School name:  University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Type of school:  Four-year, land-grant, research-intensive university

School locale:  Lincoln, NE

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)?  50/50 mix of in-person and asynchronous-online graduate courses

For how many years have you taught psychology?  about 18 years

Classes you teach:  Foundations of Educational Research, Statistical Methods, Applications of Selected Advanced Statistics, Correlational and Experimental Methods in Educational Research, Experimental Methods: ANOVA, Correlational Methods: Regression, Multivariate Analysis, Evaluation Theory and Practice, and Longitudinal Data Analysis

Specialization: Quantitative research methods, applied statistics, and psychometrics

What size classes do you teach?  Anywhere from 2 to 35+ graduate students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Early in my career, a senior colleague conducted a peer review of one of my courses and afterward said, “You put a lot of time into creating your teaching materials and you clearly have a plan – everything you do in class is with purpose. But do you ever tell the students the purpose? Because I’m not sure they know.” In retrospect it seems so obvious, but spending time explaining why I cover some topics and not others, use a specific textbook or software, or why I want them to complete specific tasks on assignments has made a huge difference in gaining buy-in from the students.

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? The Joy of Teaching by Peter Filene – Great advice about setting realistic expectations for the first time you teach a course, being kind to yourself when things inevitably go wrong, and keeping in mind that the second time through will always go better.

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting?  That teaching and giving a research presentation, while related, are not the same thing. Also, if a student does not understand me, that is my failure as a communicator, not their failure as a student. 

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.  While I love teaching more advanced courses, I really do enjoy teaching introductory statistics. There is something so fulfilling in helping a student, who is anxious, is convinced they are bad at math, and might have had a previous unpleasant experience in an intro stats class, succeed in my class. I am not able to reach everyone, but nothing is better than having a student who did not want to be in my intro stats class admit to me (often in a hushed tone) that they are actually enjoying the class. Even better is when that student has built enough self-efficacy that enroll in more of my

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.  One of the additional readings in my introductory statistics course is a chapter from a research methods book on generalizability and replicability. I then have the students read Upper’s (1974) famous paper The Unsuccessful Self-treatment of a Case of “Writer’s Block” and the replication by Didden et al. (2007). After fielding the usual emails from students telling me there is something wrong with the pdfs, we discuss the papers as a class, and it is just fun to show the students that researchers can have a sense of humor.

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it?  This will probably sound horrible to most people, but I have always wanted to teach a 16-week sequel to my ANOVA course (ANOVA Part 2) because by the time we have gone over the basics and students are comfortable with ANOVA, the course is over. I would love to have another 16 weeks to talk about all the variations on experimental designs (fractional factorial, incomplete factorial, 2^k designs, ANCOVA, etc.). That, or a philosophy of science course.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style?  Energetic, detailed, self-efficacy-building

What’s your workspace like? I have taught in a lot of small, windowless classrooms over the years. For smaller classes, we make due, but with larger classes, it really feels like we are packed in like sardines, and it can really suck the energy out of the class. This semester I finally was able to get my ANOVA course into one of our big, beautiful, new classrooms where the students can spread out, I can move around, the technology is new and works consistently (!), there is lots of natural light, and the class just feels so alive. I have 35 students enrolled this semester (small for many, but huge for a graduate-level statistics course, especially for an in-person course post-COVID), and I am hoping to increase that number, so now I just need to figure out how to get this room every semester.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.  My first solo-taught course (Multiple Regression) was a disaster. I had TA’d a few courses in graduate school, but I had never taught my own course or gotten any real training in teaching. I knew the material, but I could not connect with many of the students (I was presenting, not teaching), which led to frustration and outright hostility from some students, which I did not handle well. My end-of-semester evaluations were not great, to say the least. One student said, “it’s like he’s seen professors and is pretending to be one “ (harsh, but insightful) and several students used the word “arrogant”. When I asked my department chair about it, he said, “Well… I wouldn’t call you arrogant, but...” It was then that I realized I had to make a decision: was I going to treat teaching as just a necessary annoyance so I could focus on research or was I going to put in the effort to try to become a more effective teacher? Eighteen years later, I am glad I chose the latter. Progress has been slow and there have been set backs, but every year I try to do at least one thing to improve my teaching: two years ago it was participating in the UNL Center for Transformative Teaching’s inaugural, year-long Aspirational Teaching Institute. At this point all I can really say about my teaching is, “I’m still trying”, but the students recognize how much work I put into teaching and seem to appreciate it.

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened.  I teach a graduate-level introductory statistics course that many students across the university take to meet their statistics requirement. A few years ago, a student enrolled in the course, and it was immediately obvious they did not want to be there. When I spoke with them, they basically said that there was no point for them to learn quantitative methods because they were a qualitative researcher and that statistics was biased because most quantitative researcher do not include positionality statements. Luckily, I had revised the course years ago to include a series of additional readings focused on statistical literacy that we discuss in class, including a reading on positionality that compares quantitative and qualitative researcher’s different philosophical approaches to dealing with researcher bias. By acknowledging the student’s viewpoint and presenting evidence that quantitative researchers are concerned with researcher bias, they just seek to address it in a different way, the student felt validated and became more receptive to learning about statistics. I am proud to say the student not only enrolled in more of my courses (and brought some friends along), but also asked me to serve on their dissertation committee!   

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching?  The biggest issue I am struggling with right now is figuring out how to grade everything in a timely manner while providing detailed, personalized, and helpful feedback. I have 80 graduate students across four courses this semester and no teaching assistant which, because three of the courses are at the 800-level and each has three small assignments due each week, means I have a total of 2,280 separate assignments/exams I need to grade. I do not want to use LLMs or make all my assignments multiple choice to help me grade more quickly, so I have been trying to find ways to revise the assignments so I can grade them more quickly without sacrificing the content. But it is the old dilemma of “fast, good, cheap” – you can only have two. So far… I have not figured it out, but I have a few ideas I am going to try next semester.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?  My middle name! Many students have guessed, but none have gotten it right (and I’m not going to tell you either).

What are you currently reading for pleasure?  The Knowledge Machine by Michael Strevens (non-fiction) and Novala by Paolo Bacigalupi (fiction)

What tech tool could you not live without?  Noise-cancelling, wireless headphones/earbuds.