A good life, this one.

Well, the semester is over, as is both my marking and testing.

In the academic parlance, I am well and truly buggered.

This will probably be a shorter post than my usual verbose linguistic gushings, as I am frankly very tired. All in all, I have had one hell of a fun semester. I have had my first tutoring experience; terrifying, but it's the first time I've ever really given a formal education, and it's quite the fun thing to do. Actually engaging with students who trust you to provide accurate information is one seriously motivating experience.

I've also managed to run two experiments, one of which was only partly successful (see my lengthy whinge/blog posts prior to this), and have learned valuable lessons about time management, data analysis and maintaining a level head when pressured. Not to mention that working too hard really does catch up to you. So in short, I shall provide an end-of-semester surmise: PhD life really rocks. In the whole time I've been a PhD candidate (since March 1st), I've enjoyed almost every day of it. Not bad for work satisfaction, methinks.

As of writing this I'm planning to go home rather early and sleep for quite possibly 24 hours straight, so I shall leave things here. I hope that life treats you all well, and I shall return next week with yet PhD life goodies!

-Harrison

Healthy Skepticism

In my last post I told you about some of my research on crime-scene fingerprint identification. Turns out that it’s actually a human, not a computer, who decides whether a crime-scene print matches a suspect or not. To make a decision, examiners place prints side-by-side, visually inspect them, and declare that the prints match or not, based on their training and experience.

The problem is that, even though fingerprints have been used in criminal courts for more than 100 years, no properly controlled experiments on fingerprint examiners' accuracy in identifying perpetrators had been conducted. Some experts have even claimed to be infallible, but mistakes made to date have resulted in innocent people being wrongly accused.

We wanted to find out whether these experts were any more accurate than the average person, and to get an idea of how many criminals are being wrongly set free and how many innocents are being wrongly convicted. Well, it took two years of planning and a visit to every major state police department in Australia, but we finally managed to conduct the critical experiment.

We gave 37 qualified fingerprint experts and 37 UQ students pairs of fingerprints to examine and decide whether a simulated crime-scene print matched a potential suspect or not. Some of the print pairs belonged to the "criminal" while others were highly similar but actually belonged to an "innocent" person.

The experts correctly matched just over 92 percent of the prints to the criminal. But, they mistakenly matched 0.68 percent of the prints to the innocent person. That they made so few errors means pretty impressive human performance, in my opinion.

We concluded that qualified court-practicing fingerprint experts are exceedingly accurate compared to novices, but are not infallible. Our experts tended to err on the side of caution by making errors that would free the guilty rather than convict the innocent. Even so, they made the kind of error that may lead to false convictions.

So, was my initial skepticism unwarranted?

Well, I think healthy skepticism is the cornerstone of science and rational enquiry. Fingerprint examiners make important decisions that can put lives and livelihoods at risk and the burden of proof is on the profession to demonstrate the scientific validity and reliability of its claims. We’ve worked closely with examiners, who were were eager to demonstrate their abilities, and we’ve shown that expertise with prints provides a real benefit.

Even though this one experiment consumed my existence for two years, it was totally worth it!

Matt
mbthompson.com

Tangen, J. M., Thompson, M. B., & McCarthy D. J. (2011). Identifying Fingerprint Expertise. Psychological Science. [PDF] [Press Release]

Tutoring for Fun and Profit

Well do I remember my first tutorial – so many thoughts running through my veins and emotions knocking about my head (or some combination thereof). Primarily, I remember thinking: “I hope that I don’t vomit” and “Why, oh why, did I choose to wear a transparent yellow dress?”.

Now, with a bit of luck your first experience tutoring wasn’t, or will not be, like this. But first tute nerves, that rowdy student, and mental blanks are inevitable parts of tutoring. Fear not, however, gentle reader – it is my firm belief that tutoring can not only make you money but can also be enjoyable (or less unenjoyable)!

So first, let’s cover some ground. If you are thinking of going in to academia you should tutor. Tutoring is a stepping stone to lecturing – and yes, odds are that if you go on in a university YOU WILL be lecturing. Tutoring looks great on your CV (especially if you tutor across a variety of subjects) and gives you invaluable experience for the further teaching that WILL come (until, of course, you score that amazing fellowship that allows you to turn your back on eager young minds).

We are gearing towards the end of January now, and as such, you will be starting to think about what classes to nominate for tutoring, and I hope, reflecting on how you can get through the tutoring semester with the least pain.

So, do a little mental exercise with me if you will. Take yourself back to a tutorial when you were a wee little undergraduate student. There you are – sitting in the back, chewing on the end of your indelible ink pen, and thinking of England. What did you wish for in that tute? If you were anything like me, you were thinking “Please, please, please, please stop boring me”, followed by “I’m hungry”. As a tutor you may not be able to do anything about the second point, but as for the first, well there are a few simple things that you can do to make tutorials less boring for your students, and yes, for yourself!

Students, like animals, will respond to your mood. In short, if you are afraid, they will sense it. Tutors and lecturers who get positive TEVALs uniformly report that their most common positive comment from students regards their enthusiasm. Students want desperately to feel excited about their field of study – and as tutors you are often the only teachers who talk to them personally, and infect them with the psychology bug. Whatever you may be tutoring, think about what you love about psychology, and try to communicate it to the students. Maybe you are tutoring something that is traditionally dry (like stats), or in a course that you are not familiar with. But my money says that you can still find things there that will peak the students’ interest. For me, while teaching stats, I consistently think about the amazing findings that stats unearth. ANOVAs may be boring, but when I, the intrepid explorer, employ an ANOVA to unearth an amazing finding about human existence, suddenly ANOVAs are just that little bit more sexy.

Aside from enthusiasm, I always like to inject a little bit of unrelated fun in to my tutes (and now lectures). Add a picture or two to your slides, begin your tutes with music, and tell an amusing anecdote that relates to the content of the class that you are tutoring. You may feel like a complete dork in doing so, but odds are your students are dorky too, and will appreciate your effort. Students (like romantic partners) love to feel that you are going that extra mile for them.

So, to conclude – I hope that my little pep blog has inspired you to be the tutor that I (and Tony Robbins) know that you can be. I will now end with two of my favourite and most memorable tutoring moments:

1. 1. Leading my PSYC1030 students in an example relaxation exercises, one of my students got a little too comfy and let out the most gargantuan fart. The class erupted in giggles that quite literally lasted for 10 minutes.

and

2. 2. Feeling overtired, I wrote my meanest comment on a failing PSYC3020 essay that I ever wrote – I said “you and I both know that you can do better than this”. I felt terrible about it for ages – until, that is, I received this student’s second assignment in which they had taken the comment to heart, worked incredibly hard, and scored a 7!

Good luck guys, and happy tutoring!

Love, Fi Barlow

studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??
Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

What does it take to do a PhD?

Students often ask me whether I think they could do a PhD, or whether they should rather do a Masters, go clinical, etc… I got my PhD in Psychology two years ago, in Germany, and won a couple of dissertation prizes and so I guess you could say I was a successful PhD student. However, more importantly, I was a very happy PhD student. I didn’t do a Masters etc., but I can maybe tell you one or two things about the PhD. Obviously, what I’m going to say isn’t valid for every University, Department, or even every Psychologist at UQ, and your potential PhD experience will depend a great deal on your supervisor, but hopefully I can give you an impression of whether or not you would have a good time doing a PhD.

In general, I think, you’ll have a fantastic time as a PhD student if you’re cut out to be a researcher, that is, if you think, act and work like a researcher. What does it take to be a researcher? Here are some of my ideas – very subjective and idiosyncratic, obviously, but maybe it’ll help you.

First, researchers don’t have anybody who works out their schedule for the day, they have no direct supervision, no boss to tell them what to do. You, as a PhD student, will have your own project, and you’ll be ultimately responsible for the progress. There will be a million things you need to know (both knowing how and knowing that), but no one to teach you. Supervisors may be helpful or they may be a hindrance. You may have to seek advice from others, and teach yourself one or two things without anybody helping you. Do you believe that you can learn without a teacher? Or do you even like learning new things autonomously? That’s really essential. Another important factor is: Can you discipline yourself, and do the things that are necessary, instead of only the things you like best? That’s important for your progress.

Second, successful researchers usually come in two broad flavours: critical or creative. Have you ever been praised for your critical or creative thinking? Have you ever excelled in a course where this was demanded? If not, don’t despair. If yes, that’s a good indicator that you have what it takes to be a researcher (because our prime job is to extend the current knowledge pool).

Third, there’s a reason that the most successful researchers often seem to be absent-minded: They are really involved with their research, they think about their project all the time. They often put in more hours than just 7, 8 hours per day, and when they go home, they take their research with them. Are you capable of working 12-14 hours a day? Are you prepared to work on a weekend? Have you ever been really involved with a topic, up to the point of becoming real fanatic about it? That’s a great plus.

With motivation and discipline, you can obviously learn everything that’s required to do research. However, one important thing is writing skills: If you don’t have good writing skills, it’s going to be difficult for you. You may overcome these difficulties, but it probably won’t be much fun. So you may be off better choosing another good job instead of researcher/PhD student: No reason to make it harder for you, right?

Hope this helps!!! Cheers, Stefanie.
Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??
Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au