March 2009 – TA Experience

lull period of the semester?

nope. not at all. busy as all get-out.

march 24 class was fun. i got to be an “organism” trained by the class. i was sent out into the hallway while the class decided what they were going to do. when i came back in, i needed to start moving around the front of the classroom trying to guess what the class wanted me to do solely by the reinforcement they were giving me. i got to the table and onto the table pretty quickly, but once i was on the table, it was evident that i was supposed to do something, but the reinforcement was a little scattered. early in the exercise, when my movements were clear, their responses were also clear. as my movements became finer, their reinforcement wasn’t as clear or as quick. then i started to run out of ideas of what to do once i was stnading on the table. dr. g provided a helpful suggestion and then i finally got it.

this exercise was entertaining from my perspective and i hope the class got something out of it.

march 26 class i was in a benadryl induced haze and it was not fun. i thought the practical applications of memory to studying and what students can do were very interesting, but what i find ironic is that very few will actually do any of the things that will help them. considering i just got the email that exam scores were lower this time, it surprises me a little that students don’t take advantage of the tips they’re given to do better. in this class, katie and mandi caught an attendance error too and i thought they did a nice job of bringing it to dr. g’s attention. he addressed it quickly and seamlessly, then promptly moved on. it was classy.

i missed having a ta meeting last week. one reason is because i like getting together with everyone to get a feel for what’s going on. jess and i met to go over the review sessions and i came up with a different idea. i wanted to condense the slides a bit, go through them all and let each student write down their own answers, then go through the slides giving the answers. then do the same thing in groups. i figured this would give them an opportunity to test their own knowledge first, instead of having the smartest kids in the session shout out all the answers. jess thought it was a good idea and i volunteered to provide the candy.

so review session day came and i realized i had screwed up one of the review session times. after a mild panic attack, i emailed the g-team and put a note on the door. i attended mandi & katie’s session, donating half the candy for that one and hung out in announced places afterwards and before the 6pm session. a total of 3 students asked about the 12:30 session and 2 of them came to the 6pm one. one student had a couple of questions for me as i hung out, but no one else stopped by. i wasn’t surprised. the 6pm session had 24 students show up. overall, i think fewer students took advantage of review sessions. for some reason i’m guessing they don’t find them helpful, but i’m not sure how we can put together an hour session and have it be comprehensive. at 6pm, we did have everyone write down answers and went through them, but the hour flew by and we didn’t get to the group part. i’m sending out an email to the students who came to that one to see if they liked it better than the other version. it felt like students attended to be spoon fed information at both sessions that i took part in. i find that personally very annoying and confusing because i’m not sure what they expect from these things. i think we do the best we can, but it feels like we’re teaching them things all over again, not facilitating knowledge exchange or anything that really feels constructive. i guess we’ll see if anyone takes the time to comment.

next on the agenda…lecture prep

the week after (before) spring break…playing blog catchup

i started this before spring break and neglected it for far too long. now i have to remember what i wanted to say. oh well.

i’m ecstatic that i finally figured out how to change the title of my blog so it doesn’t say “arnota02” anymore. HUGE accomplishment! high five to me!

our last couple of ta meetings were interesting because and dr. g actually made changes to the schedule based on our comments. felt like a novel concept and i like the fluidity of this experience.

COMMENTS IN RANDOM ORDER

::March 4 TA Meeting Notes::

We had the opportunity to vent a bit at this meeting and while I aired some concerns about time management, I feel like that’s mostly my fault. I think I come at this experience a little differently because I’m older. I have lots of experience working with this age group, so the things they do don’t surprise me all that much. I’ve practiced detachment for awhile and know how to prioritize and how to set things aside if necessary. I call it “educated slacking.” The other experience I’ve had that helps in this situation is that I usually have way too much to do and not a lot of time to do it in. So, this has felt normal.
I liked the advice that Dr. G gave us regarding not overthinking this too much. He emphasized that we are an academic resource for the students and that boundaries need to be drawn somewhere.

::March 5 Class Notes::

Student questions early in the class and asking how class info applies to them made it feel like a smaller class. I feel like they’re participating much more and like they are more comfortable doing so.
Group exercise with Piaget stages returned to groups of 3 which were much more manageable and because it wasn’t saved until the end of class, they had more time to work through it. As a TA, I didn’t really need to help at all, which was interesting.

::March 10 Class Notes::

I thought the adult attachment information was very interesting and directly applicable to real life. I went to the website myself and took the quiz and found it very informative. Would be interesting for them to take a look at all the surveys and tests that show up on myspace and facebook and have them analyze what is being measured. Perhaps as an extra credit project?
I LOVED the horror movie/classical conditioning thing. This is partly because I’m a huge horror movie fan, but it was also a refreshing point of view. Pavlov’s dogs can be hard to grasp and it’s a little boring. However, the video made it more real, and did the Harlow video. I thought the texting example and the roommate video was very relevant and helped bring the material together from different perspectives.

::March 11 TA Meeting Notes::

We received a revised TA syllabus with more room to work on things and less to do. I’m somewhat relieved considering the amount of stuff that needs to be done for other classes and things in April.
Interestingly, we found out that attendance hovers around 87% which I thought was pretty darn good for a class this size. I think the fact that Dr. G keeps things interesting is a compelling reason for them to attend.
We had some interesting discussion about textbooks and I found the world of textbook publishing shockingly similar to that of record labels. I have a feeling that students didn’t put much thought into the book they bought. In fact, I’d be shocked if they did. Considering most of them are freshmen and I doubt they’ve ever had a choice for textbooks, their choice was likely uneducated. I think textbook choice would work better for upperclassmen, but I think it’s kind of wasted on freshmen.

STUDENT ENTITLEMENTI’ve been thinking a lot about students taking responsibility for their education. I feel the generation gap at times in that my previous college experience was a scrappy one. Professors didn’t worry about whether or not I was in class, participated, earned good grades and I didn’t have any TA’s in any of my classes. All through school I had two part time jobs and it was my responsbility to learn the material presented in class. There were no review sessions or practice tests or study tables and if I did poorly, it was my job to figure out how to fix it. Our discussions about student entitlement really irritate me sometimes, not because of the idea, but because these students aren’t being taught to fend for themselves. What I’d really like to tell these students is “buck up and figure it out” but I don’t think that would be appropriate.

I printed the article by Ellen Greenberger but have to read it yet. I am very curious about the links between entitlement, incivility, view of the professor and grades. Although part of me wonders what would come out of such research. If it’s determined that a sense of entitlement increases incivility in class but has no effect on grades, would that produce a recommendation to teachers to ignore incivility? What if incivility does contribute to lower grades, then what? Aren’t college students adults and shouldn’t they be responsible for their own grades? Granted, we could show that these things are related and hopefully provide some recommendations for professors to run their classes, but without those recommendations, I think we’d just be collecting some interesting information.

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So, I think I’m caught up now. I pulled a rookie mistake by having to miss the last class because my husband doesn’t know how to follow directions when booking flights for vacation. UGH! I felt terrible and quite embarrassed considering we’d recently had discussions about students pulling that kind of crap. I should know better. Oh well, it’s back to the grind and time to finish the final sprint.

Week 7 before Spring Break March 10th & 12th:

Harlow’s Monkey Study:

I have seen a lot of video clips on this particular study, but the monster toy video clip was something that I have never seen before. This was a good choice to use in case there are other students who have seen and learned about Harlow’s study. The information on this part of the study was new to me and I really never heard much about what happened to the Monkeys later in their life and after this attachment study was complete.

Daycare Harmful?

Not a question many of us think about until we ourselves have children and face the stay at home or daycare dilemma. The answer is: 4 infants to 1 care provider and 6 toddlers to 1 care provider. It makes sense that children develop better social, language, and cognitive skills through the means of daycare interaction. A lot of students with children added more interesting feedback such as the exclusive mother, she did everything for her child and she learned that her son could do things that she thought he was incapable of doing. Good stuff to know for the not so distant future.

Conditioning:

The example given about classical conditioning was nice (scary movie and Calvin Klein examples) but the texting example was purely genius! Definitely something the class has been conditioned to do: Professor walks in direction, cell phones and hands are instantly out of sight. And the students thought that professors wouldn’t notice this obvious behavior.

Last class before break:

Wolf-man has been in class on time all this week so the public message seemed to have sunk in. Going back to conditioning; the example used to get rid of text anxiety is a really good application of the conditioning and most useful for those students struggling with this type of anxiety – I know that a lot of our students told me about their terrible anxiety over the first exam.

Thought that the extra points for being in today’s class was very appropriate and reinforces good behavior (fighting the break urge and going to class). The video at the end of class (I have seen it many times before from my friends but never realized the conditioning aspect) was a great bang to end class with… I believe I heard some claps from the class after that video – very amusing.

Week (6) of Development: March 3rd & 5th

My favorite Section – Human Development:
     One of my favorite topics in Psychology and one of the best topics to start after the Biology unit. This unit is far less complicated and is a good extension of Biology. This is a good unit to use a lot of different video clips and other visual aids to help with the explanation of material. There are a lot of research being conducted along with findings that are very intriguing, such as Scents and its biological effects along with perception. The developmental stages are very important for the students to remember – Rathus book is not too clear on Erikson’s life stages. It is easy to see which students are parents with all of their questions and examples of their children and parenting. A lot of their input is very relevant and prime examples of attachment and stages of learning. I feel as of their comments are not off topic and enhance the discussion; sometimes comments can get way off topic and time consuming.
Wolf’s Late… again:
     Good person to set a point – don’t come in late and if you do, do not walk down the aisles and disrupt class while trying to find a seat. Hopefully this will discourage late arrivers from now on.
Use it or lose it:
     We are learning so much about development that can change the way we live and the choices we should make (i.e. which habits should be changed and behavior to adjust). We are given a valuable gift of education to improve our well-being. This unit teaches use crucial information that can improve the way we live and transform our lives to be long and healthy ones.
Quiz on Parenting Styles and Language Formation:
     Good to test Tuesday’s material and the class seemed to have learned the different parenting styles. A lot of good exercises with the quiz questions and the schemas yet another good exercise to warm the class up. I feel as if the video clips and the screaming simian examples are good tools to use to keep the class engaged and focused. (Seems like the Human Development unit has a lot of use for video clips and other such examples). The group exercise on the social development stages went very smoothly, the class seemed to have whizzed through it, and the groups of three worked well and swiftly.

Examination and Rehabilitation Week (5)–Feb 24-26–

Review Session in the evening:

Trudi and I were in charge of the review session in the evening before the exam, so to prepare ourselves we decided to meet two hours before the review session. When I printed the review slides and saved the slides, I assumed the answers were highlighted or on the last page. To my surprise the answers weren’t posted but I didn’t fret because that is why Trudi and I were meeting two hours before the exam, in case something like this would happen. Fortunately for Trudi and I received a call from one of the TAs saying that they had sent an email to us, with the answers to the review slide show… YAY! We were happy to have the totally correct answers and surprised that the questions we had answers for so far were correct. We continued to prepare for us review session and settle some of those pesky nerves.

Show Time: Review Session:

Trudi and I were amazed to have seen 44 students sitting in the review room ready to review (and there were a few late comers)! I was not too nervous at this point because my first fear was having zero to five students show up for the review. I was happy to see so many students and I was excited to get the show started. I had about 10 mardi gras beads (appropriate for the holiday) to pass out to those who answer questions correctly or ask questions during the hour spent for review. I told the group that I would hand out the beads randomly to avoid running out of beads and conditioning the group to an answer = beads treatment. Trudi and I can both say that the beads were a hit and the group was very good about answering and asking questions and also discussion of topics. The hour long session was successful and throughout the time, Trudi and I would ask, “So with a show of hands, who feels like they are more prepared for this exam” or “who feels 5 times smarter than earlier in the session?” We saw hands and felt the confidence. I was worried about smart comments and complaints about the review session, fortunately I did not hear of any and we even had a small group stay after for more, one on one help. Without a doubt, I would continue the review sessions for future exams.

Exam Day:

I can say that I felt some nerves from the students but in the end, “it wasn’t so bad after all.” Before the exam my roommate had told me of some bizarre cheating methods some of her classmates use in her Anatomy class: Girls will write a cheat sheet and slip the sheet between their cleavage and wear a low top during the exam, so they can just look down and feel secure that they would not be confronted for looking down their shirts. Also, for the boys, taping answers to the review sheet, to the underside of the bill on their hats… all they have to do is look up without much movement. I can say that I was keeping an eye out for this behavior during our exam, but I did not catch anything. I am glad and yet saddened, that Katie had caught a cheater and had the attention to find such guilty behavior. Unfortunate to have a cheater on the first exam in an Intro. class but at least we caught the guy early and hopefully discouraged him from making the same mistake.

Going over the exam:

I think it was very important for us to go over the science behind the exam with the class the next day. It was important for us to stress the importance of reading the chapters for there were questions on the exam that solely relied on the material from their reading. Hopefully this message will hit home for the students… READ! On the topic of reading; reading some of the exam comments out loud to the class showed the class that we for one read their comments and care enough about the class concerns.

Post Exam – Student Visits:

I know that I am always one of the few students who takes her exam problems to a Professor or TA and I had three students visit me. The three all came with me with the same concern, testing anxiety and how will this affect my overall grade? Starting out I asked if the student had any questions (any at all) or a place where they wanted to start on the exam, none really didn’t know where to start so I took the lead. I started off by highlighting the tricky questions on the exam, the reading emphasis questions, the throw out questions, and the confusing questions (all based on my judgments and problems students had brought up to me after the exam. I look to see if these students got any of these focus questions wrong, and if so, I would walk through the problem with them. For example, if the question was a reading focus question I would point that out and suggest tips to help the student retain more from their reading. If the question was tricky, I would ask the student to tell me what the question was asking and what their thinking process was for the question; usually the student would get stumped on two potential answers and from there I would have them tell me, why those answers? Which seems to make more sense? If they totally did not know, I would point out the best answer and explain why. Then I would suggest the “chunking method” (take topic info from lecture, notes, and reading and ‘chunk’ the info together and see the connections between each source) to use during studying. Most of the students admitted that they didn’t focus on the reading and that they felt like they were prepared after they attended the review session but come exam time, they were in fact not prepared. Two of these students were really nervous and expressed testing anxiety issues over this exam. For these students, I pin pointed their anxieties with their help and for these two, these students feel overwhelmed with the time and blindly go through the exam. I suggested some relaxing methods I use for exams and breathing tips (tends to work for me, I relax more and increase my attention through focused breathing). Whether it will be used or work for them, I am not sure but that’s all the advice I could give other than the, “Get tested or talk to the professor for accommodations.”

**** SUGGESTIONS****

Very random idea I gained while listening to a conversation my boyfriend and I were having once: Add totally funny, humorous, silly questions in the beginning, middle, and near the end of the exam. This way, students who tense up during an exam can have a chance to laugh and relax when reading these ridiculous questions. It always worked for me; I went back and compared exams that used this method to those that didn’t and I fared better on the exams with comical questions (I compared Middle Childhood and Adolescence to Adulthood and Aging exams… both had similar interest and exam set-up). Even if you add 3 questions to the exam (3 out of 50 questions are comic relief) I think this would be something that can help and see if it does help. LET’S EXPERIMENT!

Another Suggestion: I would like to have at least 5 questions during the review session that mock questions the students would find on the exam (mock meaning completely worded like questions on the exam). The Jeopardy review is entertaining but I think it would help the students (especially during the first review session) to see what type of questions they should expect on the exam. Some students complained that they knew the answers to the review stuff but the exam questions were a different ballgame, so why can’t we give them a preview? I think it may help and give the students a fighting chance when studying for exams.