Blogging on the Brain

Okay. At Gardner’s suggestion, I’m going to post my teaching statement. Please please please criticize it!

Throughout my time as a graduate student, I have gained much more teaching experience than I had expected. Even more surprising, I found I enjoyed teaching as much, and sometimes even more, than research. After receiving my masters degree in December of 2007, I began teaching classes for Tarleton State University (part of the Texas A&M system). The first semester I taught Animal Behavior, a senior-level psychology course. I had never taken a formal animal behavior course before, and I was given no materials for the course other than a textbook. It was bumpy at first, as I had never designed a course or written real lectures or exams before. Surprisingly, however, about halfway through the semester, I realized that I loved teaching. It was far more stressful than working with animals in my lab, but I found it to be incredibly rewarding and fulfilling.

During my time with Tarleton State I was approached by Dr. Gardner Campbell, the director of Baylor University’s Academy for Teaching and Learning (ATL), who invited me to become the first Graduate Fellow for the ATL. I jumped at the chance to work with Dr. Campbell, as it promised a unique opportunity to focus on my burgeoning love of teaching. My responsibilities at the ATL have included blogging about neuroscience, teaching, and learning (www.hillaryblakeley.net), giving Seminars for Excellence in Teaching, consulting with other departments regarding improvement of courses, and collaborating with other graduate students around the University. Largely due to these experiences, I began to refine my “teaching philosophy.”

Among my favorite aspects of teaching college classes is that I can treat my students as adults. Students seem to respond well when treated with respect, and in my experience, they tend to rise to whatever standard the instructor has established. In a discipline like neuroscience, where there is still so much to discover, it seems important to initiate undergraduate students into the field by sharing our questions with them and inviting them to think creatively about problems they may one day solve. It seems more important to engage students in the mystery of the unknown than to maintain a false semblance of omniscience.

I have become increasingly convinced that use of emerging technology has the potential to transform higher education. Students are already actively creating content online; they are active participants in a virtual community, as evidenced by the fact that some of the most visited sites on the internet, like YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia, are entirely comprised of user-generated content. I believe it would be a tragic loss to overlook the possibilities inherent for deeper student involvement through use of these tools. These technologies can be used in any number of ways: I have set up a wiki page for a reading group, attended a conference in SecondLife, and I plan to start a Facebook group for students in my lab course this semester.  As I mentioned earlier, I have also been blogging for almost two years, and my blog has become an incredibly useful record of my thoughts, experiences, and activities during that time. Blogging can be a useful way for students to keep a course journal, can also encourage students to process course material outside of the classroom, and can facilitate out-of-class discussions between students.

Participation in the learning process is also important in my teaching philosophy. Cognitive neuroscience tells us that passive listening is far less effective for long-term learning than meaningful engagement with information. Whenever possible, I try to engage students in group work, class discussion, or projects. I give my Adaptive Psychology students a project early in the semester that requires them to apply the principles we are learning to everyday life. They go somewhere to observe people, like a coffee shop, bar, or playground and note behaviors applicable to principles learned in class. They always come back brimming with excitement, saying that they watched two women fighting over a man at a bar (intrasexual aggression), or simply saw jealousy induction in a sit-com. There is nothing like the feeling of transferring passion for your subject to a student.

My ultimate goal as a teacher is not only to impart information, but also to help students manipulate it in such a way that they can carry that content with them outside of the classroom. I am lucky to teach such a fascinating subject, and I want my students to be as excited about neuroscience as I am. There is still so much we have yet to learn about the brain, and I am invested in both researching it myself and also helping to bring up the next generation of scientists.

I was recently given the task of writing a summary report for my work this last year at the ATL – a somewhat daunting task, given a 2-page limit. Anyway, I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on my experiences in 2009, helped along greatly by this blog. I think blogging has actually come to be the most useful tool I’ve learned to use in the last year – it serves many purposes for me:

1. I think most importantly, it allows me to organize my thoughts, and forces me to look critically at experiences I’ve had and try to make that into a narrative, or something like it, that another person could follow. This is something that I don’t normally do – especially if the experience happens to be difficult or painful for me (see posts on the NCORE conference). I very much appreciate the sort of therapeutic value of sitting down and making myself think about things.

2. I like the feeling of putting myself out into the electronic abyss – something I was originally terrified of. After doing this for a while, however, I’ve come to a couple of conclusions; first of all, seriously what is the worst that could happen? Someone disagrees with me? Thinks I’m a bad writer? Okay, well, that’s going to happen anyway, so why worry about it here, where at least you aren’t confronted physically to your face? Second, I’ve been very thankful for all the kind and encouraging comments I’ve gotten from readers – they aren’t terribly frequent, but they remind me that at least a few people “out there” think my thoughts are worth reading and considering, which is gratifying and humbling.

3. I love, love, love having a record of the last year! This was a benefit I didn’t even consider when I started, but now, when I’m being asked to write a review of my year with the ATL, I have the perfect place to go to remind me not only what I did, but how I felt about things, how they challenged me, etc. It reminds me of when my grandparents took me and my older sister to Europe after we graduated from High School – they bought us each a journal and told us we should really write in it every night to remember what we did. So, being a good granddaughter, I did as they said, even though I was exhausted most nights and didn’t really enjoy the process of writing that much, and let me tell you, I couldn’t be happier that I did! I wouldn’t have remembered a quarter of what we did that two weeks if I hadn’t written about it! (For instance, I was proposed to by a very friendly waiter in Brussels one evening!) So I’m beginning to feel very much that way about blogging. Often I don’t feel like it’s something I want to do, but I’m always glad once I have.

From my favorite web comic, xkcd - note the "blogipelago" at the bottom left...

Today I gave my Seminar for Excellence in Teaching (SET) on neuroscience and learning for the second time. I gave it for the first time last March, after a horrendous week of computer crashes and lost files, so I expected to be more comfortable this time. That turned out to be true to a certain extent – once I got started I think I had a lot more confidence than last time, but I had other types of uncertainty this time. First of all, I obviously wasn’t as active in preparing as I was last time. I certainly re-read (or at least skimmed) the bulk of the articles I used to build the presentation in the first place and I added some new stuff, but as I walked into the classroom, I found myself worrying I may have missed some huge advancement in the last six months, etc. But it went fine.

I got my feedback, and I’m happy to say it was mostly positive! Most of the criticisms were that the presentation time was too short and people wished we could have gotten into more detail – so that was a plus. Apparently there were one or two people present that either really didn’t like the material or didn’t like me, but I’m trying to focus on the other 18 or 20

So that’s about it for now. After the SET I had to teach a 3-hour neuroanatomy lab and I’m exhausted. I always forget how different “presenting” feels from “teaching.” Much scarier and much, much more tiring. Although I have to admit, it was nice to hear some applause at the end. What do you think the chances are of getting my students to do that after lectures?

This week I was introduced to a concept by a colleague of mine that I found quite interesting. She mentioned a student that didn’t have a “learner’s attitude.” I had never heard that phrase before, but I immediately loved it – and for anyone who has encountered one of these students, it may mean something a little different to each person, but I think it probably carries the same sort of tone.

When I consider a student without a learner’s attitude, the first thing that comes to mind is someone who assumes (regardless of how ridiculous it may seem) that they essentially already know everything. I think this gets to be a problem mostly for juniors and seniors in undergrad. They already have the basics, and are now watching younger students struggle through those first steps which, understandably, can give way to some ego issues. The funny part then as a senior graduate student is that I know they don’t know everything (or anything close to everything), but they still walk around assuming nobody (even someone more educated) could really offer them any useful information anymore.

I think I’ve always fallen toward the other end of the spectrum – mostly falling prey to the “imposter syndrome” that plagues many graduate students. There’s a great line in a Ben Folds song (I love Ben Folds, if I’ve never mentioned that on here) that says (please excuse the profanity):

You get smaller while the world gets big, the more you know you know you don’t know shit. “The Whiz-Man” will never fit you like “The Whiz-Kid” did…

That line is pretty much what I felt like for at least the first three years of my graduate career (and I still often feel that way now). While it doesn’t feel great to feel like you don’t know anything, and under-confidence generally doesn’t work so well either, feeling like that does serve to develop a couple of important characteristics that I think need to be present to have a “learner’s attitude.”

1. Humility: This one is huge – and also very rare in academia. I still often find myself wondering what would happen if the scientific community would drop its collective ego and actually cooperate and collaborate with each other. Even if we could all simply allow for the possibility that we’re wrong or that there will probably always be someone out there who understands something more thoroughly or who has a different way of thinking to offer, I think any given discipline would benefit. As far as the individual learner, this too is important. The seniors in undergrad don’t yet know that in large part, the material in their classes – yes, even the upper level ones – has been simplified for ease of learning, but if they can hold on to some humility (or perhaps rediscover it in graduate school), they’ll make much better learners than those that continue to think that they know everything already.

2. Respect: This is an interesting one for me to think about as a graduate student. I have lots of undergrads that I teach (both at Baylor and the community college). Like I mentioned above, many upper level students are starting to get a little bit of an ego going, and they can be very disrespectful toward me as their teacher – I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have my PhD yet or I’m relatively young, but I’ve often had students speak to me as if they know more than I do. Now I, for my part, try to remember that paragraph above about humility, but I also have to wonder what is going through these kids’ heads that they speak to a fifth-year graduate student as if they’re more educated than I am? In addition, I think there needs to be some respect for whatever field you’re working in/studying as well. Do these kids really think there’s nothing more to neuroscience than a few undergraduate courses? Be serious.

3. Curiosity: This is obviously necessary to be a good learner, and if you assume you already know everything there is to know about a subject, there’s nothing driving any further investigation or even interest in looking into what might be going on.

So I know I talked about most of these in the context of undergraduates, but I think it’s equally (if not more) important for graduate students, post docs, and professors to maintain this learner’s attitude – because I think most of us lose it somewhere along the way.

I’d be interested to hear what qualities anyone else thinks would be part of this learner’s attitude too!

So this week was pretty busy. I’ll admit to taking Monday off, but somehow having a four-day week didn’t seem to help much. I’m at the point in my program where the vast majority of my time really should be dedicated to data collection. I’m not sure if I’ve talked much here about what I do, but I use a technique called whole-cell electrophysiology to look at physiological properties of neurons in vitro. In my case, I’m looking at pyramidal cells in the lateral amygdala and looking at measures of excitability (essentially how easily they fire action potentials) in the presence of a couple of different chemicals.

So the technique is very prone to glitches. There are several compounds that I have to make very meticulously, a whole collection of potential mechanical issues, and, well, a lot of normal human error that goes into every day in lab. It’ s been a frustrating week in this department. The way the technique works is that you “look” for a cell to suction onto (looking for deflections in an oscilloscope reading to show you when you bump up against something in the tissue slice), then rupture the cell to make a continuous aqueous environment with your recording electrode so you can control either voltage (and record current) or current (and record voltage).

The main problem is that once you obtain a decent cell, you have to be extremely careful not to bump, brush, or breathe wrong around the table that the setup sits on or you’ll lose the seal to the cell. The bummer is that I have to change solutions about six times throughout my protocol – each time just asking for a bump to the equipment. The other bummer – it usually takes anywhere from one to six hours to find and seal a good cell, so if you lose one it may mean that the possibility of collecting good data that day is out… and that’s what every single day looked like this week.

I don’t mean to complain; I know that it’s not supposed to be easy to be a graduate student, but it’s rough to go a whole week where it feels like you’re working really hard, only to realize on Friday night that you’re not even a tiny bit closer to your goal and you might as well have taken the whole week off and at least enjoyed yourself. Oh well. Here’s to hoping a quiet, rainy weekend will restore my motivation for next week.

I just met my new Adaptive Psychology class this morning, and while I can’t believe we’re already in the first week of the term, I think it’s going to be a fun semester. No matter how resistant I feel as the beginning of the semester approaches (especially the fall semester), I always still get a little excited when I get to talk with my students for the first time – especially for this class, which is a lot of fun to teach.

This will be my second time teaching the course for Tarleton, and I find myself caught between really wanting to improve the class from what I did last time, and wanting to conserve my time and energy and just use all my lectures/methods/etc. from last year. It just took I so much work the first time through the course – reading the textbook and writing lectures and coming up with exams and quizzes – that not only do I often not feel like using that much time again, I also feel like it would be a waste of the previous time spent if I didn’t use that work again.

I’m sure I’ll end up using quite a bit of my preparation from last year, but I really need to make time to sit down and figure out how I can make things work better and how I can get the students to engage more. Last year it was pretty much a lot of lecture, then projects/presentations from the students. Anyone have any thoughts on how to (generally) make a course more engaging? Are there things out there that you veteran teachers do to stay more interesting while lecturing? To pull more students in? To get them to participate? As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated!

The end of another semester. Students are scattering, grades have been turned in, and I actually have some time to breathe (and write). I think overall it was a good semester, or at least that the good outweighed the bad. The bad is mostly that I let my other responsibilities take over time that I really needed to devote to lab work. The good, however, is a slightly longer list.

First, I completed my first semester as the graduate fellow with the ATL, which was a total blast! I got to give my seminar on neuroscience and learning (something I never would have dedicated as much time to had I not had a good excuse to), meet some great people at Baylor, and learn a WHOLE lot about using technology (like this blog) to open up conversations and get advice from all of you out there that know a whole lot more about, well, most things than I do. And to top it off, I’m being sent to San Diego in a few weeks to be a representative for the ATL and the NCORE conference! It’s a tough job

Second, I completed my third semester teaching at the community college. It was an interesting process this time through because it was the first time I wasn’t scrambling to write lectures and structure the class as I went (I taught the same class last spring). While it was really nice to have my lectures ready to go, I could feel myself getting a little lazy about teaching rather than using the extra time to continue to improve the class or add new material/activities. For those of you who have taught the same courses for long periods of time – how do you keep yourselves motivated to keep making the class better? I don’t want to be one of those teachers who you can tell is bored with the material or isn’t totally invested in making the class the best it can be. I’ll have to try harder next semester when I’m back to teaching Adaptive Psychology. On a good note, though, that class is already full and was the second one (behind stats, which is required) to reach capacity during registration!

Third, I got to teach a new lab at Baylor: Behavioral Neuroscience. It was pretty great getting to actually teach something I’m interested in rather than just supervising students or teaching stats (no offense to anyone out there who likes stats – it’s just not my thing). Next semester I’ll be teaching the lab for Clinical Neuroscience, which is mostly a neuroanatomy lab using sheep brains. Not only should it be fun to teach (if you’ve never been in a room with 20 undergrads and as many sheep brains, you should try it), it should also be a good review for me as it’s been a couple of years now since I’ve taken neuroanatomy. Also, a big thanks to Becky Helfand for walking me through all of this stuff, I’d be lost without her!

So it was a busy semester, and I’m a little worn out, but in that nice kind of way when you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something. This summer I’ll be taking my LAST CLASS EVER – molecular genetics – for the last few credits of my biology minor, then I’ll be back to the usual grind…which I think I kind of like.

Well, I was all prepared to go for the multiple-posts-in-a-week thing, but clearly that didn’t work out. Fortunately, it didn’t work out because I was so busy doing fun stuff this week! We had a big week at the ATL with the Annual Educational Technology Showcase on Wednesday, and a very interesting workshop from Bryan Alexander (of NITLE) on digital storytelling on Thursday. In addition, I finally gave my first Seminar for Excellence in Teaching after all of the drama with my hard drive!

I’m actually happier with the SET than I thought I’d be. I liked how my re-made version turned out better than my original, which was nice, and I ended up getting a pretty diverse audience which was an unexpected surprise. We had people from history, philosophy, and all kinds of other disciplines and everyone seemed relatively interested in the topic (yay!) – although I’m sure the free pizza helped with the popularity too.

While overall the SET went pretty well, there are some things that I caught myself doing that I think I really need to keep an eye on in the future. First, there were a couple of Ed. Psych. people there, which immediately made me nervous and started me second guessing my information and worrying that I’d be stepping on toes by saying neuroscience can step in and help direct their field. So I tried to be moderate in my claims and careful about my material, but even so, afterwards a very nice lady (from ed.psych.) kindly told me that ADHD – which I’d been talking about and referring to as a “learning disorder” is not actually categorized as such. She was very nice about it, but I still kind of felt like an idiot. Oh well. Now I know.

My other concern didn’t come up until after the seminar when I was talking to several other people on their way out. One man had asked if any of the research I’d been talking about pertained to autism, and several others had asked about the possible over-diagnosis of ADHD. Now, I tend to get a little outspoken about my dislike for medicating high-energy 8-year-old boys, and I’ve met a whole lot of people convinced that their socially awkward kids are on “the spectrum” (of autism disorders). Luckily I didn’t spout off about any of that because the man that came up to me said he had a 12-year old son with asperger’s. As I chatted with him about the difficulties of dealing with public education in those scenarios, I breathed an inward sigh of relief that I didn’t open my big mouth about overdiagnosing/paranoid parents. I need to remember that in front of an audience – especially a mixed one without much other background in my subject – I need to stick to facts, not my opinions, and it wouldn’t hurt for me to remember that I’m not a clinician either.

Today was not my best day. It started off just fine and I was anticipating a nice balance of productivity and a little relaxation this evening – little did I know what kind of day I was in for. Now, in an effort to keep this post from turning into me whining and complaining until anyone reading out there wants to die, I’ll bullet-point my day.

-Got to lab

-Booted up laptop

-Laptop did not boot

-Spent the next 4 hours trying to diagnose problem (missed my lab-mate’s thesis defense presentation in the process)

-Had to teach lab at 2:30, but didn’t have a laptop to use for powerpoint

-Asked around to find a laptop

-Found a laptop, went to class

-Laptop had unkown password

-Found password, returned to class, entered password

-Laptop would not recognize my USB drive

-Borrowed laptop from student in my class (=humbling/embarrassing)

-Student laptop recognized my USB drive but not the cable connecting it to the projector

-Propped laptop screen under ELMO which WAS connected to the projector, commenced the one of the worst lectures I’ve ever given.

-Lab lasted about twice as long as it should have

-After lab, a student stayed to argue about the classifications of cranial nerve functions for another half hour, so I didn’t get a chance to go to the gym (the one thing that might have lowered my stress level)

-Came back to my office, friend had taken apart my computer and pronounced my hard drive dead (the really bad mechanical kind of fail that sounds all scratchy and grindy).

-Freaked out a little when realizing everything I no longer have access to: the exam I’m supposed to give my class at 8am tomorrow, my powerpoint for the SET on monday (see previous post), and all my powerpoint lectures for the rest of the semester – not to mention all my dissertation proposal stuff, pictures, and music.

-Came home and re-wrote the exam for tomorrow morning, about to go make copies.

So there is now a massive effort on the part of some very good people to get my stuff off my hard drive. Current plan: we’ve purchased another of the same hard drive on ebay and will attempt some sort of frankensteinian procedure to make it work at least long enough to copy my files. Thanks to those of you who helped today!

So here’s my question: Why, in the technologically advanced age we live in, is there not a fail-safe for dummies like me who don’t back up their files nearly often enough? Seriously. Some sort of hard-wired USB drive like the little SIM cards in cell phones. Would it really be that hard? Anyway, enough complaining. I have a lot of work to re-do.

So this feels weird. Kind of like writing an email to nobody in particular. Clearly I’m very new at the blogging thing, and I’m hoping I’ll start to feel a little more comfortable as I acclimate to the process. I guess I’ll start with a little about me.

As far as my professional life, I consider myself first and foremost to be a scientist. I’ve always been a scientist, really – from my early days of reading about Jacques Cousteau and learning what “SCUBA” stands for (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), to examining the physiology and proportions of animals through my (very limited) artistic endeavors. At some point, my curiosity found direction in the mystery of the brain. I got my MA in neuroscience in December of 2007, and I’m now working on my PhD. Let me just say that if you ever encounter an awkward silence in conversation with me, it’s a safe bet that you can break it by bringing up anything remotely related to the brain. I am utterly fascinated and in awe of the complexity, elegance, and power of our least understood organ.

In addition to being a scientist, I am also a teacher, and a fairly new one at that. Just over a year ago, I started teaching at a community college in the area after essentially no other teaching experience (just some very minimal TA responsibilities for labs at Baylor). I took the job because I thought it would be good experience, look good on my CV, and, let’s face it, anyone who’s ever lived on a grad student stipend knows that it never hurts to earn a little bit extra on the side. So I jumped in the deep end.

The class was animal behavior. They handed me a textbook and about two rules and told me to go for it. A class of 30 for an hour and a half twice a week.  I started off the semester frankly terrified – that I would say something stupid, say something wrong and have a student correct me, or, worse, say something wrong and have the students believe me. I mostly lived in fear that first semester. Despite what I felt was a shaky start, I accepted the offer to teach a different course the next semester. This one was adaptive psychology. I started off the semester with about the same anxiety as the first, but then about halfway through, I realized something that came as quite a surprise: I was enjoying myself. The course content was interesting, sure, but more than that, my students were responsive and excited about the material; they were asking questions – questions that I knew the answers to! I found myself looking forward to the mornings I got to teach, not dreading them. I am now teaching the animal behavior course again, and I have to admit, there’s nothing like that feeling you get when leaving a classroom after a great class. I think I might be hooked.

So that brings me to the impetus for this blog. I was fortunate enough to be offered a position as the graduate fellow with the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor, a position which gives me the opportunity to investigate the intersection of two things that I’m very excited about: neuroscience and education. That’s what this blog will be about (more or less). So stay tuned if you’re interested. More coming soon…