Keeping students happy, Darwinian-style

The other day, Sciencewoman posted about her trials and tribulations in pacing lectures: whether 'tis better to pitch the class at the speed of the slowest note-takers, or, by moving more quickly, lose them.  Lots of disagreement appeared amongst the comments (who has time to create separate versions of the lecture notes for students with some words blanked out?) but it brought back some interesting memories.

A few years ago, when I started my first full-time academic post, I had to take a "how to teach" course as a contractual obligation.  Not just a one- or two-day training session, oh no.  This was a several-hours-a-week ongoing Enormous Waste of Time that led to an entirely superfluous qualification that currently lurks in the dustpile near the end of my CV.

  

Sample session: "How to Lecture to Large Groups Effectively", where 5 minutes of material was stretched out to two hours of powerpoint slides (plain b&w: don't use colours in case you disadvantage students with colour vision or reading disabilities) read out (with little elaboration: don't use culturally-specific anecdotes or examples in case you disadvantage international students) at a steady pace (slowly: don't speak too fast in case you disadvantage non-native speakers of English and/or students with reading disabilities).  Every couple of bullet points was interrupted with a check that we understood everything so far (we were a class of academics and this material was delivered at a level a 12-year-old could follow: eventually someone asked her if it would be possible to move more quickly), and every few slides was interspersed with token group exercises where we had to reflect on what we'd learned so far (not a lot - there was very little content in all the handwaving).

By the end of the session, when it was clear that we had filled our requisite flipchart pages, the instructor was practically hugging herself with glee that she had imparted her message so effectively.  By the end of the session, I had practically ground my teeth down to the dentine.  It was a perfect lesson in how not to teach: the visuals were dull, the delivery was monotonous, the "interactive" exercises were simplistic and redundant, and the pace was so slow that the entire class became intensely frustrated.

Ironically, those dreadful "how to teach" sessions probably have sculpted my lecturing style.  Whether it's fair or not, they made me decide that it's worse to alienate the top of the class through boredom and frustration by pitching the delivery at the weakest students than it is to alienate the bottom of the class through incomprehension by pitching the delivery at the best students.  In other words, if I must lose students during my lectures, I'd rather lose the dim than the bright.

Ouch.  Not very caring and sharing, is it?

Now, I pitch the class at the upper-to-middle (students at the 1st class to 2:1 level).  I distribute lecture notes online in advance of the class and make it clear that I'll assume that students have the notes in front of them during the lecture.  The pace seems to suit the majority, or at least I get no indication otherwise.  If any students have trouble keeping up, they also keep very quiet about it.  Or maybe they just bring the notes and pay attention next time.

And yes, I use colour on my slides, frequently ramble off-piste with whatever relevant anecdotes come to mind, and speak in my natural style that happens to be fairly rapid.  And my teaching evaluations come back positive with nary a cross word about level or pace.

Am I just very lucky and keep getting classes of students with reasonable attitudes and expectations?  Or does my refusal to cater for the bottom of the class actually work out best for the class as a whole?

Either way, if it ain't broke...

I'm not a psycho******

I found myself on the British Psychological Society website today, on a page where different types of psychologist are described for Ms. and Mr. Interested Layperson.  All the usual suspects are there: clinical psychologist, educational psychologist, forensic psychologist, and several others.

No academic psychologist, though.

I can think of a few reasons why academic psychologists are not listed.  For one, the BPS is not terribly important within academic psychology.  It's actually fairly irrelevant, apart from accrediting the degrees we teach on, and most academic psychologists I know don't bother registering with the society.  It's important for other fields, sure, but research academics gain little benefit from shelling out the annual fees.  Personally, I don't publish within the flagship journal (British Journal of Psychology), or any of the others, and rarely even cite from them; my subfield publishes in different places.  There are many subfields of psychological research that are only carried out by academics, and not at all by any of the "official" types of psychologist listed on the BPS site, but apparently they don't count as types of psychology.

On the other side of the coin, the BPS tends to have a policy of splendid isolation in limiting membership eligibility.  Like many academics working in the science of the mind, I'm not even entitled to join the BPS because I didn't study psychology in an accredited undergraduate (or postgraduate conversion) degree.  Never mind that I've worked and published in the field for several years - the only way I could join the BPS is to sit a qualifying exam and I will almost certainly never be bothered doing that.  Anyone who studied psychology outside the UK also has to jump through hoops to be allowed to join.

Another reason that the BPS doesn't mention academic psychologists is that they currently have a movement to restrict use of the term "psychologist" to registered members.  No appearing on telly or sticking up a sign on a high street doorway without paying your dues, it seems.  Also, according to proposals for a Psychological Professions Council, no hinting that you work in anything psych-related:

It is expected that the title ‘Psychologist’ will be protected and, in order to provide for complete protection of the public, any other title or description incorporating the term ‘psychology’, ‘psychological’ or ‘psychologist’ – or any variant of these – will be made unlawful for non-registrants.

"Complete protection of the public", indeed.  Sounds like the BPS and its cronies have been taking press lessons from the Department of Homeland Security.

Now, I am a non-psychologist and proud of it.  I am a scientist who happens to examine how the mind works.  Further details in this proposal claim that "services provided in connection with the acquisition or dissemination of knowledge for teaching and research will be explicitly excluded" from the restriction, but there's still a massive grey area.

What if I appear on tv or radio talking about my research?  Or give a public engagement talk about psychology in general?  What if  start writing a blog that reveals my real name?  Is all that still dissemination for teaching/research?  I don't think so, and I also don't think that these "services" should be prohibited from using the words psychology, psychological or psychologist - or any variant of these.

Very kindly, the proposal also indicates that it will be easier for academic psychologists to join the new council body through a "non-standard" route that will involve supplication in front of a panel of registrant assessors.  So, it seems, they'll let me do the above things if I beg to join the club and keep paying my annual protection money.

There's an uneasy relationship between academic psychology and the BPS that can be basically summarised as you stay out of our way and we'll stay out of yours.  If the BPS can't even be bothered to list academic psychology as a valid type of psychology, and then propose to milk money out of us for the privilege of using the p-word, then I think they're breaking our (unspoken) agreement.

Anyone for psycho****?

Keeping below the parapet

Is it better to 

1. Follow internal politics and keep yourself visible to the powers that be, by being seen to apply for internal funding sources and/or directing your research towards the topics deemed "hot" by department or faculty heads?
   
2. Ignore most of what goes on internally unless it has a direct and immediate ramification on you, but otherwise carry on your own programme of research regardless of the topics currently being pushed by internal funding or senior management?

I must admit that I tend towards option 2, with occasional forays into option 1.  Perhaps, if those people in senior positions were actually involved in my research area, I might give more thought to their whims.  But they're not.  The only thing they know (or want to know) about what I do is the amount of money I bring in grants and the impact factor of the journals I publish in, so I am at a loss as to why I should pay any attention to what they feel like prioritising.

There are potential negative consequences to option 2.  If people are not particularly visible within their own department (and instead only work on visibility outside), then they could have a hard time making their case for promotion or having top people as referees on their CVs.

Pff!

My department is (in)famous for not being a place that you progress through promotion.  If you want to be promoted, you leave.  Likewise, since nobody in a senior position actually has a clue about my specific field of research, they wouldn't be much use to me as a referee.

There are also negative ramifications to option 1: if people have to follow the trail of breadcrumbs towards topics that the department/faculty likes, they would end up leaving that which interest them most and spending time getting to know new areas and applications.  Even if they managed to find a "hot" topic that interested them, in my university at least, the time and effort required to jump through internal funding hoops is pretty much the same as that required for external funding, where they'd have the same odds of getting 10 times the money.  Worst of all, if people get into internal politics they inevitably have to take sides in someone else's backstabbing, which I would find ethically unacceptable.

So, it seems, it might be better for me to stick wholeheartedly to option 2: keep my head down and do my own thing.  I know I won't be in my present university forever, partly for the aforementioned work reasons (small chance of promotion) and partly for personal reasons (I don't want to live in the UK permanently).  Frequent chats with friends and colleagues in the department show this is a fairly common pattern.  The happiest academics I know are those who work away in their own little empire, whether that empire consists of just the academic plus a student or postdoc, or a mini-army of collaborators and underlings under one roof.  While taking option 1 (and being a visible part of the internal political machine) can lead to an academic being labelled a high-flier and perhaps given preferential treatment regarding internal resources, it does not necessarily lead to a better career.  

Internal grants and internal pats on the back matter a lot less once you move onto another institution, whereas external validation looks good forever.

Of course, I might change my view entirely if I ever move to a university that I want to stay long-term, but, for now, I think it's best for me to keep my head well below the parapet.

O Caffeine (to the tune of O Canada)

There is an unfortunately linear relationship between productivity and caffeine in my bloodstream.  Yes, I'm well aware that the psychopharmacological properties of caffeine are not a magic wand for hard graft, but my point still holds.

I skipped my breakfast coffee this morning, and, right now, my mind is muzzy and soft around the edges.  Trying to reason out an intelligent train of thought is like trying to plait a ribbon while wearing oven gloves.  I'm working on a grant proposal at the moment and it's safer to leave it alone until I can write like I actually know something about the area.

Time to make some coffee, wait half an hour or so for the drug to cross the blood-brain barrier and get to work.

::::::::::::

I'm ba-aack.  Yawning less, certainly.  And I have that slightly brittle attentional focus I associate with coffee - the aforementioned ribbon of thought can be easily manipulated although I might drop it if I go too fast.  Wheee!

Surely the smartest thing any academic department can do is provide free coffee (or tea, hot beverage of choice, etc.) for staff and students?  And not nasty instant stuff either: proper coffee, drip filter at a minimum and espresso at best.  Not only is it a cheap way to raise morale but there's a great social aspect to running into people at the coffee machine.  Of the universities where I have spent enough time to make a judgement:

• University 1.  People paid a small sum into a kitty (managed by one of the admin staff) if they wanted to avail of the coffee-making facilities.  Research atmosphere in department = excellent. Research productivity = excellent.

• University 2.  Free coffee provided by department as a basic right along with light and heat.  Research atmosphere = excellent.  Research productivity = very good.

• University 3.  People paid directly into coin-operated machine that produced bad coffee at a discounted price.  Research atmosphere = okay-ish.  Research productivity = good. 

• University 4.  Coffee-making facilities introduced halfway through stay, though individuals had to provide their own coffee (which was frequently nicked by others).  Research atmosphere went from non-existent to okay-ish.  Research productivity went from okay-ish to good.

• University 5 (current university).  Coffee-making facilities are present (i.e., kitchens with kettles), but no means of making proper coffee.  Some individuals provide their own coffee (which is frequently nicked by others), some keep coffee-makers in their offices (where proper coffee can be made), but most buy from nearby coffee bars.  Research atmosphere = okay-ish to good.  Research productivity = very good.
  

Obviously, I need a bigger sample, but I see a relationship...

Levering open narrow minds with a crowbar

I've had a cluster of recent encounters with academics who have remarkably narrow views of what psychological research is all about.

There is, for example, a peculiar breed of psycholinguist who is suspicious of any suggestion that language is not the pinnacle of evolution and the entire point of the human brain (such individuals can often be found at conferences in those talk sessions that see little passing traffic through the doors).  In a very distant corner of this metaphorical conference from hell, there are also some antisocial social psychologists who prefer to talk loudly about how utterly pointless it is to study human cognition without taking interaction into account.  If it weren't for the huge chip on their shoulders, they might find out that not everyone disagrees with them.  Peering superciliously at passers-by from the conference bar are the clinical psychologists who like to condescend in conversation because, obviously, working with non-patient groups is so trivial.  At the other end of the bar are the über-logical reasoning people, who firmly believe that humans are all rational agents despite the behaviour at play around them.

It's not subfield-specific, of course.  A closer look at the conference floor will reveal methodology subgroups.  You have the raters, who will trust a consistent difference of opinion over a 30 ms response time difference any day of the week.  They don't talk much to the milliseconders, who look askance at anything as subjective as ratings on a Likert scale.  Different groups of cognitive neuroscientists make snide comments at each other about who has the biggest, shiniest, most expensive machine, but nobody else is really paying them any attention.  And then you have the Luddites, who are always one or two steps behind the particular technological advances of the moment.  When software made it possible to randomise trials, they stuck adamantly to blocked designs; when neuroimaging began to be used in their research area, they refused to cite anything beyond behavioural experiments.  Most people tend to leave them to cite each other.

While the aforementioned groups are all very real, they are, thank the great flying spaghetti monster, a definite minority.  Most psychology academics are happy to acknowledge that their way is not the only/best way to study the science of the mind.  But my rather varied background has left me with a very "big-picture" view of research.

All is one.  Well, almost.  I can make most people's research topic somehow relevant to what I do (a sanity-saver in conferences when choosing a talk based on title alone has horribly backfired).  The downside is that the narrowmindedness I sometimes encounter leaves me frustrated and incredulous.

Psychological science should not be insular.

And it should not be possible to build a successful career with that attitude, but that notion will have to wait until I rule the world.

The scrabblings of a demented spider across the keyboard

What is a university lecturer meant to teach?  Subject-specific knowledge?  Or basic literacy, spelling, grammar, sentence structure, etc.?

I recently marked a batch of essays that were written by second year students.  These students got at least AAB in their A-levels (two As and a B in three separate subjects).  In first year, they got classes on essay-writing and plenty of practice in written composition with the plethora of lab reports they submitted.  They were all native speakers of English, as I ascertained when I met them for a tutorial in advance of writing the essay where I brought them through further exercises in structuring an essay argument.

So why can some of them still not string a coherent sentence together?

These were not hand-written essays scrawled under time pressure, for which I am prepared to allow some leeway as even the best of us can make grammatical and spelling slips when racing to beat a clock.  Rather, they were typed essays, prepared with all the spellchecking and proofing benefits of a word processor, and some of them were still absolute rubbish.

I offer the following as an example:

In 2001 [Researcher X] investigated weather the effect was right in a new experiment. By using stimuli she had controlled better. He found [the effect] and this proved [Researcher Y]'s (2005) theory was right.

Where should I start?  "Weather" is not a conjunction.  Effects can't be "right".  "By ... better" is a fragment, not a sentence. Researcher X changes sex from one sentence to the next.  A 2001 empirical paper disregarded temporal dynamics to prove a 2005 theory correct.

Ye gods!

Grading research ability

Female Science Professor writes on a topic close to my own heart today: A-grade versus B-grade students and whether grade quality translates into researcher quality.  The general thrust of her argument is that it does not - some top students make poor researchers and some second-rate students make good researchers.

I'm biased here.  My control freak streak has meant that my academic past is strewn with As, first-class honours, distinctions, etc. and I'd like to think that I'm also a good researcher.  I don't find it easy to separate the two.

I always did well in English and other written expression, which is invaluable when trying to convert a complex dataset into a clear and persuasive theory of how a particular process in the mind or brain operates.  I also always did well at Maths, Science and technical things, which means I'm not afraid to wrestle said datasets into coherent submission.  My undergrad project was both collaborative and huge in scope, so even tenacity and teamwork were at some point graded.  Most of the skills and abilities that are useful to my research were formally assessed (even if in nascent form) during some part of my formal education.

So what's left?  What do I need as a researcher that was never graded as an undergrad?

• Creativity?  Being able to come up with good studies, and good lines of research, that are more than just incremental developments of someone else's work.  Being able to see through unexpected patterns in results to deduce what processes might be bringing them about.  My PhD was the first time I had to build these skills and the zen-like feeling of being one with the data is possibly unquantifiable.  Unless you give me an fMRI machine.

• Multitasking?  Dealing with planning research, writing grants, reviewing grants, creating studies, designing experiments, developing stimuli, training research assistants, supervising research assistants, collecting data, analysing data, interpreting data, reading papers, writing papers, reviewing papers, sitting on committees, going to research group meetings, organising events, giving talks, going to talks, brainstorming ideas with collaborators, designing courses, writing lectures, creating assignments/exams, giving lectures, marking assignments/exams, creating student projects, supervising students, tutoring students, giving pastoral care to students, recruiting PhD students, advising PhD students, examining student theses...  At times, I fit in eating and sleeping.

Now that I think of it, these last two qualities are possibly the most important.  I can easily imagine FSP's "A-grade students who make crap researchers" being clingy and anxious because they lack these qualities.  Equally, the B-grade students who make great researchers might have these qualities in buckets, even if they lack more classical academic ability.

So...  

Wanted: Research Assistant for busy psychological science lab.  Must be able to generate ideas from nothing and juggle up to 20 roles per day.  Grades unimportant.