher. But also, my mother was a teacher and I do follow her example for a lot of my style. Not to mention the many great teachers I have had in my college career both at USI and UMSL. Anyway, what follows is the full-text of my review:

October 22, 2008
PSY 101 8:30-9:50 AM
Instructor: Mitch Harden
Observed by: Associate Professor Beth Finders, Psychology Program Coordinator

Mitch began the class by presenting an overhead of an extra credit assignment on Gender Roles to enhance the chapter 9 material on Life Span Development.

http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200804/why-do-boys-and-girls-prefer-different-toys

The assignment was to analyze the theories and contrast them to the gender schema theory presented in the textbook. Extra credit is worth up to 10 points and due next Tuesday. This looks like a great assignment!

Mitch began by showing a very interesting and relevant video clip from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeSvkE9ZtHk regarding the famous Canadian case of 1965 of David Reimer that had a severely botched circumcision at age 7 months and his parents brought him to see Dr. John Money who headed a Gender Identity Clinic. He performed complete gender reassignment surgery on him to change him into a female. Bruce became Brenda and was raised as a girl.

Mitch did a very good job of explaining what had occurred in adulthood after the girl, Brenda, lived her life as a man again and eventually committed suicide. Mitch finds interesting and discussion oriented materials to portray in the classroom.

The next item presented was a Midterm Professor Review where Mitch displayed the results of a survey that he had given his class related to 5 topic items about his own performance. This demonstrated great security in himself and willingness to gain feedback and learn from his students comments. He asked relevant questions and offered opportunities for the students to comment freely. The students did not take advantage of the opportunity, but Mitch certainly opened the door to them to be able to. This was a very unique concept to do such an assessment so openly and freely in a brand new teacher’s classroom without being asked to do so.

After that, he moved into Adult Development issues and as the slides were up relevant to the chapter material he enhanced their content through his discussion and comments related to the paths that people may take and lifestyle choices. He discussed the Activity Theory of Aging and discussed results of “reaction-time studies.” His comments were interesting and relevant about older adults who fare worse in cognitive decline might be because of being more focused on accuracy than speed. He raised questions about the concerns that the elderly have about losing independence and leaving activities in their hands as long as possible.

The last topic area was on Kubler-Ross’s 5 stages of dying. He again showed a wonderful and interesting YouTube video of a little girl whose fish died and the stages of grief that she went through. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcNQGNUncd44

He discussed that the stages may not go in order and that all may not be present. Mitch also gave a very good example of a teacher who said that when she gave assignments to her students that when she was vague and wanted the students to explore on their own and they did poorly that it made her sad. When she gave explicit instructions and they did poorly it made her angry. He talked about the concept of being sad may be better than being angry and why.

Finally, Mitch utilized the i-clicker technology and slides of questions related to the chapter 9 for a review before the exam next week. Some were publisher formed and he also used questions that the students submitted as well. The dialogue between the students and he was clear that it was a comfortable mutual learning environment.

Mitch clearly has a knack for teaching and is very comfortable In the classroom setting and interacting with his students. He makes a point of learning their names and they seemed to enjoy and appreciate their time in the course with Mitch. It was very impressive for a new teacher. It would have been a great class if this had been a teacher for 20 years. I would enjoy taking his class very much.

Week 6

2008-10-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

This week the Weimer readings focused on evaluation. There are numerous problems with the current way that classroom performance is evaluated: grade inflation, inaccuracies in grading, inconsistencies, etc. But, for the most telling has always been how poorly grades seemed to reflect understanding. For me I had a great understanding of the material but poor study skills, so I was a B student. Others got Straight A's but couldn't talk for five minutes about any topic they had studied. One of the suggestions that I plan to implement is to reduce anxiety about evaluation. I can reduce anxiety in my class by offering more assignments, tests and other opportunities for evaluation, so that each evaluation has lower stakes. I can also incorporate more review time into class before tests, and give sample papers to those writing papers. One of the other suggestions that I like and have been using in the Research Methods class I TA, is to give LOTS of feedback. I try to write an excessive amount of feedback on the research papers I receive (even if scores are higher than the amount of feedback might suggest) in an effort to make my students better writer's for next time. Another activity I plan to incorporate into my Intro class is the review session. I've tried a couple of different review strategies this semester. And Next semester I will continue to experiment. My next experiment is for the self-created questions. I'll let my students break into groups and they will each have a different section of the material (this next section is lifespan development) and each group will create three multiple choice questions. I'll then display them all to the class and we will use the iClickers to vote as a class on the right answers, and lastly we will rate how likely the test question is to be on the exam. Since I have just given an exam and will have to debrief it during my next class the sections about how to respond to student objections was also very interesting. I tend not to allow much bickering about answers, and I think instead I should allow it, but only via E-mail.
In class this week we talked about how to maximize student attention and retention, which was interesting because I had just taught much of the memory model to my students in intro. I think the biggest problem my student shave is using elaborative rehearsal to encode long-term memory. Many of my students seem to do one of two things: listen in class without writing in an attempt to 'absorb' what I'm saying or write down everything I say and project without spending anytime thinking about it. MY plan for next semester is to break up my lecture into smaller 20-30 minute blocks with some activities in the interstitial times in an effort to get students to reflect and consolidate the information that I'm giving them. Also I plan to make out-line style note sheets that they could print-off before class to bring and write on so that they don't have to be concerned with writing every word that appears in my powerpoint presentation.

Week 5

2008-10-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight we met without the professor to exchange drafts of our classroom observation and get a peer-review. This was an incredibly valuable experience from two perspectives. On the one hand I got valuable feedback from my classmates which you can see below. But, it was also very interesting to see my classmates observation logs. Some saw entirely different things than I did! Anyway here is my revised observation, I hope you can see where I made changes:

The first thing I noticed as I entered the dim classroom was an ancient overhead projector shining like a beacon in the night. A projected transparency held a jumble of numbers and words that only made sense to me in that I recognized them as words and numbers. The good thing about observing a high-level accounting course is knowing that the content of the course won't distract me from the style of the teacher. I only counted one student using a laptop instead of pen and paper, and all seemed to be oriented on the professor. Unencumbered by the need to integrate the information on the transparency I was able to track the professor as he paced back and forth at the front of the classroom, none of the other students seemed to be tracking him, instead they focused on the projected problem. I'm not sure how important his dynamic movement was to the class, it seems possible that he felt more connected to them by his movement, and maybe they felt more like interjecting while he wasn't actively, behind a piece of archaic teaching equipment.
The students weren't overly vocal, but neither did there seem to be a reticence among them. For example, early on a student commented on an error on the problem as presented, the professor acknowledged the error and thanked the student, using the student's first name. It seemed to be an effortless interaction on the part of both of them, and unlike other classes I've been in, no students huffed in exasperation as the slide was changed ad hoc. A few other questions were asked during this lecture portion of class, and in each case the professor repeated the question to the class, answered the question, often related it to previous material, and issued some form of positive regard to the student. Everything about these interactions seemed to encourage students to keep being active in class; repeating the question told all of the students that this point was important, relating the question to other material helped the students integrate old and new information, and positive reinforcement as a consequence encourages the operant to increase behavior.
During a later portion of the didactic the professor asked the students to work out a problem. From what I could gather, answering the question required the student not only to infer how the numbers that were given to them had been calculated, but also to integrate that into the methodologies that they had learned previously. In any event the students got out their calculators and began to work. The professor stood at the front of the class and gave positive non-verbals to the class; he nodded approvingly when students looked up to him. After a time the professor started to talk about the problem and it was revealed that much of the answer was already on the projector, just further down. This got a good laugh and on the next slide, the professor used an impromptu blinder to block out the bottom half of the worksheet.
What had seemingly begun as a quick in-class assignment was getting more serious; his transition from didactic lecture to in-class group work was really smooth. The professor passed out something which must've been data about the problem and he encouraged everyone to work in groups. He did not set a time limit for them to work on and just insisted, “satisfy yourself as to what method” was used. Students seemed to form small groups of two to three and crunch away; the organic nature of group formation indicated to me that these students were already comfortable with this technique and were comfortable sharing ideas about how to solve the problem. After some time, the professor gave a hint, and worked on the in-class computer at the front of the class. As the noise level in class rose it was unclear as to how many students were collaborating on the problem at hand or otherwise chatting. In fact, the professor confronted a student about not working on the project, she responded, “I'm saving my brain for a test in my next class.” The professor chuckled and apparently knew what class she was going to next and wished her luck. At this point he revealed a figure that was allegedly revelatory and asked for a proof of it by next class, thus ending this portion of the class.
Next up: test review. The professor listed the goals for the test review and gave the stats for the test as a whole. He also suggested that everyone correct their test, write on it references as to why their answer was wrong, and where to find the right answer. The professor also promised to award (non-specific) credit for doing a good job. This seemed like a great idea; a simple yet non-specific task with an equally non-specific reward. The vagueness of both the assignment and the reward made it unnecessary to discus a grading rubric and placed the judgment of adequate perforce squarely in the lap of the students. He gave them the rest of the class to work on this, and began to float around answering questions one on one. As students returned their tests, the better students who had less to correct turned theirs in first, he was not shy about commending them. I wonder how this made students who have a lot to correct feel, was it an unintentional negative reinforcement. But he did seem to know all of his students and addressed many of them by name, no one seemed shy about asking him questions or turning in their corrected tests. By the end of class most students had turned in their tests, but he invited them to his office if they had any more questions.
Overall I would say the class went very smoothly; in fact it appeared effortless. Not in the way an unprepared teacher would appear to have put no effort into a class, but rather in the way that a skilled expert has crafted a sequence of events to flow from one into the next. The opening lecture exposed students to new information while the professor was constantly highlighting the integration of this new knowledge with what had come before. The transition into group work using not only this new problem, but that previous learning was so smooth as to appear accidental. Group formation was totally organic and in the hands of the students themselves, with what appeared to result in a healthy amount of collaboration. Ultimately all of that in-class work led into an assignment that would be due at the next class session, leading me (and hopefully the students) to believe that their effort was worthwhile. The test review already included plenty of feedback from the professor written on the test itself which in and of itself is good. However the test correction process still required the students to gather information about how they had failed. Consequently this gave struggling students a reason to go back and self-instruct where they had missed out on learning material the first time through. Underscoring the entire conversation between professor and students was the professors warmth and approachability. It appeared that he knew his students, was genuinely interested in addressing their questions and comments and didn't hesitate to give positive feedback at all times.
Watching this professor teach forced me to review my own teaching style. I could break up my class sessions into smaller sections with varied activities to help students integrate new information. I could encourage more group work and give students the opportunity to figure out elements of the lesson on their own terms. I could allow students to correct their exams in an effort to learn material they might otherwise have missed. I already use my students names, give plenty of positive reinforcement and try to work in enough humor to be jovial. In fact, the only thing I doubt I will ever do is use an overhead projector.

Week 4 Classroom Observation

2008-09-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

This week we observed a class here is my rough draft of my observation report:

The first thing I noticed as I entered the classroom was an ancient overhead projector shining in a dim classroom. A projected transparency held a jumble of numbers and words that only made sense to me in that I recognized them as words and numbers. The good thing about observing a high-level accounting course is knowing that the content of the course won't distract me from the style of the teacher. I only count one student using a laptop instead of pen and paper, and all seem to be oriented on the professor. Unencumbered by the need to integrate the information on the transparency I am able to track the professor as he paces back and forth at the front of the classroom, none of the other students seem to be tracking him, instead they focus on the projected problem. I'm not sure how important his dynamic movement was to the class, it seems possible that he felt more connected to them by his movement, and maybe they felt more like interjecting while wasn't actively, behind a piece of teaching equipment.
The students weren't overly vocal, but neither did their seem to be a reticence among them. For example, early on a student commented on an error on the problem as presented, the professor acknowledged the error and thanked the student, using the student's first name. It seemed to be an effortless interaction on the part of both of them, and unlike other classes I've been in, no students huffed in exasperation as the slide was changed ad hoc. A few other questions were asked during this lecture portion of class, and in each case the professor repeated the question to the class, answered the question, often related it to previous material, and issued some form of positive regard to the student.
During a later portion of the didactic the professor asked the students to work out a problem. From what I could gather answering the question required the student to infer how the numbers that were given to them had been calculated and integrate that into the methodologies that they had learned previously, and then begin to apply that to what they were presently learning. In any event the students got out their calculators and began to work. The professor stood at the front of the class and gave positive non-verbals to the class; he nodded approvingly when students looked up to him. After a time the professor started to talk about the problem and it was revealed that much of the answer was already on the projector, just further down. This got a good laugh and on the next slide, the professor used an impromptu blinder to block out the bottom half of the worksheet.
What had seemingly begun as a quick in-class assignment was getting more serious; his transition from didactic lecture to in-class group work was really smooth. The professor passed out something which must've been data about the problem and he encouraged everyone to work in groups. He did not set a time limit for them to work on and just insists, “satisfy yourself as to what method” was used. Students seemed to form small groups of two to three and crunch away. After some time, the professor gives a hint, and works on the in-class computer at the front of the class. As the noise level in class rises it is unclear as to how many students are collaborating on the problem at hand or otherwise chatting. In fact, the professor confronts a student about not working on the project, she responds, “I'm saving my brain for a test in my next class.” The professor chuckles and apparently knows what class she is going to next and wishes her luck. At this point he reveals a figure that is allegedly revelatory and asks for a proof of it by next class. But this ends that portion of class.
Next up is test review. The professor lists the goals for the test review and gives the stats for the test as a whole. He also suggests that everyone correct their test, and write on it references as to why their answer was wrong, and where to find the right answer, and he also promises to award (non-specific) credit for doing a good job. This seems like a great idea! He gives them the rest of the class to work on this, and begins to float around answering questions one on one. As students return their tests, the better students who had less to correct turn theirs in first, he is not shy about commending them. I wonder how this makes students who have a lot to correct feel. But he does seem to know all of his students and address many of them by name, no one seems shy about asking him questions or turning in their corrected tests. By the end of class most students have turned in their tests, but he invites them to his office if they have any more questions.
Overall I would say the class went very smoothly; in fact it appeared effortless. Not in the way an unprepared teacher would appear to have put no effort into a class, but rather in the way that a skilled expert has crafted a sequence of events to flow from one into the next. The opening lecture exposed students to new information while the professor was constantly highlighting the integration of this new knowledge with what had come before. The transition into group work using not only this new problem, but that previous learning was so smooth as to appear accidental. Group formation was totally organic and in the hands of the students themselves, with what appeared to result in a healthy amount of collaboration. Ultimately all of that in-class work led into an assignment that would due at the next class session, leading me (and hopefully the students) to believe that their effort was worthwhile. The test review apparently including plenty of feedback from the professor written on the test itself, but still required the students to gather information about how they had failed. Ultimately this gives struggling students a reason to go back and self-instruct where they had missed out on learning material the first time through. Underscoring the entire conversation between professor and students was the professors warmth and approachability. It appeared that he knew his students, was genuinely interested in addressing their questions and comments and didn't hesitate to give positive feedback at all times.

Week 3

2008-09-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

The readings for this week have really gotten me worked up. That is to say, With every paragraph I find myself plotting my moves for designing next semester's Intro Psych course. Oh it's so exciting! I didn't really expect that I would like teaching as much as I do.
So this week was mainly about content. That is to say in college classes content is what is covered by the professor and delivered by the lecture to students who are assessed based on how much content they've “learned.” I have to throw some scare-quotes up on learned because one of the key points of the readings this week was that mastery of the content can be difficult to determine. For example if I give a quiz over neuroscience (which I did) and my students correctly identify all the components of a neuron, and a handful of neurotransmitters, but they can't write a paragraph about the process of propagating an action potential, have they learned? Sure they have the vocabulary down, they memorized some terms, but they don't understand what happens systemically.
Weimer suggests less content. What!? By covering less content I can instead focus on teaching how to learn the content than just listing the terms that should be memorized. Weimer also suggests that this approach should be used developmentally; students probably don't know how to handle the course content at all, at least not at first. Svinicki helps with some examples, such as using case studies to build understanding of content. She reminds us that, “one of the characteristics of an expert is an ability ro see the antecedents and consquents.” By using a case study where students have to think about “what happens if...” it forces them to integrate the example into the large system of knowledge in which I have allegedly been immersing them.
How does this relate to my class? What I do now includes a lot of summarizing, or explaining the concepts presented in the course textbook. My lectures are based on the powerpoint slides that came with the text book and I expand them with my own body of knowledge and trim away bits I find unnecessary. This is probably wasteful because if my students read the textbook they would already know it. But, they probably don't read the book, or at least don't read it well. So here is my roughshod plan for next semester:

Reading assignments will be made for each class (available on the syllabus)
During my first lecture (What is Psychology) I will get out MY copy of the book and I will show my students what parts I highlighted, and ask if they did the same.
The next class will be similar except this time after I lecture (History of Psychology: important People) I will ask around what sections they highlighted
During my next lecture (Psychological Perspectives) I will spend half of the lecture talking about the different schools of thought as listed in the book asking students to provide me with the key element of each school. Then as an exercise we will make a table listing/comparing these elements. Part two of my lecture will be a case study of a moral dilemma and how it could be viewed by the various perspectives, a group exercise that will be peer-reviewed in class.

I think this sequence of events at the start of the semester will help my students get the habit of reading their textbooks, learn how to pick out the most important topics in the text, and then ease them into group-work and applying what they learn to larger problems.

Educational Autobiography

2008-09-12T21:46:00.000-07:00

I know I already posted about my academic history but this is a copy of the bio that I turned in in my EdPsych Course (late). I redacted the names of former professors, just in case:

My high school literature teacher, Ms. , referred to me as “frustratingly unique” and I think that pretty much sums up my academic history. Ms. had assigned us a passage from Shakespeare and we were to memorize it and recite it to class on the next day. She gave us class time to work on our memorization and it quickly became apparent that I wasn't on task. She asked me about it and it went something like this:

AK: Mitch, why aren't you memorizing?
MH: Oh ... I don't want to do that.
AK: Why is that?
MH: Well ... as I understand it Shakespeare was a playwright and his prose was meant to be performed by actors, which I am not. And the very task of memorizing, what by all accounts is among the greatest prose in the English language, just to regurgitate it like an automaton droid ... well I find that distasteful and I would hate to ruin Shakespeare for myself.
AK: Be that as it may Mitch, it is an assignment and if you don't do it you will get a zero.
MH: Uhm, Ms. in spite of what I just said I'm not an idiot. I know that life has consequences and I've made my choice, and honestly can you tell me that I'm wrong?
AK: ... Mitch you are a frustratingly unique student.
MH: Thanks.

This event is one of the many reasons I dropped out of the gifted and talented program, as we did more work, but didn't learn more. Teachers didn't seem to prep for class any differently and they fought to keep us all on the same schedule so it didn't seem to matter. On top of that was the fierce competition for points which hold little value for me.

I spent the next eight years working full-time and occasionally going to school. My college experiences weren't qualitatively different than high school for the most part with a few notable exceptions. Dr. and Dr. ; both taught at the University of Southern Indiana. Dr. taught ancient literature and I took his class to fulfill a core requirement. He was so incredibly demanding, I nearly dropped the class when I read his syllabus. We were going to read twelve books in our fourteen week class including such tomes as the Illiad and the Anead. But on that first day of class he talked to us about what it meant to be a student, and why he had such high expectations of us, and by the time he was finished I knew I was in for the duration if for no other reason that to prove myself to him. It was the most work I had ever put into a class, and I was happy to be one of the few students to get an “A” grade, because for the first time in a long time the grade actually meant something to me.
Dr. taught in the psychology department (my major) and he was biologically oriented which I liked. He was very no-nonsense, in fact maybe even harsh with his students, but the difficulty of his classes was offset by the “craft” of his lectures. He had such great examples and was always able to pare down the most challenging topics into terms that were easily understandable. It has only been in retrospect that I've understood how good his lectures were. In comparing my notes form his class to other biopsychology classes I've observed, he was able to build on the topics so seamlessly that by the end of the course you had a system of knowledge about the brain (as opposed to a serious of facts).And this more than anything else has prepared me for the graduate level work that I do now.
So in short I would most like to emulate these professors from my own history, and give students the tools they need for future success while maintaining a high level of expectations from them. I want the student who do well in my class to actually feel a sense of achievement. At the same time I fear that my sins as a student will be revisited upon me as a teacher; I fear that my students won't understand the goals of the course and ultimately be disappointed with their experience in my classroom.

Week 2

2008-09-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

I'm blowing it. I only just bought the books for the course this morning, and while I read everything I was supposed I didn't realize that we had an assignment due. This could've been because I wasn't paying attention when Peggy was going over the syllabus last week. So not only did I not have the assignment done, I couldn't participate in the class activities and really felt as though I couldn't talk about the in class activity either. The activity was to trade biographies with another classmate and grade them. Then we discussed if peer-review was okay for grading. It seemed that my fellow students thought it was okay, but I don't really think so. I mean the feedback you get from another student is probably worthwhile (of course I had no example since I hadn't done the assignment), but the score isn't. There is no way I would give a fellow student less than 90% (4 out 5 in this example), unless of course I was able to see what score they were giving me and it was less. In fact I did notice at least two of my fellow students trying to see what their grader gave them before assigning a grade! It's almost the same argument against self-evaluation. I would never give myself 100% because then if peer-review rates me lower it looks like I don't have an understanding of my own ability. If I give myself a 3/5 and a peer gives me 5/5 then it looks like I'm my own worst critic and am in constant search for improvement. So in essence, I think peer-review is GREAT for generating feedback; your peers will often write good comments about how to 'fix' a paper and some will even brutally rip it apart. But for assigning point values peer- and self-review don't seem meaningful.
As I mentioned we read a lot for the class. I'll append a bibliography to this post so you can follow along at home if you like, but all three course books are about learning theory. In Svinicki the idea that jumped out at me was teaching to the top 1%. The top 1% of students are smart and will do well no matter how bad of a teacher I am. But for those students that aren't incredibly gifted, understanding the learning theories presented in the text will help me to be able to teach them. Maryellen Weimer wrote about her experiences teaching an intro public speaking course with a menu of assignments instead of a list of assignments. That is, students were free to pick and choose (cafeteria style) which assignments they wanted to do. They just needed to cross certain point thresholds to achieve good grades in the course. Even mediocre students can get an 'A' in the course by doing many assignments, while high-performers can get away with fewer. And EVERYTHING was on the menu, tests, speeches, etc. At first this seemed like madness to me. But the more I've thought about it, the more I am convinced that I am going to try it next semester at SCC. Huba & Freed, is far more steeped in EdPsych jargon and was much less accessible, I also found the layout of the book annoying. But, that said it did raise interesting issues about the importance of valid assessment and I hope the further reading will help me make better quizzes and tests for my students.

Svinicki, M.D. (2004) Learning and motivation in the postsecondary classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Weimer, M. (2002) Learner–centered teaching. San Francisco: Josey-Bass.

Huba, M.E., & Freed, J.E. (2000) Learner-centered assessment on college campuses: Shifting the focus from teaching to learning. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Week 1

2008-08-27T09:13:00.000-07:00

Tonight I met my classmates, there are five of us in the class. A Biologist, a Sociologist, A Teacher, and Another guy (also a teacher I think). I'll try not to use names. I also met my teacher, we had actually met briefly at the TA conference. Anyway some of the other students had their TA conference evaluations ready to turn in, I did not. I'm not too worried about it, I've thought a lot about the conference and I'm sure it'll all gel when I start writing. The syllabus is nice, but we actually picked up a lot of paper tonight, the color is goldenrod. I think it is my least favorite color. Kind of like orange that stayed out in the sun too long. Or Yellow that just didn't have enough energy to be bright. Peggy (The professor) seems really thoughtful about teaching and class, I wonder if she chose this color for a reason. The only reason I could imagine color-coding papers is for organizational purposes: assignments on blue paper, information on green paper, syllabus on goldenrod, etc. Maybe for test forms if I thought cheating was a problem: Test Form A is Red, Test Form B is Blue. It's probably not important, and to be honest the amount of time I spent woolgathering over the color of the syllabus is time I should probably of spent processing the things she was saying about it. I kinda feel guilty writing so much about it, knowing that she is going to read this, but evaluations ought be honest, no matter where that leads. The class is exciting though, maybe too exciting. What I mean to say is that often times things are said that I hadn't thought about much before, and so I spend some time mulling it over (woolgathering) instead of keeping up with the ebb and flow of the classroom conversation. One exercise we did was to write down our opinions about our best and worst classes, and the way we have learned in the past, then discuss what we wrote. There was a moment when Peggy asked us a question (I was elsewhere in thought and have no idea what the question was) but we all turned to look at the sheets where we had written our thoughts, and stared quietly. We stared for an uncomfortably long time. Then a cricket started chirping. Literally! I locked eyes with another student and we shared a moment of dramatic ... well not irony, I guess appropriateness. Fortunately whatever was asked must've been intended to be reflective because we moved on without comment on the pregnant pause. I can tell I'm really going to get a lot of valuable information out of this class, but I really am going to have to work hard to focus and be “present” during our discussions.

Weekly Review bLog

2008-08-27T08:20:00.000-07:00

Each week I am required to write a review of what I've learned in my EDPSYCH class, and so I will be doing so here. I'm really hoping to come out of this class a more conscientious professor, so we'll see how it goes. Comments are of course welcome

TA Conference

2008-08-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

At UMSL any new TAs are required to attend a two day conference about being a good TA. I am a new TA at UMSL, and I also got a job as an adjunct professor teaching Intro to Psychology at St. Charles Community College. I'm taking a course that requires me to write a review of the conference. That is what follows:

I have, over the course of my life, been to quite a few professional development conferences. I think it began with convocations in high school with motivational speakers, then their were training in-services while I was a telemarketer. When I was an orderly at a mental institution we had training days where we were instructed on how to deal with violent patients. As an “I.T. Guy” I went to countless meetings, web-conferences, training sessions and workshops about computers, HIPPA, and business. The universal constant among all of these was their poor time to value ratio. I won't go so far as to say they were worthless; they did have valuable lessons. Unfortunately these valuable lessons could be summed up in a single catch-phrase such as, “Talk-down not Take-down” or “Don't read patient files,” which was invariably repeated thousands of times over the course of the eight hour conference. That amounts to over seven hours of filler which often took the form of forty-seven slide power-point presentations, over-enthusiastic speakers or the dreaded“team-building” exercises. Needless to say my past experience with professional development conferences left me somewhat pessimistic about the TA Conference I was about to attend this fall.

Sure enough this conference did start out that way: speakers talking about things that only marginally applied to me, trying to work out the most advantageous schedule to put me in the lunch area before others, kibitzing with colleagues during speeches about some accreditation process to which I don't even feel tangentially connected, grabbing free swag and hording pens and while I did find it interesting to learn that provost had the same Latin root as warden most of what was said amounted to white-noise. But then something interesting happened, an Improv group (InterAct) came in to act out scenes in a classroom. The first such skit involved a student-TA interaction that was all wrong. It was so obviously wrong that I can't imagine anyone making the mistakes that this TA made in a real-world situation, thus limiting the utility of the skit. But that wasn't all they did, the second phase of the performance allowed the audience to question the characters (not the actors) about why they behaved the way they did. In phase three the re-enacted the same scene, but this time with help from the audience. Audience members could stop the action at any time and take the place of the TA in the scene and attempt to have a more appropriate interaction with the student. So even though this skit didn't fulfill its potential, I left this session looking forward to the encore performance the following day at Noon.

UMSL is now offering a new program: the Certificate in Undergraduate Teaching (CUT). Since I think that teaching will always be a part of my career, I thought that getting a certificate is great CV material and will make me marginally more employable. CUT comes in four “units” which are described in detailed on the programs website linked above. Two of the conferences presentations could be used to fulfill CUT Unit 2 requirements so I made sure to attend both of these. If it sounds like I was just attending these sessions to get a certificate to put on my resume ... well that's accurate; all I wanted out of CUT was a certificate. The very first session I attended changed my mind not only about the CUT program but about teaching and my career. Sally Ebest was running a session about how to make a syllabus (handy since I hadn't made one for the general pych course I was about to start teaching). There was a ton of valuable material presented: practical guides to planning the course schedule, how to make small assignments, breaking-up the class into sections of time, and making variable assignments so students can play to their strengths. It's this last one that I took most to heart. I thought of how great it would've been if professors had given the option of an oral presentation instead of a review paper. I am a much better talker than a writer and would've loved the opportunity to demonstrate my learning in that medium. I decided on the fly to integrate that concept into my class. Not only was this seminar directly affecting my behavior, it started me thinking. I could teach my students with a method entirely different than the one used to teach me. I SHOULD teach my students with a method entirely different than the one used to teach me. As a probable life-long college professor I should strive to become the best teacher possible to train the next generation of scientists. In short: I bought in.

Day two of the conference was more of the same old song and dance until the InterAct took the stage at lunch. This scene had five characters: Two-over achievers, an two distracting under-achiever, and an unsure TA. At first I felt that the scene was again fairly obvious, the TA was letting the over-achievers dictate the course discussion, he was ignoring problems from the under-achievers, and he buckled under pressure to change a student's grade on an assignment. But, during the Q&A and later when a fellow TA took the stage I was shocked at how poorly he did at 'altering' the situation. When the over-achiever tried to steer lecture to talk about cracking the Enigma code in WWII, the TA (a real TA now mind you) attempted to show her up with his extensive knowledge on the topic. Not only was this ridiculous because he was interacting with an actress who may or may not of known or cared anything about WWII and the infamous Enigma code, but also because I feel it was the wrong was to handle that situation. I talked to this TA later and he told me that he felt it was important to be able to “blow them out of the water” with his knowledge on the topic (and no he is not a history grad student; he's in the chemistry department). It made me wonder how many TAs, or professors even, feel that they should receive accolades for being the smartest kid in a room full of undergraduate students. I know it is not something that I am looking for in my teaching experience.

The other CUT program was just as valuable as the first. Grading was the topic and it brought up a lot of good points about how to design a rubric for evaluation so that students can know what they need to achieve on a given assignment. Also discussed were the type of questions that make up a good evaluation (quiz or test). I'm going to try integrate this at least in my quizzes for my students; I require them to write sentences and/or paragraphs, with verbs like: explain, list, apply, compare, argue, exemplify, etc. I feel as though it will be difficult for undergraduates, perhaps new to the college environment, to write cogently on the fly, but over time, with feedback, hopefully they will improve.

I skipped the end of the conference. I assumed closing remarks would mirror opening remarks. I'm also not interested in getting a T-shirt and any evaluations I wanted to give about the program I would do so in paragraph form instead of on a Likert-type scale. In fact this whole write-up is an assignment in my CUT Unit 1 class, which is taught by one of the conference organizers, so mission accomplished: feedback achieved.