Office hours vs. review sessions: the power of a name and a little prep

My campus requires all faculty members to hold four office hours a week.  During these office hours I'm required to be in my office (or some other location), available to any student who wants to come by.

The idea is a great one: there are many reasons why students might want to come and see instructors outside of class, and office hours give all students an opportunity to do just that.  So, in my dream world, I would sit in my cozy office chair sipping tea while student after student came into my office asking thoughtful questions about biology and my advice on transfer possibilities (and bringing me artisan cheese to sample).

But in reality, office hours quickly turn into just another hour to get work done.  Students almost never came by, and when they did it was usually for a few questions that were quickly answered before the student went on their way.  Oh, sure, anytime there was a major assignment due a handful of students would come by to ask about it, but that was at most four or five students every few weeks (I tend to have about 70 to 100 students a semester in my courses).

The lack of student attendance was frustrating, because I knew they could use help (shockingly, they don't all score 100% on my exams, despite my amazing in-class instructing), and I also knew that they wanted help, as there was always a constant chant of "Can you hold a review session?" whenever an exam came up.  I often would hold a specially scheduled review session, while in the back of my mind thinking, "Wasn't that what office hours should have been for?".

And then last year it clicked.  Students desperately want to go to review sessions, but most couldn't care less about office hours.  A quick e-mail to my dean confirmed that there is no requirement to actually call office hours "office hours", and an idea was born: I no longer hold four office hours a week; instead I hold four hours worth of review sessions each week.

I hold the review sessions in the lab I teach my courses in, scatter the hours through the week (to minimize scheduling conflicts), and publish the hours on my syllabus.  I also don't just sit there and wait for student questions; each week I come with prepared slides that list what I can go over that day (e.g., what I think are tough topics), a few new things to talk about (e.g., a preview of material to come, or another example of something we've talked about), and a set of test-like questions from the prior weeks' content aimed at promoting discussion of core topics.  I then ask the students what they want to do, and we go from there.

The weekly review sessions have been a huge hit.  For the primary class I teach (majors' biology), I had four students attend during the first week of the semester (I've never had students come to office hours during the first week to ask about anything other than enrollment issues), in the third week I had seven students attend (even though I had cancelled both review sessions due to being off campus, and only announced that I would be holding one an hour before it was scheduled to start), and last week I had 14 students show up.  This week I haven't even held all the review sessions yet, and I've already had 13 students show up.

In the first four weeks of the semester I had more students come to my review sessions than I typically have come to my office hours in an entire semester.  The students are active and engaged; most stay for the entire time asking me questions and working on my sample questions.  I'm also getting lots of positive feedback ("These are really helping, Prof. Radagast").  And, as an added bonus, since I hold the review sessions in the lab room, students know that they can use the review sessions to give themselves extra time to look at lab specimens, if they need it.

One challenge to this concept is that the review sessions must be specialized for each class.  So, I had to split up my office hours to target each class I teach (luckily I only teach two separate courses), and I've made it clear that I'm happy to schedule office appointments for anyone who can't make the review sessions for their class.  It's not ideal, but the extra attendance and engagement by the students make it worth it.

I think there are three interacting factors that contribute to the success of the review sessions:

• The name - Students think about "office hours" in a completely different light than they do "review sessions".
• The location - Instead of walking into my office and interrupting me while I'm doing some probably meaningless, but important-looking task, students instead walk into a room designed for teaching, and see me sitting at the front doing nothing but waiting for them to arrive¹.  
• The preparation - While students end up asking me lots of questions, at the start of each session I usually just get blank stares. Having a few slides prepared with sample test questions, extra content, and a list of what I think is tough helps break the ice and get the session going.  The sample exam questions are especially liked, and much of our time has been spent going over them.

As an added bonus, I'm enjoying the time much more.  Instead of guiltily doing administrivia during office hours, I'm now interacting with my students and helping them learn the content.  Which is, after all, why I'm here.


¹ Or, more likely, they're waiting at the lab door and see me rushing from my office to the lab 15 seconds before the review session is scheduled to start.

Plum frozen yogurt

It's hot here in southern California this weekend¹, and thus on Friday I broke out our ice cream maker and made some plum frozen yogurt.  Friends have told me that they haven't had much luck making frozen yogurt at home, as they find it tough to get the yogurt strongly flavored enough with the bits of fruit they add.  I've never had that problem with this recipe: by adding more plum than yogurt, this frozen yogurt ends up filled with plummy goodness, peppered with blended bits of purple skin and small chunks of plum.

This is my favorite homemade frozen yogurt recipe, and it makes an excellent refreshing snack or dessert.

This recipe requires an ice cream maker; for more background on home ice cream makers, see this post.


6 plums (3 to 3 1/2 cups coarsely chopped)
1 3/4 cups whole-milk, plain yogurt (unsweetened)
3/4 - 1 cup sugar


1) Remove the pits from all 6 plums, leaving the skin on.

2) Peel the skin off one of the plums, saving the skin for step 3.  Finely chop the rest of the plum (you should have about 1/2 cup), and set aside.  These plum pieces will be added to the frozen yogurt as it freezes in step 5.

Who knew Paperboy was based on real life?

While I teach my favorite course on Friday, I'm basically in the classroom prepping, teaching, or cleaning up all day long.  So, come 5:00 I was exceptionally happy to be able to head home (and also exceptionally wiped out).  Unfortunately, though, I didn't know that a video game was awaiting me on my street:

• As soon as I turned onto my street, I had to slam on the brakes thanks to two dog owners who were chatting while wrangling their large dogs into the open door of their SUV.  Said dogs were on leashes, but extended into the center of the road.
• After realizing that said dog owners weren't going to get their dogs into the SUV anytime soon, I moved into the opposite lane to drive past the dogs.
• Immediately after passing the dogs, a young teen on a bike rode out from between two cars in front of me, and slowly crossed the road.  
• Shortly thereafter a woman closed her car trunk while carrying a large bag of groceries.  Without looking, she crossed the street right in front of me.  (Sadly, there wasn't a baguette or bundle of celery sticking out of the grocery bag)
• After avoiding the woman (and now going extremely slowly), I noticed a squirrel a few yards ahead of me on the side of the road.  The squirrel darted out into the road as I approached.  Luckily the squirrel thought better of it and darted back.
• As I neared home, I saw a teenager on a skateboard riding down the sidewalk next to a child on a bike.  Said child was clearly just learning how to ride a bicycle.  The pair slowly wobbled forward, reaching our driveway just as I was ready to turn into it.

Amazingly, nothing happened when I parked.  

Cheese!

In the past few years my SO and I have been bitten by the artisan cheese bug.  We started out sampling the cheeses at Trader Joe's; buying Basque Shepherd's cheese at Trader Joe's was probably the seminal event in our cheese-eating lives. Our friends have learned of our addiction to cheeses, and so for my birthday a few friends went to a cheese store and bought me a selection of cheeses that I'd never tried before. 

Clockwise from upper left: Beemster extra old (Holland, cow), Lagrein (Italy, cow), Humbolt Fog (California, goat), and Cashel Blue (Ireland, cow)

We broke out the cheeses the day before yesterday, serving them with good bread, almonds, and honey.  Since I know my friends are dying to know how these tasted, here's a quick summary. Note that I'm no cheese expert, so if you're looking for good descriptions I'd suggest you try another source :)

Beemster extra old: This is an aged cow's milk Gouda from Holland.  It's hard to see in the picture, but the cheese is studded with crystals, and thus is fairly showy.  We've had some aged Goudas in the past that were so strong that they were best used for cooking; eating them raw, even with bread and/or honey, proved unsatisfactory.  This Gouda, however, is a perfect eating cheese.  It's filled with good aged flavor, it's caramelly yet savory, but is mild enough that it's great all by itself or with a piece of bread.

Lagrein: This is a cow's milk cheese from Italy, made by the Mila co-op.  The cheese is bathed in red wine and spices, and has a very distinctive purplish rind.  And, oddly enough, it tastes just like a good salami.  I found this cheese to be perfect all by itself; eating it with bread or other sides overwhelmed the moderate flavor, which I wanted to savor all by itself.

 

 Humbolt Fog (front) and Lagrein (back).

Humbolt Fog: This is a classic California aged goat milk cheese, which I'm embarrassed to say that I hadn't tried before this tasting.  I'm a sucker for ash layers (I've loved the Morbier I've tried), but the ash seems like it's just for show (I didn't notice much of a flavor difference around the ash).  The cheese itself is a delicious melding of two distinct flavors.  The gooey outer region has a savory,  pungent taste with an almost blue flavor from the rind, while the center has a milder, tangy goat cheese flavor.  And since the two flavors are spatially separated, you can decide for yourself which flavor(s) you'll get in any given bite.  We both loved this cheese, and we ate the entire chunk in just one sitting.  The cheese reminded us of Le Chevrot, though the outer gooey portion of Le Chevrot we've eaten has been stronger in flavor.

Cashel Blue: This is a cow's milk blue cheese from Ireland.  Until a few years ago I disliked blue cheese; the classic "blue" flavor just turned me off.  But, I kept trying them, and my first favorite was Roaring Forties, which I had at The Cube in Los Angeles (my favorite cheese restaurant).  Cashel Blue reminds me a lot of Roaring Forties: it's a creamy blue, and was just delicious on bread either by itself or with a dab of honey.  I don't have a lot of experience eating blues, so can't say much more than "I liked it!"

The cheeses made for an absolutely delicious meal; thanks for the present!

Follow a chemical oceanographer!

A good friend of mine just started a post-doc at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and for his first week at work they decided to throw him on a month-long cruise aboard the RV Atlantis.  He's blogging about his adventures over at The Daily Bucket.

Image by Steven Beaupre

If you've ever wondered what it's like to live and work aboard a research ship sampling water from the depths to analyze for carbon isotope composition, now's your chance!

Homemade chicken pot pie

My SO and I almost never roast meat, but recently we ended up getting two chickens for free.  So, we roasted them and served them with a delicious gravy.  By the time a week had gone by, we'd already made a number of delicious chicken sandwiches, so were excitedly looking for another way to use the leftovers.  Enter chicken pot pie.

Before we made this, I was never a fan of pot pies.  In fact, I'll admit to having to be dragged kicking and screaming into cooking this.  But then I went back for thirds.  In my defense, most of the pot pies I've had were either frozen vegetables and bland chicken in a sauce that tasted like unseasoned flour topped with cardboard, or were salt-fests with mushy tops. 

Crust: (this is essentially a three-quarters batch of my standard pie crust recipe, made without sugar)
1 7/8 cups white flour (1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons)
3/4 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon cold water

Filling:
3 cups cooked chicken, coarsely chopped (we used a mix of dark and light meat)
1/2 pound frozen corn, defrosted
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter (reduce salt added if using salted butter)
4 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
2 medium onions, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 medium cloves garlic, peeled and minced or pressed with a garlic press
1/2 cup flour
2 cups chicken stock (we used homemade)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt (plus more to taste; we added probably ~1/4 teaspoon more)
pinch cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

To cook this recipe, you'll need to sautee the vegetables, make the white sauce, make the pie crust, and then bake the dish.  Try to time everything so that the pie crust has been chilled for at least a few minutes and the vegetables are finished sauteeing by the time the white sauce is finished.

Relatively easy-to-make crusty peasant loaf

One of my favorite features of writing here on Rhosgobel has always been my "recipe blogging of the week" posts.  Through that little feature my SO and I have posted more than 110 different recipes. While I make no promises about continuing to post one recipe a week, I am happy to return to recipe blogging with the following bread recipe.

While I've always enjoyed baking bread, the amount of work entailed in making a good loaf relegated  bread baking to days when I had lots of free time.  My favorite artisan bread baking book is Hamelman's "Bread"; it has incredibly detailed recipes and descriptions of techniques that allowed me to make a few loaves of delicious ciabatta.  However, said ciabatta also took me much work across two days, and thus my SO and I found ourselves frequenting our local bakery whenever we wanted bread.

That all changed when a friend introduced me to a new book, "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day".  I was extremely skeptical at first, as I'm always suspicious of recipes, books, and cooks that promise that home-cooked, old-world taste in two minutes flat ("and $20 off if you order in the next 5 minutes!"¹). However, after a few failed attempts, I was able to modify the technique introduced in the book to make a surprisingly good peasant loaf with a minimal amount of work.   Here's the basic outline of the technique:

1. Mix the ingredients in a large container and allow to rise for three hours at room temperature.
2. Put the risen dough in the fridge, and refrigerate at least overnight, though it can hold for up to two or three weeks.
3. Take the dough out of the fridge, pull out as much dough as you want to use that day, roughly shape it, and let it rise for about two hours (folding it after the first 20 minutes).
4. Bake for ~40 minutes, and let cool until ready to eat.

While I'd hardly call it "bread in five minutes", the ability to have risen bread dough ready to go in the fridge has enabled me to bake bread virtually any day I want it.  Whenever I finish up one batch of dough, I immediately start another; my SO and I almost never buy artisan bread anymore.  So, if you're looking for a crusty loaf of bread that has a chewy, wheaty interior and yet doesn't take a tremendous amount of work to make, you might want to give this a try.

Bread ingredients:
3 cups water, ~100F
1 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
32.5 ounces (~6 1/4 cups) unbleached white flour
1/3 cup wheat germ

We read old cookbooks

"No, it isn't particularly good, but it may be eaten by the bulging with a clear conscience."

Description of the "Dressing without oil" recipe from Joy of Cooking, 1964.

Rombauer, I. S. and M. R. Becker. 1964. Joy of Cooking. The Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc, Indianapolis, Indiana.

What's it like to create a new Facebook account?

I've deleted my personal Facebook account, but since most of my friends still post on Facebook regularly, I wanted a way to keep up with what they're doing.  So I created an empty shell account with a disposable e-mail address that I can use to view what they post (at least until they ditch it as well).

What struck me during this process was just how privacy-invading Facebook's default settings have become.  I found myself thinking "What if my mother-in-law or some other non-net-savvy person was doing this?  Would they understand what was actually being shared?"  So, in this post I'll summarize what Facebook's sign-up process looks like to a new user, focusing on how privacy is presented.


To sign up, users are asked for their name, e-mail, sex, and birthday.  Pretty easy.

Ahhhh, that looks better ...

The housekeeping is largely finished, at least for now.  I've got a shiny new template, a non-swindling comment service, a reorganized sidebar, and a new home for my "recurring features" pages (they're now hosted here on Blogger using the "pages" tool, which will save me a lot of time).  

A few things are missing: I've pared down my sidebar links to what I actually read somewhat regularly (sorry!), I've removed my no-longer-updated delicious page (which I used as a hack to categorize my posts before Blogger came out with its post "labels"), and the old Haloscan comments are gone (sniffle).

Oh, and I can now use "jump breaks", too.  :)

Housekeeping

A bit of dust has collected here at Rhosgobel over the past few years, and it's going to take me a bit of time to clear it all out.

I'll be updating the template ¹ and whatnot, but the biggest change will be in the comments.  Haloscan, the commenting service I've used since starting the blog, has died.  Haloscan transferred the comments to Echo, but in a most user-unfriendly way: while the comments are still visible on the blog, the old comments are neither visible nor editable in Echo's user interface, I have no way to export the comments, and they want me to pay $12 a year for this great arrangement.  So, I'm going to switch to Blogger's commenting system and close the Echo account.  I've saved a selection of the old comments², but won't be able to go through all the old posts to save every last comment.  It sucks.  Sorry :(

¹ I'm still using the template I picked back in 2004!

² This is why there are currently two "Comment" links below each post; I need to have both Blogger's and Echo's commenting links visible to copy over the old comments.  I apologize for the confusion.  

A return to Rhosgobel

Regular readers will note that ... well, let's be honest: there are no regular readers of this blog anymore.  I haven't written anything here for more than two years, and haven't posted regularly for longer than that.

What happened?  Many things.  I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, and had to drastically cut back my computer use: computer game playing has vanished, online teaching is no more, online reading has been slashed, I'm a slave to typing timers, and writing for fun got largely eliminated.  The pseudonymous nature of the blog also started getting in the way: I found myself wanting to write about items that could lead to someone easily identifying me, and I also wanted to share what I wrote with my circle of local friends, many of whom worked at my campus.

So the blog fizzled.  I was sad to see it go, but I soon replaced it with Facebook, which I enjoyed for the ability to privately share what I thought with close friends without anyone else (students or coworkers) being able to find me.  But in the time I've been using Facebook the privacy settings have gotten steadily worse¹ and the company has gotten more and more focused on invading privacy to make money; I've finally gotten tired of it.  I'm leaving Facebook, and replacing it with a mix of other information sharing websites.  I've missed being able to share things I enjoy with people other than my few dozen contacts on Facebook.

So, I'm back.  I'll still write under Radagast, but will be more open about the site with colleagues and I won't try as hard to hide my identity.   However, along with this change will come a separation of public and personal.  Don't expect vacation reports, family news, personal pictures, or the like: those will be shared elsewhere.

Oh, and my wrists are still not great, so I don't promise to post with any regularity.

¹ I had the strongest privacy settings possible, yet Facebook still forced me to be visible to "friends of friends", forced my profile pictures to be publicly visible, defaulted all of my (previously private) interests to be public, and started sharing my information with third-party websites without my permission.  Many of these changes were "opt-out", meaning that I had to be aware enough to go in and undo their changes to stay at least somewhat private.  Facebook's focus on "monetizing" the information they've collected on their users' interests and browsing histories irritates me, especially since many users thought their information would be held privately (and few websites are bold enough to ask people to list their religion, sexual orientation, hobbies, educational history, everything they "like", and all of their acquaintances in one place ...).