The students in my IFS class this year are really an incredible group. Like each year before them, their interests and abilities vary greatly. But, what makes this group particularly special is how well they have bonded together as a cohort. Take for example last Monday plan, much to my surprise, all of them came walking into my classroom in Fine Arts 005 dressed in their pajamas! They went on to explain to me that it was “spirit week at IFS, you know, like in high school. Today is pajama day, tomorrow is IU-wear day…”. I thought to myself what a great idea the staff of IFS have come up with! It was only hours later that I found out that this was something that my class came up with all by themself. Only they were doing it!
Unbelievable! Pajama Day!
“You know, as a way of bonding,” my intern Ronak told me. That’s just the way these kids are this year, and it’s been fun to watch. Here the group of them are in front of the Showalter Fountain which also made new this week.
Also on Pajama Day the Attention Group presented their heart rate data which showed that–contrary to what they expected by the way — their classmates paid more attention to movie clips when they were in black-and-white and when they were in color! We talked about why that may be the case (perhaps more cognitive resources needed to be applied to the black-and-white clips because they were less familiar than the color clips, etc.)
This past week the emotion group got to design an experiment of their own. It was interesting, focusing on something that we talk about in class as a primary driving force among human beings in general — sexual attraction. And, perhaps that is even more of an interest to college freshmen, I don’t know, it’s been so long ago now since I was beginning my first days on a university campus… More later.
Once again more than a month has gone by my since my last blog post. And boy I’ve been busy, but don’t want to take time here to update you on everything that I’ve been doing. But, a little more than a week ago I met the parents of my Intensive Freshman Seminar students, and the students themselves, for the first time in a classroom in the Kelley School of Business.
And since I said at that time… like I always do… that I would be publishing information about what their kids were doing to this blog, I can no longer procrastinate in writing. And, if I had to choose a way to return to the classroom after 10 months off, IFS would be the way.
This is the third time that I’ve talked the seminar and so you think that I’d be used to the fact that the “I” in IFS stands for intensive. But the time between each IFS session gives me just enough time to forget how draining it can be (and, of course, I’ve gotten a year older!)
But, whew, this has been a whirlwind of a week. Already this week. I have introduced him to the Herman B Wells library, showing them how to check out a book from the closed reserve system in the in the Media and Reserve department, plus they had a tour of the entire library including tutorial of the online databases including the Web of Knowledge research database. For the third year in a row, this tour and tutorial was completed by Telecommunications Librarian Jian Liu. He always gives the freshmen a fantastically interesting tour, and teaches them lots of tools they can use. And, for the third year in a row…I learned something new as well.
But beyond all this, we also talked a lot about attention since it was ATTENTION WEEK. We talk about the distinction between automatic and controlled attention, discussed a bunch of different ways that media psychologists have measured attention in the past–identifying strengths and weaknesses of each of the measurements–and related attention to media variables.
The most fun, of course, is the last day when half of the students… the attention group… get to collect data from their classmates in order to test an original hypothesis that they have come up with during the week. This year the students chose what is actually a common one when I teach this course to undergraduates. They were interested in what the effects of color versus black and white was on attention to video clips. But, they also added something interesting to their expeiment by also asking To the question by also asking whether the presence of sound, as opposed to television clips where the sound has been removed, impacted the attention being paid.
Here they are gathering data to test these hypotheses. They gathered heart rate data and self-reported questionnaire answers. This weekend they have have been busy analyzing that data and creating a presentation which they will deliver tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Britni, Kelsey, Ian, & Zach have fun with media psychology
Ian monitors heart rate data collection during the experiment
Since physiology data collection has to happen one-subject-at-a-time, there were other things we had to line up for the rest of the class to do. So, I have a “canned” attention experiment that I have recycled from a former semester’s class that uses a method called Secondary Task Reaction Time. Tomorrow I’m going to present the results from that experiments after The Attention Group presents their heartrate data.
Jennifer and Garrett participate in the STRT experiment
Oh, and btw, I was able to take advantage of the time the students paid in the lab by snapping a few pictures that I need for my book. (The students were thrilled that their hands will be included in the book…but of course I’ll be getting them to sign waivers!)
Two birds with one stone...a picture for 'how to clean electrodes' for my book!
Did more sightseeing in Singapore yesterday and today prior to my first real duties associated with ICA 2010–which kick in tomorrow when I have to spend the afternoon attending my first Board of Directors meeting. Sounds….procedural.
But, there was no Roberts Rules of Order associated with my visit to the Singapore Botanical Gardens on Father’s Day. Although I missed being with my kids, I truly enjoyed myself. The joy began with the excursion to the Gardens themselves. I had looked on the SMRT online trip planner to execute my route. But, when I got to the Promenade subway station to buy my tickets…it turned out that the planned result was not the optimum one. The SMRT staff went out of their way to explain the best way to get there…and stressed that at every stop I should feel free to ask staff members (from ticket agents to bus drivers) for assistance and they would be happy to help. I did and they were…both yesterday and today! If you’re headed here, forget the cabs, take the mass transit.
So, if you’ve been following my blog during my trip down under, you have realized that I’ve grown quite fond of visiting gardens and parks. But, changing countries…even to another one in Australasia…introduces a whole new set of flora. Take a look:
Now, I initially wasn’t too thrilled about paying to get into the National Orchid Garden…but doing the conversion the S$5 ended up being about $3.50 and I think you’ll agree with these images it was well worth it…
I could post many more…but just go visit the place for yourself! You won’t be disappointed.
Today, one of the things I wanted to do was drop by the Suntec Convention Center so that I could get a sense for the rooms where the Information Systems Division sessions would be held. Little did I know that ROBOCUP 2010 was going on in the Convention Center beginning today. And, what was even better was that the event was open to the public. Now, I’ve never heard of this but I guess it’s been going on for something like 40 years…always coinciding with the World Cup. They use the guise of getting scientists and technologists to create robots that compete against each other in a game of soccer…and their goal is by 2050 to develop robots advanced enough that a team of mechanical soccer players can defeat the actual human world cup championship team.
Unfortunately, when I first dropped in on the event I did not have my camera with me. When I returned later in the day, most of the soccer matches had wrapped up for the day. I’ll try and get some pictures of that in the days to come. But, for now, you’ll have to be happy with video of Olivia the robot and her (in my opinion ’still-to-be-perfected’) voice localization mode:
