Julia Strand 0:02 Hello and welcome back to the juice in the squeeze. I'm Julia strand here as always with my co host, Jonathan Peelle. Hello, Jonathan. It's been a while. Hi, Julia. Yeah. Welcome back to both of us. And to all of you to your listeners, sorry, we've left you hanging for a bit it, you know, got pandemic busy. Jonathan Peelle 0:21 Well, a couple of a couple of the times we had we had kind of planned to record and have to cancel it was for Yeah, various COVID related testing or, or getting vaccines which is, which is good. So, you know, anyway, we all do the best we can. Should we let's do a quick little Halloween follow up. I know it feels like it's way too late. But we we promised we would. And I want to, I want to hear about about how your you know, event went? Julia Strand 0:52 Yeah, it was good. It was good. It was a little quieter than then in past years. But we got we still had over 100 trick or treaters, which is pretty good. No, no. 187 like, the last Halloween of the before times. Jonathan Peelle 1:07 But two right there. How do you count your trick or treaters? Do you have like a little Oh, I have a little orange clicker. Okay. Yep. And it usually happens I'll typically have like a friend over Julia Strand 1:19 or a few you know, who are like helping to pass out candy. And if I need to, like, go up and deal with putting a kid to bed or something, someone else will, you know will be in charge. And they're very strict rules that clicks. It's only for kids who actually come up to the porch and get candy so parents don't count. If they're like older siblings who are lingering behind. They don't count babies and strollers who candy candy. They don't count either. It's just actual like Kid trick or treaters? Jonathan Peelle 1:44 Do you ever get older kids or parents who asked for candy for the babies and strollers who do not come up? Julia Strand 1:53 I thought I thought in the past about like having little mini bottles or something that I could hand out. Jonathan Peelle 1:59 But no, no, we haven't done that. We get i this year, we had a lot of requests for candy for the babies. And I didn't fight them on it. But I thought maybe it's for the older kids and not actually for the babies. Yeah, right. I don't know. Budos whatever. I don't know how many. Julia Strand 2:17 One of my one of my favorite ones that happened is I had a little kid who was like climbing up the front steps of the porch. And like tripped on our steps. You know, he's like wearing a big dinosaur costume and tripped on the steps and and then like when he got into the candy bowl, he's like, I think I need a lot of candy because I tripped. And I was like, Oh, I wonder how many times he's pulled this Jonathan Peelle 2:40 little scam artist. We had Can you guess what happened? Julia Strand 3:06 What? What happened? Jonathan Peelle 3:07 Well, the trick or treaters discovered the candy bowl on the porch because you know, some people who don't answer their door will leave out a bowl in a very obvious location on the front, like on their front porch or whatever. So even though mine was hidden, there was some ambiguity, I think, and they were just like, well, there's a candy here. I guess we'll take it. So by the time I got back at like 630 You know, 90% of our candy was gone. Because because the kids had discovered the hidden candy bowl, which I don't really hold against them. It was kind of my fault. But it was it did not go according to plan. So we ran out a candy lake by very early on, and then we had to get reinforcements and all that so it was It felt good to have a popular, you know, whatever. And we have a lot of Julia Strand 3:49 people out. Sure. You know, and sometimes just leave the candy bowl out. So you know, Jonathan Peelle 3:54 I know I never said that but then that usually doesn't last very long. Julia Strand 4:00 Yeah, right. When we went to bed, I mean or like went up to watch a movie or whatever. And I was like, you know when it seemed like like the trick or treaters were all done. I just like left the bowl of candy out and like turned off the porch light but like lifted, you know, out on the stairs. And when I got up in the morning, there was still a whole bunch of candy in there. Wow. I was like well, good. Good for you. Yeah, who did that TV my house or take all of the candy? Jonathan Peelle 4:27 Oh, you'll be happy to know that. After a bit of testing and YouTube videos, the smoke machine I thought I thought worked out really well. So we had it hooked up to the back of a Jack O' Lantern. So I just had a little hole in the back of the Jack O' Lantern and then connected the smoke machine hose. Got a hose from Home Depot that wasn't supposed to be for a smoke machine and put the hose in the back of the jacket, latrine and kind of put it all together and then I could have the Jack O' Lantern breathe smoke whenever I pushed a button Oh, nice. I was happy with that I feel like honor was served as the new as the new people in the neighborhood like, you know, anyway, we did. Okay. Julia Strand 5:09 That's awesome, good for you. Jonathan Peelle 5:09 Thanks. I have a long list of things to tell you about Julia, because I haven't talked to you in a while, like, Okay, I'm gonna go through them. So the first one is that I have a new podcast. It's called the brain made plain. And I think I mentioned to you, but I don't know if I've mentioned to our audience of the motivation behind this. And, and that's really come out of teaching cognitive neuroscience. So I've moved away from textbooks a couple of years ago, for various reasons. And now we just read original research articles. But I find I had a couple of a couple of downsides. So the positive parts of this have been, I think it's really good for students to get practice reading research articles, and a lot of them haven't done a lot of it. So it's kind of hard at the beginning of the semester, and then we do six to 10 articles. And by the end, they're much more comfortable. And, you know, they'll come back and tell me, I'm really glad we did that. Because the next year, I did this advanced class, and it was great to have some, some background. So that's good. And I also like having them interact with the actual research literature and see some of the details or nuances or, you know, just complications of real research that sometimes don't come across in a textbook. The downsides are, that sometimes the articles are like pretty confusing and a little bit dry. And it's hard to get through. If you've never read a research article before, and all of a sudden, you're dropped in the method section of something you've never studied. It's actually pretty overwhelming. And that's true for me, if I'm in a if I'm in a new field, although I have more practice, so that can be challenging. And so I was, you know, back when we had our first COVID semester, I did a, I did a podcast for my lectures. I had this vision that people were all stuck at home, and they could like, listen to my lecture while they went for a walk outside and enjoy the fresh air in real life. I asked around and no one did that they just had in front of their computer, listen to the podcast on my computer. So I kind of failed in that sense. And I get it. But then it kind of got me thinking, Oh, what about having like a guest lecturer, then I got older, I guessed a podcast person. And then I said, I should have a podcast about this. So it's a interview podcast, where every episode I interview a different neuroscientist about their work. And I have I don't advertise this, but I'll tell you all, because Because we're friends, I you know, I started with topics that I cover in my class. So the idea is that they can like read an article, and then listen to a podcast episode of one of the authors of the article, talk about the research topic, and maybe even the article a little bit. So it's kind of a little bit of a, you know, explain the science, but also from a broader perspective. And then also, like, get to know a scientist and hear a little bit about their career path and things like that. So I'm super excited about this, actually, I hope it will be, I hope it will be useful for, you know, people in my class, and then maybe some other classes too, if people are teaching. Julia Strand 8:05 That sounds awesome. That sounds really great. And it's nice. Yeah, that it seems like the kind of thing that I mean, even if it's nice to record lectures that aren't, you know, that aren't like super tied to a particular class, right to avoid saying things like, remember on Tuesday, well, the robots, you can use them in the future. But this seems like even even more than that, that it'd be useful outside of your class as well. Jonathan Peelle 8:26 Yeah, I hope so. And I, you know, the plan is, I just, you know, kind of currently putting up, quote, unquote, season one, I'm kind of doing them in batches. Don't tell anyone I recorded these like a year ago, and it's just taken, like a year to get them out. So I feel bad about that. But But what can you do? But yeah, I imagine after a couple of seasons, there will be more than I use anyway. And people can kind of pick and choose whatever topics they want, or, you know, whatever. All the all the various other non science stuff that gets talked about might be useful to Yeah, so that's at the brain made plain dotnet. If you want to have a listen, that would be great. Or tell a friend is teaching cognitive neuroscience. Julia Strand 9:07 Nice. Yeah, that's that sounds awesome. I'll check it out. Jonathan Peelle 9:11 I also totally changing topics I've had I had a little bit of a epiphany is too strong. I had a rethinking, again, about about time and attention and sort of how I live my life in a very small area. And that has to do with both Twitter and email. And this was Twitter was was inspired by Merlin man. I'll put a link to back to work, which is a podcast at Merlin does have Dan Benjamin, which I've mentioned before and have listened to for years. And my sense of Merlin is he's always trying to make things better. And like, just Keith thinks a lot about the way he does stuff. And so one of those things is Twitter. So there was a whole set of episodes where they talked about like how people Use Twitter and the different options and different apps you can use for Twitter. And so I kind of fallen into this cycle of just using the Twitter web app, because other apps are, don't have all the information. And sometimes it would be problematic to like, figure out threads and whatever, I would just use the, the Twitter web app, which is fine. And this is like not a moral judgment on anyone who wants to keep doing that. But there's a bunch of annoying things about it, too. And so Merlin's kind of suggestion was like, Well, if this thing is annoying to you, you should like try to fix it. So there is a, there's a web browser plugin called tweaks for Twitter. And that lets you do things like take off, you know, some of the advertisements or like, you know, like in the sidebar is like, trending now near you, which I personally I don't, I don't ever have to see so. So this will let you turn stuff like that off. And just kind of make it a little bit more of a, perhaps experience that that you want. And then the other thing that also I was inspired to do is like, how many people am I following now? I'm following 3900 people. And that's not because I really, really, really care about what all this 3900 People say. You do your listeners, of course, I care about what you have to say, but the other, you know, the other x number of people. But you know, your people, you meet people, and they follow you and you follow them back. And there's people that followed 15 years ago for I don't know why or whatever. And that means that my you know, timeline, you know, is as it is for lots of us. So just like lots of stuff, lots and lots of scrolling. And the percentage of stuff that I was noticing the percentage of stuff I actually cared about was pretty was pretty small. But luckily, this is like a solved problem. So lifts in Twitter, you can make a list of particular people. And then you can look at tweets from those people. So I've been starting, I started using Twitterrific, which is a Mac web client, which anyway, has has other features too. But that was helpful. And then also, lists were also useful. And so I just have a list of like, you know, I don't know, a couple 100 people that I kind of know and actually interact with the most. And I look at that most often. And then if I ever want to look at the the whole, like fire hose feed of everything else, like I certainly can, but what is meant is that I feel like my Twitter time has been more productive. And also like a little just a little more intentional. You know, it's like a small thing. But actually, I get on there every day. So it kind of adds up. The other thing, pro and con Julia Strand 12:40 question. Yeah. The thing about Twitter lists, couldn't you just not follow the people who are saying things that you're interested in reading? Jonathan Peelle 12:49 I could so I'm right. That's a great like, Julia Strand 12:53 like, you're following them for political reasons. But you don't actually well. Jonathan Peelle 12:57 Yeah, I mean, yes or no? Right. So like, Okay, so one option is I go through 3900 people and make a yes, no decision about all of them. And that seems overwhelming to me. So So let's make it easier for me, just to put them on a list of things that I want to see like, like a safe list of people to follow. But the other thing is like there are I'm going to give an example that may or may not be true, but I think everyone will understand. So like if we have a department Twitter feed, hypothetically, maybe I don't always want to see that. This is not like people I want to ban. It's just like I don't always need to see that particular thing. But I don't want to necessarily unfollow them. And I'm trying to support people in the department who are door tweeting, right. So like, yeah, you know what I mean? So you're right, it is kind of a little bit of a weasel out of just unfollowing people, but I found it to be easier for lots of reasons. Actually, sometimes people do I have had people give me a hard time. Usually jokingly, but maybe not 100% about not following them on Twitter. And usually that is not for any specific reason. It's just like, there's too many people in the world. And I don't always follow all the interesting people. But anyway, but people will people notice and so I try to be, you know, inclusive? Julia Strand 14:15 Yeah, yeah, no, I think that makes sense. I've used lists for like, like people will make them for conferences be like, these are the people who were at whatever conference tweeting about the conference. And I've done it for that temporarily, but I haven't ever done it for like, you know, normal use. Jonathan Peelle 14:31 Well, the cool thing, so you can have a private list or a public list. And so my list of like the people that I look at the most often is private. So it's just for me, but you can just set up I don't know how to do it in the web app, but in Twitterrific certainly if you just open up a window, that is that list and so I can just like to basically like I basically see every tweet on that list because it's not that many and then like in my regular feed, I can just like scroll to the top and just see whatever is his most recent so I think It's been working, it's been working for me. And I felt like I've been able to reclaim, like, you know, 1% of my sanity, that way. Julia Strand 15:08 One percent's a pretty big percent! Jonathan Peelle 15:15 The other thing is I, email wise, I always struggle with email. And I don't even get that much compared to some people, but it seems to have a disproportionate, like, Hold on my attention. You know, and just like, even if, you know, if I'm at home relaxing or doing something else, you know, I just kind of have my I'll pull up, it's like the whole phone, like you happen to have your phone up. And you happen to pull your email up when you happen to check it and delete some spam. And it doesn't seem like a big deal. But like that happens so many times during the day. In the end, it becomes like a fairly big distraction. And it's like, how many times have I checked my email at home? And it's been like an emergency, either either a good thing or a bad thing? And I can't think of any, but I always have this little niggle in the back of my mind, like, Oh, what if today's the day that like, I won the lottery, and someone emailed me about it at work, you know, like, anyway, so. So I've done this before I took, I took my, I took work, email off my phone. And yes, I can still get to it on the web app. But like, two factor authentication, like put it putting up barriers to checking it at home, right. So turn it off off that, and I've tried to be much more scheduling about email at work, like checking it maybe once a day and not first thing. And then closing my email client when I'm, when I'm done. And like, it is anyway, it almost seems kind of stupid to say it, but but the result has actually been very helpful. I think I spent less time doing it. And the other thing I'm trying really hard to do, which goes just against my, the core of my being, is just to not look at everything. And just like on Twitter, like there's like too many tweets, and I just scroll through and do a few things and don't have to read all of them. I'm trying to get email to be the same way. In other words, there are lots of unread emails in my inbox for the first time in years and years and years. And I don't like it, but I also kind of like it. I don't know, are you are you in every email has to be read person, Julia Strand 17:16 Did you hear me gasp? Jonathan Peelle 17:20 Yeah Julia Strand 17:20 no, I'm I'm a I maintain Inbox Zero, basically all the time. And just as soon as they come in, either make them make them to do items. If there's something I have to do, if it's a kind of thing that can be answered in, you know, less than a minute, I just deal with it immediately. And otherwise, I archive it and and make it go away. Jonathan Peelle 17:40 So my big fan, I'm just gonna say, yeah, go ahead. Good. Oh, I really don't like using the inbox for a to do list, which we've talked about before. And right now I'm a little bit in danger of that. So I really am a big fan of that. And yeah, it used to be more Inbox Zero E. But that is it hasn't really hasn't been effective for me. Julia Strand 18:04 Yeah, I, I think that talks about on here, okay. Remember, use a service called GQ, GQ You II s which is like a task manager that integrates really nicely with the Google Suite. And it makes it very easy to be like, here's an email, click a button. Now it's part of my to do list. And it makes it Yeah, so that said, I don't use my my inbox as a to do list because that stresses me out. Jonathan Peelle 18:27 Yeah. So inbox zero was probably coined, but at least made famous by Merlin man of the that I was just talking about, I'll put a link to, to a couple things that he wrote. And then I don't know, he's kind of he kind of moved away from that over the years. But I saw an article in The Atlantic Julia cover your ears. It's called the case for inbox infinity. And so, so these are, these are many things that happen. So that came, someone shared that with me. And then I also read a book called 4000 weeks if you heard about this. No, it's a I hate to say a productivity book. It's sort of like an anti productivity book. But anyway, I think the kind of the main gist of it is that like, there's a lot of ways to get really better at at managing lots of little things that may not matter in the long run. And it's harder, but better to like focus on things that you actually care about. So like, actually, it ties in well, remember our What was our episode on having too much stuff in the closet. Like, if you have too many things to do, just doing them all more efficiently doesn't actually help you. It's like rearranging your closet over and over and over to fit more stuff in when actually you should just go through most of it out. So it's kind of along that line. And so he kind of picks us up to that like, it's really tempting for me, anyway is like Okay, before I do any work, um I go through my list of all of these emails I owe people and like, clear the decks. And then when everything is put away is like cleaning the counter in the kitchen, now I can start to work. But then what I find is like, I'll spend my entire day doing all that stuff. And then I don't have any time to do the thing that I say is most important, like, like, I should be working on this new podcast. But then I spent five hours writing back to emails that I feel rude, not replying, but actually don't seem that important, or whatever. And then like, I have no time for the thing that I say is important. And so email is certainly not the only way that that manifests itself. But for me, that's been that's been kind of helpful. And, you know, just to try to deprioritize being quite so. On top of things, which again, it's hard for me, it's not my, that's not my nature, Julia Strand 20:50 being selective about the things you're on. Jonathan Peelle 20:53 Now, I do have a filter that pulls in emails from like, my department chair, and like my grants administrator, and like, a small list of people that I really don't want to miss. But then everything else just goes in a big bucket called, like, you know, the rest of my email, and I do I try to look at everything, but I definitely have not been replying to everything. So you can ask me next time we we talk like, right now, like, partly that's been helpful and partly has been causing stress. So I'm curious to see how the equilibrium happens in a month if it'll be like, more stressful or like Julia Strand 21:27 or less. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, and if you realize you've missed out on anything that, you know, was it was important that actually had some consequences, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm all for taking things out of the closet and prioritizing the things that are important to you. And I guess, I don't know, the system that I use, I've kind of found a way to, to, I think make make both of those work. One of one of the ones that is really helpful for me, is not like having my email open all the time. Because there's definitely like, for me, at least, like a task switching cost of like, I'm writing a paper, I got an email, let me go see what it is, oh, that's kind of interesting to do back to the paper. But like that, that time, just, you know, the, the cost of switching from one task to another, like, just take some cognitive energy and take some time. And so I find if I limit how often I do that, like, keep it close, and then just open it up every once in a while. I also deal with everything that has come in since I checked last a lot more quickly. You know, if there's just one email you like, oh, kind of sit and ponder it for a minute. But if there's a bunch here, just like, don't need to reply reply really quick to you know, like, kind of go through the more quickly. And so that's been effective and kind of making it. Yeah, making it more efficient for me. Yeah, yeah, I Jonathan Peelle 22:47 like that. The other the last email plug I'll put in is it's a new this is not for work email, I've been using this for like personal email instead of Gmail, I still have Gmail, so now has made it harder because I have to. It's, Julia Strand 23:05 hey, hey.com has been used, Jonathan Peelle 23:07 it is not free, so you have to pay for it. Which is, which is a downside. One thing I really like about it is when a new when you get an email from someone who's not emailed you before, it just says, Hey, do you want to get emails from this email address? Yes or no. And so far, it's been remarkably effective at keeping out spam. And probably it's a good new email address. I don't have like 20 years of accumulated, like companies that are trying to send me stuff or whatever. But like, a lot of times, you know, Here's, uh, you know, you don't many times these days, I get emails from stuff I never asked to email about, but they happen to have my email address for some odd reason, right? And like, oh, we have a relationship, it's okay to email you this advertisement. And yes, you can unsubscribe, but like, sometimes, like, I don't have time, or it's just too many or whatever. So I've actually found my personal email now is actually like, pretty much everything in the inbox is actually relevant. And important, and I get like very few emails, I don't get that many personal emails anyway, to be honest, but in Gmail is like, I have 50 Junk emails, like not actual spam, but things I don't care about. And then, you know, to one that I actually might want to look at, for real, and then in hay. So far, it's been like, pretty much everything that makes it through is something I actually want to see. So that's also been been good. I'm a little bit, you know, anyway, I don't like changing. I don't like changing stuff. And I would rather have it be free. But I also, I also understand business models and like if you make software you have to get paid. And at Gmail, Google is making plenty of money off of us. It's just we don't we don't pay them directly. It's off of our our time and attention and advertising. So I kind of would almost rather have pay someone directly for him. So I just Julia Strand 24:48 know what you're getting into. Yeah, right. Jonathan Peelle 24:50 Yeah. Julia Strand 24:53 Yeah, I also whenever I get an email that's from somebody that I don't care about, like, you know, I bought something I didn't use And they got my email and started sending me stuff. I always just unsubscribe right away. And that I get very few emails that I'm not interested in, I think because I just really stay on top of being like, nope, opt out. And that and that helps to right to see the signal through the noise. Jonathan Peelle 25:16 Yeah, and I think years ago, oh, see how old is our daughter five more than five years ago, I think I was probably more like you Julia. And like, I was like, if I stay on top of everything, it's all very manageable. And then, you know, for whatever reason, I stopped being able to stay on top of stuff, and then it very quickly became overwhelming. So I feel like this is like, this is partly inspired by like, who I read a book, and I had some good ideas. And in principle, this seems good. And also partly just a reaction to like, well, whatever, you know, whatever my ideal is in real life is not working. And so when I try something else, Julia Strand 25:54 you know what, and I feel like one of one of the themes that we've like, come up against regularly is like, try it, see how it works. It may not work forever. Figure out what works for you right now. Jonathan Peelle 26:04 Yeah, well, exactly it kind of reevaluated. Julia Strand 26:07 And so yeah, yeah. So speaking of reevaluating, it is so Carlton is on break from about Thanksgiving till about New Years, we've got a nice long winter break. And I have been using some of this break time to kind of be thinking about retooling, reevaluating the way that I teach intro psych, which I have not done since the before times, the last time I talked, it was January to March of 2020, just before before COVID. And we went online, and everything changed. And so I've kind of been like thinking about and it's kind of goes back to the conversation we had in a previous episode about like, what have we learned from the pandemic? How has it changed our you know, how has it changed us professionally? What are we going to do do differently, what we're going to, you know, carry forward. And one of the things that I've been thinking about and would love your input on is the way that I typic the way that I did assessment in intro was they would write a couple of papers. But the biggest chunk of the grade was was exams in person timed closed book exams, and some multiple choice some short answer some, you know, small essays, I have the luxury of only having 35 students in my intro class. And so I can do things like have them write papers and do essay exams. I'm not I'm not, you know, strictly like locked into multiple choice questions. But when I was teaching other classes remotely, I got rid of closed book exams, because I didn't want to have to deal with how to proctor stuff remotely. So I just switched to having exams that you couldn't get 100% on just by Googling everything, right that that, like they actually had to know stuff and puzzle through stuff. And the goal was to kind of asked questions that knowing the course content, well, would help them to answer the questions, obviously, but like, they actually had to think about stuff, right? It wasn't just memorization or things they could look up, they actually had to figure stuff out. And the only way they would be able to figure stuff out is if they had mastered the content, and then thought hard about it. And I really liked that switch, in part because it's the way that I it's, it is closer it is assessing in a way that is closer to the skill that I actually want students to come out of my class with, which is like, armed with some knowledge and better able to figure stuff out. And if you forget the terms and have to google them, that's fine. Because that's, you know, like, that's, that's how I figure stuff out too, right? I always forget the names of stuff and you Google it, but like you understand the big picture ideas and how to figure things out. And so in some courses, like when I did that, in my sensation of perception class, it works pretty well, because it's a relatively like narrow band of content. But it's trickier for intro, because this is supposed to be an introduction to like a super broad array of content. And so the question is, is it possible to have like, open book, Intro exams? I mean, as I'm saying, is it possible? Like, yeah, of course, it's possible. The question is, like, how does, how does one go about, you know, doing that same kind of assessment. But for something where like, breadth is really one of the things that you want to assess, right, they have to have a couple of papers where they delve more deeply into a particular topic, but, you know, if you have a section and you're like, Okay, I'm going to ask you about social psych and personality and psychopathology and intelligence, you know, it's like, real broad, right? Um, so that's it. kind of been trying to try to figure this out? Jonathan Peelle 30:04 Yeah, I mean, so I also went to open book untimed exams, when we were kind of doing remote stuff, because for similar reasons I wanted to be flexible and didn't want to have to, you know, practice stuff, and everyone has different internet connections and all that. And I liked the flexibility. And I was, and I was very aware that students were grateful to have the flexibility. And then, but then I started feeling a little bit like, I wasn't doing my job, because Because part of, you know, you know, why do we do exams? You know, is it like, yes, it's kind of evaluative. But I mean, for me, I view it much more as just like incentivizing people to spend some time outside of class, right. So if if people come to class every time and really pay attention to my, my lectures, and hopefully, they'll learn some stuff, but they're gonna learn more if they go review it afterwards, like, because they've seen it twice. Or if they go do something additional, like read a research article and think about how the two relate. And so I much more often view it as sort of incentivizing that extra time and thinking and unfortunate that that's the best way we have to do it. But that's, that's the best way I've come up with doing it. So then talking to students, about the last couple of semesters, I've kind of said, but I think, you know, understandably, I think most people, you know, it's an open book exam, they don't study all their notes, they just go find the answer to the one thing I asked. And then everyone says, Well, yes, of course, we do. Because they're smart. They're using their time well, and I don't I don't begrudge that. But then I feel like I've failed to it's not as no longer evaluative if it ever was, and now it certainly is not encouraging them to actually spend time studying. So yeah, so I, this is what I struggle with, too. And also, with, you know, 200 students in class, I don't have time, it's just not practical to do like a lot of essay, essay stuff. So I feel like I'm kind of limited to short answer and multiple choice. And I don't like the Yeah, I feel like the open open book and untimed is not working super well. For for for the encouragement, you know, Julia Strand 32:11 right, right. Yeah, I, when I did it in sensation, and perception, I kind of pitched it as like, it's open book. But, and also sorry, mine were open book, but timed. And the timing was generous enough that they, I didn't want them to like, feel rushed. But I also didn't want them to spend three days looking up every single point and doing a bunch of original research and things like that. And so the way that I pitched it to them was that I recommended studying for it as though it were closed book, right, like, actually studying for it. And then I gave it like an example essay question. That was pretty hard. Right to show like, Look, you it just because it's open book, you may think you don't have to study but like, how would you approach this question? Turns out, you actually have to have a really good handle on the material, because then you are able to spend the time thinking through it and making connections rather than, you know, just like look at looking stuff up. Yeah. And I was impressed when I when I did it previously, that there was still like, a very good distribution, right, it was not the case that making it be open book just made it easy, and everyone was able to do super well. And so that was kind of like, my biggest concern is Oh, no, if it's open books, just am I gonna be able to, like, even see any spread here? Are there gonna be any differences? And there, there certainly were so so that, you know, relate some of those concerns. That's Jonathan Peelle 33:48 good. One thing I what I've done in the past when I've done timed in class exams, um, as I've provided a list of things to study ahead of time, I call it a concept list. Two people like it, obviously, people might call this study sheet or a study guide, but just have all of the things we talked about in class or have all of the things in the readings, what what should they study, and I always, you know, when people say, Oh, how should I study for the exam, I'd say Well start with, you know, for each of those terms, you know, do flashcards or some version of that, right? And just have like a be able to define and get three sentence definition. If I asked you for an example of a you could give me an example. And so I feel like that makes it very manageable, and also very concrete. And then you know, and then I have to hold myself to that on the, when I make the exam, I have to make it so that all the stuff I asked is indeed something I told them about. And so that has always lowered the stress and at least given them some direction as opposed to just like, study everything. I took that away when I was doing untimed open book exams because no one was using them because they didn't study ahead of time, but I really liked it. I do like your approach of like, you know, having an open book but you you can't Do well, if you have not put any time in ahead of time, I think that that makes sense. And yet in the real world, you can just Google things and so we don't have to totally force memorization, but then I also feel like it does, you know, I do want them to have a certain working vocabulary of, of things that you know, you get that from, from interacting with it. Yeah. So, Julia, when you do that, when that makes sense to me for like, a, an essay question or long answer, you know, type question where you have to like, yeah, maybe put some thought in and do some like, synthesizing? Do you do that for like, for other question types? Like, do you do multiple choice questions that are designed to be more, you know, integrative and like, tricky, for lack of a better word? Or is it mostly for the longer stuff? Julia Strand 35:50 Yeah. So I don't like the word tricky, because it implies that there's, you know, tricks, but less difficult. Challenging. Yeah. Yeah. So I did, I did also include some multiple choice and also some, like, Mark, all that apply. So like multiple choice, but there can be multiple right answers. And, but But again, I tried to be like, if you can actually as I was, as I was writing them, I would sometimes just be like, if I just type this question into Google, what happens? And yeah, it was, it was really hard at first to like, figure out how to ask questions, you know, that, that you can't google that's actually testing. You know, what? What you want to be evaluating? And I and I had thought about doing these kinds of things before COVID. But then it was just like, I just, I don't know how to do that. That seems really hard. And then when forced, I was like, no, actually can't do this. And so yeah, I was able to do it for for multiple choice questions, and the like, check all that apply questions, as well as, as well as as essays. And, you know, in some of them, try to think of a good example. So for some multiple choice questions, I would say things like, um, you know, someone has, you know, this kind of issue that's happening with some sensory system, which, which of the following scenarios could that explain, and then describe for scenarios of people having atypical sensory perceptions in some way, all of which, like, are true things that could really happen. But you have to think about which of those three things that could really happen is likely to be the result of, you know, this, this other thing? So I think having questions were, like, all of the response options are true statements. But you'd have to figure out which of those true statements like is the result of the question, because as soon as you have things where some of the answers are demonstrably false, right, losing your sense of vision, makes you get taller or something, then, you know, as soon as there are ones that can like be easily eliminated, I think I think that makes it much easier to live process of elimination them sure is it they're like, No, all of these things are actually true. I have figured out like what the mechanism is, that is, you know, making it true. So I tried to do to do things like that, or, you know, here's a condition we read about in one particular sensory system. Do you think that that could occur in another sensory system? So they have to know about both of the sensory systems and they have to know about the condition that you know that that happened for one of the systems. And so it's not the kind of thing you can Google, you actually have to like, reason through it. Jonathan Peelle 38:46 I like that. Here's a, this is separate, but related. So for, like, in, in class participation versus not at where we are in COVID. So again, this is the other thing, like, I don't like the idea of having, I don't know, anyway, I like that, you know, there's a model of having a in class exam that everyone does, whether it's open or closed book at the same time. And I kind of do like that, just for, you know, preventing people talking about stuff, if there are things that are supposed to not be worked on ahead of time. I like kind of, you know, controlling when people get to see the questions and so on. But then also with COVID II stuff, I don't want people to feel like they have to come to class if they're not feeling well. Right. So in the past, I've been probably more on the side of No, you I mean, obviously, if someone is like, very sick, I'm not going to be a jerk about it, but like, you know, you should you have to come take the exam when it's given and you can't just, you know, take it take a makeup just because because, you know, okay, I can't, I can't handle that. So now with COVID I'm like, Well, if I do go to in class evaluation, whether it's open book or not, then how do I handle like, also being flexible? You know, I mean for COVID, but also I understand people other also have other stuff come up. So I feel like I had a really good I like honed my non COVID flexibility. And I felt really good about it. And now I'm just like, I don't even know what to do, like, oh, no, do you? How do you handle this? Julia Strand 40:14 Yeah, so what I did, what I did first sensation and perception, I think I'll do again for intro is say, you know, you have an hour and a half is not have exams be in class. So it's, you know, take it home, when it works for you, and set it up such that you have 90 minutes to do the exam. And you can do that anytime on Thursday or Friday. And, you know, if you happen to do it in the middle of the night, I might not respond to your questions in a timely fashion. So you might want to do it during the day, but like you can do at any time. And so that way, if they're like, I feel really punky this morning, I'll do it tomorrow, or something, they have that option, but it still is, you know, the same, like fixed amount of times. Of course, you know, you're gonna run into people who are like, Well, I had a paper on Thursday, and so I plan to take it on Friday, but then I got sick, and can I do it on Saturday instead or something. But once it is already not at a fixed time, it feels like less of a big deal to to be able to even later not fixed time. And if it's fully online, you it's just a couple of clicks to set it up for them to be able to take it at a different time, which is much nicer than being like, Okay, I gotta like, where are you gonna be? And who's gonna proctor? Right? Jonathan Peelle 41:26 Exactly. All these things are related. Yeah. Julia Strand 41:29 Yeah. And having that big window also is nice. Because if someone has a thing that makes it hard for them to take it at a particular time, I would rather just let them make that decision and figure that out for themselves rather than having to set it up with them, not because I'm cruel and heartless and don't want to talk to them. But because I know that students really vary in their level of comfort, talking to professor's and I don't want that to be like, you know, a roadblock. So I want the same opportunities to be there for for everybody without them having to, you know, have the nerve to ask for them. You know, and so it seems really tricky to figure out how to do this for a class that's really emphasizing breadth. But hearing this I'll talk about and I'm like, Well, I thought it was really tricky. I thought it would have been really tricky when I was doing it for s&p Two. And when forest I found a better way, good way to make it work. And so maybe I can do that again. Jonathan Peelle 42:28 Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is is just as you've described, sort of like thinking about what you want them to, to learn, or what you want to take away from it. And then that might be different. That might be a different thing, in a more of a broad class versus a focus class. But if you identify that thing, then kind of using the same principles to, you know, to come up with questions, I think was would would still work. Yeah. And I guess the other thing, too, is like, I don't know about you, I always feel like I have to have everything all figured out. And do it like the right way the first time. And not that I want to lay experiment on my, on my students. But like, anyway, if I have a particular kind of exam with a certain kind of questions, well, maybe I can't redo the entire class, every exam on every question this semester, but maybe I do like 25% of them. And I'm like, Ooh, I like how these work or like, I try it and like everyone gets those wrong. And I kind of messed up on those. Right. So it'd be willing to experiment a little bit and maybe, you know, try it out and see, see how it goes. It doesn't have to be an all or none. Julia Strand 43:35 Yep. Yeah. And I think also just being, you know, open and direct with students about like, Hey, we're trying something different. And here are the reasons that I'm trying it. And please give me your feedback about how it goes. And you know, maybe they'll hate it and ask for in person timed multiple choice close book. For the second Jonathan Peelle 43:58 exam, yeah. Yeah, Julia Strand 43:59 I doubt it. Well, these are good. Good things to think about. And I think I think my assignment is going to be doing some trying some things out and in a few episodes coming back for some follow up. Jonathan Peelle 44:14 Oh, good idea. Yeah. Now, when does your when does your term start in January? Julia Strand 44:20 The fifth? Okay. Jonathan Peelle 44:22 Great. So I don't start till like the end of January. So you can like try all this out in the first couple of weeks and then tell me what to do. Next. Is that great. Yeah. Julia Strand 44:32 All right. Well, thanks for the input. Great to talk with you, Jonathan. And thanks, everybody for listening. Talk to you next time. Alright everybody. Well, thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you again. Sooner than nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. All right, well, thanks for listening everyone. I hope you have a happy What am I doing? I like Mike. Jonathan Peelle 45:52 We've been too long since they've done this. Yeah, sorry. Okay.