A TRANSformative College Experience

I like to think that for many of my students college will be more than just test scores and transcripts. I like to think that students will really grow as a person during their experience at SCC. Whether they are traditional students here for their first foray into higher education, or they are returning learners who have a wide range of life experiences but are looking for more formal education. Or even beyond that range I have student veterans who have life experiences beyond those that many students can comprehend and are using higher ed as part of their return to civilian life. Or high-school students who dual-enroll in college to get a head-start on their academic career. Whatever the student I suspect that if they engage in the SCC experience, that they can truly find transformative moments that will influence the rest of their lives.

Recently I created an extra-credit assignment for my Psych-101 students. The assignment was to attend an event, ask a question, and write a reflective essay about the experience. The description of the event follows:

The St. Louis Trans visibility Project, in conjunction with Sex+STL, and Transhaven present an afternoon of uncensored Q&A. Our amazing panelists will be ready to answer any question you might have about their lives and experiences as Trans* identified persons, including those questions you were told you should not ask, and the questions you may have been too shy to ask. No refusals, no reprisals, just honest dialog. Live questions will be fielded, as well as "anonymous write in" questions for anything you do not wish to ask aloud. The panel will be followed by an informal "coffee and conversation" hour.

I was a bit nervous. I felt like my students might be rude (intentionally or accidentally) or offended by the event itself. But, I thought that it was worth the risk. 7 Students (and 5 guests of students) attended the event. My wife and I were also there so I got to witness their behavior first hand. They were, of course, all very well behaved. I shouldn't have worried that they would do all right. But I have to say I was very proud of their essays. All seven essays had the same theme, and all were well written, but I chose one out to share with you. The author is one of those dual-enrolled high-school students and think her writing is a good example of why I try through this and other assignments to offer students the opportunity to have transformative moments. Here is her paper:

Last weekend I was exposed to a whole new world. I went to a little coffee shop downtown. When I walked in I saw men and women. I always thought that when it came to men and women you were straight or gay, but I learned that is not always the case. When I left I saw human beings. A panel of 5 transgendered people sat on a stage and answered questions about their lives and how they have changed from years ago. First there was Lilly who used to be a man but now identifies as a women; she basically looked like a man dressed in women clothing to me. Then Eli, who used to be a girl, but now identifies as a boy; on a normal day I totally would have thought that Eli was just like any other boy. Next was Linda; she made me feel really uncomfortable actually, but she had male parts that were inactive or something like that. She was really interesting. Then there was Tim who used to be a girl but identifies as a man now. Before the presentation started I was kind of looking around the room to decide if I could tell who was going to be on the panel and I would have never guessed that Tim would be up there. I couldn't tell at all that he used to be a girl. Lastly, there was Susan, who used to be a man but now identifies as a woman. All had their own story to tell as well as information to give.
    I was really intrigued by the entire presentation. Like I said, growing up in a St. Charles County suburb, I have never been exposed to the topic of transgender and transsexualism in such a way. I knew that some people got surgery and stuff like that to change their gender, but there was so much that I had no understanding of. Eli and Tim transitioned when they were middle school/ high school age. That is insane to me. I have so much respect for them because I think we all know how brutal kids can be in high school. Some of the other panelist didn't transition until they were in there mid thirty's or forty's. These people reshaped their entire lives to be happy. Some were lucky, like Lilly, who seemed to have a very supportive family system. Others weren't as lucky, like Susan, who described how she lost most contact with her family, friends, and a marriage. Even though I cannot fully understand the feelings behind the panelists' needs, I can relate to wanting to find happiness and be at peace with myself. I think that is a part of everyone's journey in life, we all just have a different path we chose to follow.
    I learned a lot from the questions that people asked. Honestly, some things I had no idea what they were talking about because a lot of the audience was educated in the subject. Actually, when you looked at the audience it was quite obviously that a lot of them were “gender queer” and transgendered or transsexual themselves. I thought I would be uncomfortable at this event because of that fact alone, but the atmosphere was cool and everyone gave off an open minded attitude, I guess you have to when you are talking about changing someone’s biological and genetic background! I asked a question about dating; I wanted to know when is a good time to tell someone you are a dating that you are a transgender person. I was hoping to get information about how transgender people find each other but the panel kept their answers pretty short and direct. Basically, they all said that it's best to just be honest, and if you are not honest then it could get to a point where someone could be hurt. That is the answer I was hoping and expecting to get, but I just wanted to see if there was any other information they would reveal about dating. In some cases, like Tim, he had the same girlfriend through his transition. 
    I guess the answers I got from the panel kind of reminded me that a relationship with a transgender person in it is just like a relationship with straight people in it. Both people are looking for the same qualities and characteristics as anyone else would. Another question I thought was interesting was when a lady asked what she could do as an ally of trans people to help them. The panel pretty much said to just spread the word that they are normally functioning people in society. Lilly actually said something like “Tell them I won't hit on them, I won't hit on their girlfriend, I won't molest their children, but I will be their friend.” That phrase really stuck with me because the whole topic of transgendered people is really unknown to a lot of us. A lot of people just kind of write them off as freaks or perverts. A lot of people don't know what to think about trans people because they don't have information so they just judge them. So you could say the panel just really wanted to be treated as equal, and to help spread information that would tell the public what they are actually like.
    This whole experience really opened my eyes and gave me a new perspective on things. I used to be one of those people that didn't know what to think about trans people and would kind of write them off as weirdoes, but after I actually met some of them, I realize they are normal people. It really hit me that they are just like me when I was in the room with people who were trans gender and I would have never known unless they said something about it, like Tim. If someone important in my life got a sex change or ended up being transgender, I would be supportive of them and help them through a time of need. Everyone has their own problems; we are all humans.

Comments welcome. And if you know of any community events in the spring that you think psychology 101 students might value, please let me know.Maybe you want to have this kind of experience? It's not to late to enroll at SCC or just sign-up for one of my classes.

Trivia Night Victory!

JLA and Mandi posing with my team's trophy

That's right my trivia team won the ESP trivia night competition here at SCC. My teammates were:

1. Gabe Harber
2. Anna Leeper
3. Marvin Tobias
4. Marvin's Wife
5. Marvin's Son
6. Lisa Stoner
7. Kate Weber
8. and Me

We had a fantastic game, scoring 92 out of 100 (Of course we got an A). Categories included: State Quarters, Candy, Sports Mascots, TV Theme Songs, Musicals, and Flags of the World. We had a great time, and raised money for a great cause! If you think you can beat my team next year I invite you to be disappointed.

SoTL: Maryville SoTL Conference 2012

Last weekend I attended a conference hosted by Maryville University. The theme of the conference was Integrating the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Into Academic Culture. I like teaching conferences; all too often teaching is a lonely pursuit. I go to my classes I do my thing, I kvetch with my colleagues about students, but often the actual planning and execution of a class occurs in a vacuum.  That is to say that we (teachers) rarely share or collaborate with each other on topics like course design and classroom management. So teaching conferences are a great way to meet with other teachers and talk about what we do and discover better ways to do it.

In the keynote address Peter Felton (Elon University) asked us the question, "How intentional are you towards your course?" I feel that over the last four years I've done so much to try and transform my course into a student-centered learning experience, so I'd say I'm fairly intentional. I am primarily teaching a general education required course, so there are a lot of topics that I must address, but I feel that I go a long way to bring education to my students in innovative ways (with varying degrees of success). But I think this is a great and fundamental question that we (still teachers) can all use to evaluate our efforts.

Another workshop I attended was presented by Michael Palmer (University of Virgina) titled, "The 5% Rule, or Teaching As a Scholarly Act." The idea being that if one of my teaching goals were to get five percent better at teaching every year, how would I measure my success? Teachers are scholars. We went to school for quite sometime and studied significantly to sharpen our scholarly skills. We can apply the skills to our teaching by researching our teaching and the learning of our students. I've done a little of this in the past, but I'm not doing it currently. I think over the next few weeks I'd like to decide on an area of my teaching to improve (student engagement, learning outcomes, or some such) and start a research project centered around it.

The last session that I'll write about here was presented by Randall Osbourne (Texas State University) titled, "Tolerance for Ambiguity: Knowing Which Students are Better Prepared for the Ambiguity of SoTL Approaches." Without drilling down into the specifics of the research, the theme of this presentation was that students with a higher tolerance for ambiguity (ToA) are more successful in courses designed with a more student-centered approach. Additionally using the active-learning model (ALM) helps to increase ToA and thus student success. This is important for me because I have found the greatest barrier that students face in my class is the ambiguity of some assignments, and maybe integrating some of the ALM techniques will help my students.

In sum, I thought this was a great conference and it really helped me to crystalize my thinking on ways I might improve my course and my teaching. I hope to implement some of these ideas in the coming semester and get started with a new SoTL research project. But next up is the Focus on Teaching and Technology conference at UMSL, and if any colleagues are interested in attending together please let me know.

Where Did September Go?

I can't believe I missed September entirely! I'm not sure how it happened, but let me try to break down where my time last month went:

Bye bye September pie.

By far the largest portion of my time went to sleeping. Even with a new (5 months old today)  baby in the house I spent more time sleeping last month than anything else. Following that was "Family Time" which might sound like fun, but really is mainly wrangling the children shuffling to events, feeding the baby, and breaking up fights. The next one will come as a surprise to my students but I spend about twice as much time grading the junk quality work they turn in as I do teaching. It is the consequence of a learner-centered activity heavy course design. I could just lecture and give multiple choice tests and then I'd have almost no grading to do, but I think my students learn better by having lots of ways to applying the things they learn so instead I slog through 150 (really) of paragraphs about fear, or diagrams of neurons. Even with all that time I am still behind. That could be because of the new time I've been spending on committee work here at the college. This semester I'm on at least two committees (They might be tasks force but I'm not sure. Also is tasks force the correct plural for task force? or is it task forces?) that have required a lot of reading and effort to contribute. I don't begrudge committee work, in fact I actually enjoy it. I mean it. No really. I'm serious. So as you can see from the pie chart there was precious little time for blogging. I have plenty of things to say, so this month I'll sleep less and blog more. I have a lot to say, but what would you like to read more about?

1. Research
2. Teaching
3. My Family
4. Committees
5. Other

Let me know in comments!

Who Cares About Student Feedback?

Some professors don't. They make the argument that students aren't qualified to judge a teachers ability. They might be right, but for good or ill I care about student feedback; I want to know what my students think about my class. One thing to consider is the way in which I receive feedback, well ways really. I get feedback through five main channels: RateMyProfessor, unsolicited student messages, solicited student surveys, our official student survey (IDEA), and direct feedback from a boss.

As of August 28th, 2012

1. RateMyProfessor - This website has become pretty famous among students as a way to suss out the quality of higher-ed professors. I imagine only students who feel strongly one way or the other will post comments here, so the data might be a bit biased. That said I'm doing ok on their 5 point scale. Most students like it that I tell stories, so I'll keep that up. I have the creepiest picture imaginable on the website which I think is responsible for my lack of hot peppers.



An example of a positive tweet



2. Unsolicited Student Messages - I'm referring mainly to social media messages. Since many students are my friends on Facebook and twitter I see when they write about me. During these first few weeks of the semester there seems to be a lot of positive feedback, which is great in that it makes me excited to be here too. My goal is for students to find each other on twitter so that they can commiserate about class and support themselves through the more difficult chapters.
   

   

   Solicited Student Survey Free Responses



3. Solicited Student Surveys - At the end of each section of my class (there are five sections) I ask my students to complete an online survey to give me some feedback on how they feel about their learning in my class. I really want all my students to have a good learning experience and since I am regularly trying new and different activities, assessments and assignments I want to make sure that these changes are having the effect I intend. It might be a bit of a hassle for students to do this again and again but it really is the most valuable to me, since it is direct and immediate feedback about specific things we have just done in class.


4. IDEA Survey - This is the colleges official student feedback form. All students receive this for all classes via email toward the end of the semester. We started using this last year and student response rates were too low for meaningful statistics to be done. Hopefully this year we (faculty) can all encourage our students to complete these surveys so we can do some useful analysis. I really want this to be valuable because it can compare how students rate me against other psychology professors or against the college as a whole. I mean it is great that my students seem to like me, but what I want to see is if they feel they are learning in my class and learning at least as much as students in other classes. 


5. Direct Feedback From a Boss - This last one only happens on rare occasions. Sometimes a student is so upset that they will go to a program coordinator, department chair, or division dean to complain. Whenever this has happened with me I have been impressed with how sensible my dean, chair or coordinator has handled the situation. But should I change my style because of a vocal student complaint? Even if I'm still getting good reviews from so many others? I weigh this carefully. I don't want any student to get this upset in my class. I'm ok if students get uncomfortable (that's part of learning), but I don't want it to be more than they can bare. So I always try to weigh the pedagogical advantage that I give to the majority of my students against the displeasure of the few... Is there another way I can achieve this that will be less objectionable? Is there a way I can soften this information in consideration of student sensitivities? Could I tell this story with less profanity? The answer is sometimes yes. 

The short story is I care what students think. I won't always change my teaching or behavior because of your feedback, but I do carefully consider it. So please continue to inform me about your thoughts, feelings, and opinions on my teaching, and I'll continue to try to be a better teacher.

The Science Behind Todd Akin's Gaffe

Recently Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) made a very bad gaffe. It is pretty serious and you might have already heard about it. The quote in question as made during an interview with KTVI on Sunday was:

“If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down."

Now a lot of people have been very upset about the phrasing of "legitimate rape" and rightfully so (you can already buy "illegitimate rapist" T-shirts). But that's not what I want to write about. I want to talk about the myths regarding pregnancy and rape. There actually is science that has been done specifically on this problem, and as it turns out the opposite is true. Researchers have found that the "per-incident rape-pregnancy rates exceed per-incident consensual pregnancy rates by a sizable margin." (Gottschall & Gottschall, 2003).

The Gottschalls set out to re-evaluate the data gathered by medical and public health professionals regarding the medical and psychological health of rape victims. By carefully screening this data the researchers were able to come up with meaningful comparisons between consensual (albeit unprotected) sex pregnancy rates and rape-pregnancy rates. After adjusting for contraception use the per-incident rate of pregnancy resultant from rape is about 8%. This is compared to the consensual, unprotected intercourse was calculated at 3.1% (Wilcox et al., 2001). But how can we explain that?


One possible explanation is that women, somehow, broadcast their fertility. That is to say that men can tell when women are ovulating, and that this is arousing, and thus triggers the rapist to strike. While there is evidence that men can detect when women are ovulating, I still don't think that fits well here. In general rape is considered a crime of violence not passion. It is about dominance not reproduction. But even still there may be some link between increased arousal and violence in men. A better supported explanation is that of coitus-induced ovulation. This is like what happens in cats; a significant vaginal stimulation triggers ovulation. In fact the very stress of being raped may trigger ovulation. Researchers were able to show that acute stress can trigger ovulation at any point of the menstrual cycle (Tarin et al., 2010).

Certainly more research is to be done on these and other potential mechanisms of this phenomenon. Even still I think it is important for politicians (and all of us) to use the science that is available to us. There is research that we can use to help inform public policy and I feel it is dangerous for us to ignore science.I don't know what this means for Todd Akin (I'm not a political science professor) but hopefully he'll read some science for next time.

Jonathan A. Gottschall, & Tiffani A. Gottschall (2003). Are per-incident rape-pregnancy rates higher than per-incident consensual pregnancy rates? Human Nature, 14 (1), 1-20 DOI: 10.1007/s12110-003-1014-0 
Tarín JJ, Hamatani T, & Cano A (2010). Acute stress may induce ovulation in women. Reproductive biology and endocrinology : RB&E, 8 PMID: 20504303 Wilcox AJ, Dunson DB, Weinberg CR, Trussell 
J, & Baird DD (2001). Likelihood of conception with a single act of intercourse: providing benchmark rates for assessment of post-coital contraceptives. Contraception, 63 (4), 211-5 PMID: 11376648

Researching Diviner's Sage

As I mentioned before I worked in a rat lab, and over the next few weeks I'd like to write a bit about some of the research I did as a graduate student at UMSL. I spent my time depressing rats and treating some of  them with novel plant-derived compounds (some poor rats just got depressed and given placebo). Before I can tell you more about my project I'd like to share with you some of the work that influenced me.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants ." -- Isaac Newton

One of the first sources of inspiration for me was an article I read in Wired about research done by Catherine Willmore (et al.) back in 2007. She was researching a relative of Sage from the Lamiaccae family, Salvia divinorum, AKA Diviner's Sage, AKA Mexican Mint. The plant produces hallucinatory effects in humans and thus has been used by religious and recreational consumers. But since salvinorin A (the main active extract derived from the plant) is selective to kappa-opioid receptors, and is one of the few non-alkaloidal hallucinogens, it has potential to influence the development of a new class of pharmacological drugs and is thus interesting to study. Also because many states lack laws regarding sale and use of Salvia it has grown in popularity amongst the youth. (Don't do drugs)

The researchers used a drug discrimination paradigm in rats to verify that salvinorin A does in fact target kappa-opioid receptors as a primary mode of action. This was my first exposure to this (apparently well-accepted and robust) paradigm. The researchers began by conditioning rats to press a lever when exposed to an established synthetic kappa-opioid agonist (U-69593 obtained from Sigma-Aldrich right here in St. Louis). To do this, they limited the rats' diet, and then put them into a response box with two levers, on days when they got U-69593 they were rewarded with food after pushing the lever on the right, and on days when they got a saline injection they were rewarded when pushing the left lever. Thus once the rats were sufficiently trained on lever pushing then they were assumed to be able to discriminate between a kappa-opioid agonist and control injections. At that point the trained rats were given salvinorin A instead of U-69593 and they still pushed the correct (right) lever, indicating a similar subjective pharmacological experience between U-69593 and salvinorin A. But it is possible the rats had associated "different from saline" with pushing the right lever. So next the researchers injected the rats with nor-BNI (a kappa-opioid antagonist) which will prevent kappa-opioid agonists from having an effect. After treatment with nor-BNI the rats were given a dose of salvinorin A and placed in the response box.  This time the rats pushed the left lever indicating an effect similar to saline.

So I think this falls under the heading of talking to the animals. Not in the Doctor Doolittle sense, but this paradigm asked rats, "Does this drug (salvinorin A), make you feel the same as this other drug (U-69593)?" and the rats kindly answered, "Yes. Yes it does."

Cool paradigm not withstanding, the results of the experiment largely confirm (in an animal model) information that we already suspected. This is the research that introduced me to Salvia and after some digging I found that there hadn't been a whole lot of science done on this mysterious plant. So that gave me an opportunity to ask some new research questions of my own.

Willmore-Fordham CB, Krall DM, McCurdy CR, & Kinder DH (2007). The hallucinogen derived from Salvia divinorum, salvinorin A, has kappa-opioid agonist discriminative stimulus effects in rats. Neuropharmacology, 53 (4), 481-6 PMID: 17681558