My father died of cancer when I was a teenager. He was 52. I didn’t realize how young he was until I surpassed his age. My father died in middle age. It wasn’t his middle age.

I’ve never liked covering death and dying at the end of the Intro Psych lifespan chapter. By putting death after discussion of being an older adult, the implication is that that is the right time to die. Everyone who dies before their 80s or 90s has evidently done life wrong. That doesn’t sit well with me.

In my Intro Psych textbook, the previous author had placed death and dying at the end of lifespan. When I revised the book, I deleted that section of the chapter. That didn’t feel right, either. It’s an important topic that we need to be talking about.

I visited the booths at the 2024 American Psychological Association convention. I could claim that I enjoy seeing what’s new in the land of vendors, but really, I just like seeing what’s new in promo items. My favorites these days are branded Tide pens and neck gaiters. I also like lip balm, but I may have a lifetime supply now. Even if my lifetime extends deep into my 90s.

On this particular visit to the vendor booths, I met Jen Reising and Heather Taylor of The Mourning Movement who offer “professional grief resources to build community and change the narrative around grief.”

In my conversation with Jen and Heather, the death and dying coverage solution came to me. Our Intro Psych coverage should not be about death and dying but about grief. Yes, we experience grief from the death of someone we love—including a pet—or our own impending death, but we also experience grief that results from other losses such as a job, a friendship or other relationship. A presidential election. Each requires coping with the loss of a previously imagined future.

Jen and Heather write:

Grief is not just about sadness; it encompasses a myriad of feelings that can surprise us in their intensity and variety. You might find yourself oscillating between anger and relief, guilt and nostalgia, or despair and love—all within a short span of time. This is perfectly normal. Emotions in grief are like colors in a palette, each adding depth and nuance to our experience of loss (Reising & Taylor, 2024).

Rather than cover death and dying in the lifespan chapter, I’m going to cover the more global feeling of grief in the emotions chapter.

In a survey of 800 Intro Psych instructors, one-third reported that they don’t cover emotion (Richmond et al., 2021). Some instructors who exclude emotion have told me that discussion of the theories of emotion bores them. What if we changed the focus of the emotions chapter from theories that explain where emotions come from to focus on some of our more powerful emotions? Let’s talk about happiness and anger. And, yes, let’s also talk about the complex emotions that come with grief.

References

Reising, J., & Taylor, H. (2024, September 11). The many faces of grief—Embracing emotional diversity. The  Mourning  Movement. https://themourningmovement.com/f/the-many-faces-of-grief—embracing-emotional-diversity

Richmond, A. S., Boysen, G. A., Hudson, D. L., Gurung, R. A. R., Naufel, K. Z., Neufeld, G., Landrum, R. E., Dunn, D. S., & Beers, M. (2021). The Introductory Psychology census: A national study. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 7(3), 163–180. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000277

The 2024-2025 ski racing season is underway. Mikaela Shiffrin, at the age of 29 holds the record for the most World Cup alpine skiing wins with 97. She blew past the previous record holder, Ingemar Stenmark, who had 86 wins. Stenmark’s record was set in 1989 and was thought to be unbeatable.

In alpine skiing, winners are commonly determined by tenths of a second. In a recent race, less than a second and a half separated the top eight racers (Zaccardi, 2024). All racers work to improve their technique in order to improve their speed. Their goal is not to win; their goal is to find a faster way down the mountain. Mikaela Shiffrin is no different from other top athletes in that way. Get faster; the wins will come (Armour, 2024).

That’s a great example of the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Are you working for the glory and the praise that comes with a win? Then you are extrinsically motivated. Or are you working to get better for the sake of getting better? Do you want to be the best you that you can be? Then you are intrinsically motivated.

Ask your students—in a free response format, index cards work fine—“Why are you in college?” (If you teach high school students, ask what they plan to do after high school, and then ask them why.)

For each card, read it silently to yourself to make sure the content is appropriate, then read it out loud. Ask your students if the motivation sounds more intrinsic, more extrinsic, or if there isn’t enough information to make a determination. In the case of college, if a student says they’re here to get a degree or to qualify for a job, their motivation is extrinsic. However, if they say they’re here to learn, their motivation is intrinsic.

Of course, this is all a bit more nuanced. I’ve had students tell me directly that they don’t care about my course because they’re not psychology majors. They were much more intrinsically motivated in courses that had prefixes that matched their major. My thought process after that was pretty straight-forward. If my students aren’t seeing why psychology matters to them, then I need to make it clear why psychology should matter to them. If I couldn’t explain why particular course content should matter, that course content got tossed.

Who is more likely to cheat? Those who are extrinsically motivated (Krou et al., 2021). A student who just wants the degree can cheat their way through college and get that degree without learning.

A student who wants to learn will do the work required for learning. The grades—and the degree—will follow as a natural byproduct. Just as the wins follow for skiers who work to get better.  

Here’s the million dollar question. How do we help students shift from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation?

References

Armour, N. (2024, October 25). Mikaela Shiffrin is using her records pursuit for good. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/nancy-armour/2024/10/25/mikaela-shiffrin-world-cup-milestone/75816994007/

Krou, M. R., Fong, C. J., & Hoff, M. A. (2021). Achievement motivation and academic dishonesty: A meta-analytic investigation. Educational Psychology Review, 33(2), 427–458. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09557-7

Zaccardi, N. (2024, October 26). Federica Brignone becomes oldest woman to win Alpine skiing World Cup race. NBC Sports. https://www.nbcsports.com/olympics/news/federica-brignone-mikaela-shiffrin-alpine-skiing-world-cup-soelden

It’s another fall Sunday in the U.S., so it’s another day of TV commercials featuring NFL players.

I know that being a middle-aged woman does not make me the target demographic, but the Little Caesars ad featuring George Kittle still rankles.

Let me get this out of the way first. Yes, that is Caesars plural, not Caesar’s possessive. I can make peace with that. I can believe that there are a bunch of little Caesars, not just one who has pizza.

Now for the commercial. Give it a watch.

Again, I recognize I’m not the demographic, but I don’t understand how watching 11 people (including a garden gnome, a groundhog, and Kittle’s own reflection in the window) bully him through exclusion (“Everyone but you!”), is supposed to make me want me to buy Little Caesars crazy puffs. Probably they just want me to remember “crazy puffs,” and hope the buying follows from remembering.

Let’s discuss.

Little Caesars is implying that Kittle is “crazy,” since the product they’re hawking is “crazy puffs.” Everyone—including a garden gnome, a groundhog, and his own reflection—saying “everyone but you” and laughing is meant to imply that Kittle is experiencing paranoia.

This commercial could be an interesting discussion starter to open your coverage of psychological disorders. What do students think of Little Caesars using paranoia to sell pizza? Do the attitudes of your students differ between those who have been diagnosed with a psychological disorder or who have loved ones who have been and those who have not? Could the commercial further the stigma for those who have been diagnosed with a psychological disorder? Why or why not?

The commercial rankles for another reason—making it a good discussion starter for the learning chapter.  We know observational learning is powerful.  Will people—particularly children—start saying “everyone but you!”? It’s very easy to see how this could cross the line from an inside joke amongst family or friends to bullying. In the comments for the YouTube video, one person wrote, “This is now the favorite phrase of my household.” I can’t help but picture a child who is a frequent target of their siblings’ bullying now being hit with “Everyone but you!”

Lastly, ask your students if advertisers have a responsibility to consider possible unintentional outcomes of their commercials. Why or why not? If you would like to expand this discussion with some what-ifs, ask students to consider what Kittle might have done after we see him scream at the end of the commercial. Write student responses where everyone can see them. For each one, ask students what if Little Caesars had showed that outcome? Would it have made the commercial more acceptable to air, less acceptable to air, or no change? Why?

An estimated 43.6 million people in the U.S. who are 12 or older—that’s 15.4%—reported using marijuana in the last month. The largest group of people who used in the last month? They would be 18 to 25 year olds; 25.2% (8.6 million or so) (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2024a).

How about daily use? In 2023, an estimated 15.7 million people in the U.S. who are 12 or older—that’s 5.6%—reported using marijuana daily or almost daily. The largest group of daily users? Yes, that would be 18 to 25 year olds again; 9.2% (3.1 million or so) (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2024b).

These data come from the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). “NSDUH employs a probability sample designed to be representative of both the nation as a whole and for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia” (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2024a, p. 5). If you are not familiar with how NSDUH (pronounced nizz-duh) surveys nearly 70,000 people every year, check out their methodological summary (Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, 2024).

Side note. For about a year, my wife Verla worked as one of hundreds of people who went to the homes that had been randomly selected for the NSDUH survey. The homes were sent a letter in advance, so they could expect her. Once she made contact with someone in the home, she would ask for basic demographic information for each member of the household. After entering that into a tablet-like device, she would press a button, and the device would select zero, one, or two people from the household to complete the survey. If one or more of the selected people weren’t at home, she would have to come back. She would set up the survey on a laptop, and then situate herself so that the person could complete the survey in privacy. Every effort was made to reach the people who had been randomly selected.

While NSDUH does not identify whether or not a person is a college student, the annual Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey does. Interestingly, the MTF notes, “The term ‘marijuana’ is increasingly being replaced with the term ‘cannabis.’ In our surveys, we now use both terms” (Patrick et al., 2024, p. 27). Their 2023 survey results have 10.4% of young adults (defined as ages19-30) reporting daily or almost daily use (at least 20 days of use in the last 30 days) of marijuana. That 10.4% is right in line with the 9.2% (ages 18-25) of daily/almost daily use that the NSDUH survey found.

Now, what about (traditional) college students? The MTF asks people between the ages of 19 and 22 if they are a full-time college student. Nonstudents, then, is anyone in that same age range who is not attending college full-time. The 19- to 22-year-olds who reported using marijuana monthly did not differ much between those who attended college full-time (26.1%) and those who didn’t (28.8%). Daily use, however, showed a notable difference: full-time college students (6.3%) and those who aren’t (11.6%).

Discussion question for your students: Why do you think there is this difference in daily/almost daily use of marijuana/cannabis between 19- to 22-year-olds who are full-time college students and those who are not?

[My first thought was that it would be tough to keep grades up if one were stoned all the time. My second thought was that smoking or vaping pot in the dorms would likely get one kicked out of college. But edibles?]

Here’s the problem. Recreational cannabis is, as of October 2024, legal in 24 states (Breen & Johnston, 2024) which makes it easier to get. At the same time, cannabis has become more potent (ElSohly et al., 2021).  

From the NSDUH survey, 16.6% of 18- to 25-year-olds met the criteria for cannabis use disorder at some point in the previous year (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2024a). Here are the DSM-5 criteria for cannabis use disorder and the ICD-11 criteria for cannabis dependence.

What many cannabis users don’t know is that frequent cannabis use can cause cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS). CHS “is an enigmatic constellation of signs and symptoms comprising nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and unusual hot bathing behavior in the context of heavy and chronic exposure to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)” (Russo et al., 2022, p. 336). Hot bathing? For reasons that are not yet clear, heat relieves the symptoms of vomiting, nausea, and abdominal pain. One hypothesis is that since there are cannabinoid receptors in the hypothalamus, the heat resets any sort of dysregulation happening there. Another hypothesis is that since heat causes vasodilation of the blood vessels in the skin, blood moves away from the abdomen, relieving pressure on the digestive tract (Ali et al., 2021). However, these are not the only possibilities (Veloso et al., 2024).  

People have died from CHS (Nourbakhsh et al., 2019; Rudavsky, 2019). Because some physicians may not know to look for CHS and because cannabis users are reluctant to believe that cannabis is the cause, it is likely underdiagnosed. In this study, 87% of participants stopped having symptoms when they stopped using cannabis, “most suffering recurrence rapidly after resumption” (Russo et al., 2022, p. 336).

Emergency department physicians, however, have begun seeing CHS much more frequently (Twohey et al., 2024) (gifted New York Times article).  

Here’s a different problem. Longitudinal research has found that teenagers who use marijuana are at an increased risk of developing schizophrenia (Godin & Shehata, 2022). People who are genetically predisposed to developing schizophrenia are at even greater risk (Wainberg et al., 2021).

And, yes, cannabis users can become dependent on it, particularly those who started using it to relieve anxiety or depression (Twohey et al., 2024).

 Invite students to read this gifted New York Times article.

Twohey, M., Ivory, D., & Kessler, C. (2024, October 4). As America’s marijuana use grows, so do the harms. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/cannabis-marijuana-risks-addiction.html

Discussion prompts:

1. What was the most surprising thing you learned from reading this article? Explain.
2. What is the one thing from this article you want your family and friends to know? Explain.

References

Ali, A. A., Mathew, R., Maaliki, N., & Shelley, P. (2021). Recurring vomiting, skin discolouration: The easily overlooked thermal element of cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. BMJ Case Reports, 14(3), e242062. https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2021-242062

Breen, K., & Johnston, T. (2024, May 17). Maps show states where weed is legal for recreational, medical use in 2024. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/legal-weed-map-states/

Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. (2024). 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH): Methodological summary and definitions. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2023-methodological-summary-and-definitions

ElSohly, M. A., Chandra, S., Radwan, M., Majumdar, C. G., & Church, J. C. (2021). A comprehensive review of cannabis potency in the United States in the last decade. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 6(6), 603–606. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2020.12.016

Godin, S., & Shehata, S. (2022). Adolescent cannabis use and later development of schizophrenia: An updated systematic review of longitudinal studies. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 78(7), 1331–1340. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23312

Nourbakhsh, M., Miller, A., Gofton, J., Jones, G., & Adeagbo, B. (2019). Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome: Reports of fatal cases. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 64(1), 270–274. https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.13819

Patrick, M. E., Miech, R. A., Johnston, L. D., & O’Malley, P. M. (2024). Monitoring the Future Panel Study annual report: National data on substance use among adults ages 19 to 65, 1976-2023 (Monitoring the Future Monograph Series). Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. https://monitoringthefuture.org/results/annual-reports/

Rudavsky, S. (2019, September 20). He loved weed. Then the vomiting began. Months later, he died. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/20/indiana-boy-17-died-smoking-weed-chs-blame-what-chs/2387571001/

Russo, E. B., Spooner, C., May, L., Leslie, R., & Whiteley, V. L. (2022). Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome survey and genomic investigation. Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, 7(3), 336–344. https://doi.org/10.1089/can.2021.0046

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2024a). Key substance use and mental health indicators in the United States: Results from the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (HHS Publication No. PEP24-07-021, NSDUH Series H-59)). Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2023-nsduh-annual-national-report

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2024b). Section 8 PE Tables—Results from the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Detailed Tables, SAMHSA, CBHSQ. Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt47100/NSDUHDetailedTabs2023/NSDUHDetailedTabs2023/2023-nsduh-detailed-tables-sect8pe.htm

Twohey, M., Ivory, D., & Kessler, C. (2024, October 4). As America’s marijuana use grows, so do the harms. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/cannabis-marijuana-risks-addiction.html

Veloso, P., Gomes, M., Lopes De Dios, R., & Pereira, F. (2024). Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome: A case report and literature review. European Psychiatry, 67(S1), S409–S410. https://doi.org/10.1192/j.eurpsy.2024.844

Wainberg, M., Jacobs, G. R., Di Forti, M., & Tripathy, S. J. (2021). Cannabis, schizophrenia genetic risk, and psychotic experiences: A cross-sectional study of 109,308 participants from the UK Biobank. Translational Psychiatry, 11(1), 211. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-021-01330-w

On the right side of this blog site is an area called Psych-Related News. Scroll down for the most recent news.

In my own news feed, I scroll through a few hundred articles (and 30+ comic strips) every day. When I see an interesting article (or comic strip) that may be appropriate for one of my book chapters or for this blog, I tag it. It’s the most recent 15 of those tagged articles (or comic strips) that appear in the Psych-Related News area.

If you have your own news feed reader (I use Inoreader) and would like read the Psych-Related News at your leisure, here is the RSS feed address: https://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005880865/tag/Psych_Matters_blog. Any time I tag a new article (or comic strip!) as Psych-Related News, you will see it pop up in your news feed.

If that all seems like too much work, just visit SueFrantz.com whenever you’d like and scroll through the Psych-Related News. New content is added once or twice a day, most commonly first thing in the morning mountain time.

Cartoonists are often astute observers of people. Since cartoonists usually don’t name the psychological concept that they are illustrating, their cartoons can provide excellent fodder for class discussion.

Before we get to the discussion, note that the comic strip below is part of the Go Comics family which uses Andrews McMeel licensing. Be sure to read their classroom usage statement to ensure that you do not inadvertently violate copyright law.

Before beginning this activity, make your students understand the different types of emotion regulation (McRae & Gross, 2020).

Situation selection. We select a particular situation in order to experience a particular emotion. For example, if we want to experience the excitement of fear, we might watch a horror movie. Okay, no, I would never do that. I learned a long, long time ago, that horror movies are not my thing. But other people certainly do that. (Ask your students to raise their hand if they enjoy horror movies. And then email me [sue@suefrantz.com] with what you learn.)

Situation modification. When we are stuck with a particular situation, we may be able to modify it in some way that would alter our emotions. Let’s say that we find ourselves watching a horror movie—perhaps because our friends talked us into it—we might choose to put in ear plugs to reduce the sound.

Attentional deployment. Where we put our attention can influence our emotions. At the horror movie, we can shift our attention by putting in earbuds, closing our eyes, and listening to a favorite podcast.

Cognitive change. Here we change how we think about the situation we are in. For the horror movie, shifting from “movie watcher” to “movie critic” may help reduce fear. If we think about the quality of the story, the acting, the makeup, the scenery, and the sound, our experience of the movie may shift from being part of it to being removed from it.

Response modulation. Imagine that we are full blown in the middle of feeling fear during this horror movie. We can reduce the intensity of the fear by doing things like taking deep breaths and relaxing our muscles.

With that common understanding of emotion regulation, let’s go to the cartoon!

Ask students to read it: Herb and Jamaal cartoon dated Sunday, May 12, 2024

Working in small groups, give students these two discussion prompts:

1. Give an example of how the son could use each of the five emotion regulation strategies to reduce his anger.
2. Is the son’s father giving advice about a particular emotion regulation strategy? Explain.

To conclude the activity, ask volunteers from each group to share examples they generated for situation selection. After each group has offered one example, repeat with situation modification, and so on through all five strategies. Finally, ask volunteers from each group to offer their thoughts on the father’s advice. Is he advising his son to use a specific emotion regulation strategy or just some emotion regulation strategy?

Reference

McRae, K., & Gross, J. J. (2020). Emotion regulation. Emotion, 20(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000703

Friends and colleagues,

We’ve had a good run! This blog started in 2009 as a way for me to keep track of how to do stuff. And then you all came along and learned right along with me.

Perhaps you noticed that my posts to this blog have been reduced to barely a trickle?

These days my energy has moved away from technology to psychology. Writing has kept me busy. For example, I have three psychology textbooks: Introduction to Psychology (with Charles Stangor), Principles of Social Psychology (with Charles Stangor; publishing Fall 2024), and Teaching Psychology: A Step-by-Step Guide (with Doug Bernstein and Steve Chew).

I also have a weekly-ish teaching psychology blog that I’ve written for Macmillan since 2015. This Macmillan blog will be coming to an end effective October 1, 2024. Since I’m no longer using SueFrantz.com as a tech blog, I will be transitioning my teaching psychology blog to this space.

For those of you who teach psychology, I hope you stick around for this new chapter.

For those of you outside of psychology, thank you for all of your support over the last 15 years! In the email you received regarding this new post, there should be an unsubscribe option at the bottom. If you need help unsubscribing, email me at sue@suefrantz.com, and I can take care of that for you.

Wishing you all my best,

Sue Frantz

Not infrequently I am asked about my thoughts on AI and the future of technology more generally. Here are some thoughts.

In 1927, Charles Lindbergh was 25 years old when he flew solo across the Atlantic. It took him 33.5 hours to fly The Spirit of St. Louis from New York City to Paris. When he returned to the United States, he spent a year travelling the country promoting the wonders of flight. He said that he could envision a time when as many as 15 people could fly on a plane. In 1968 and at the age of 66, he met with the Apollo 8 crew the night before they flew to the moon. A few weeks later, the first Boeing 747 took to the air. In January 1970, the first 747 commercial flight (PanAm) took off with 335 passengers and 20 crew members. Lindbergh was 67 years old. Fifteen people, indeed.

If Lindbergh—a huge advocate for commercial flight—could not envision in his lifetime no more than 15 people on a plane, there is no hope for me in predicting the future of technology. But we can look backwards for any lessons that may help us as technology moves forward.

Calculators. I’m certain that math instructors who were in the classroom in the 1970s are laughing pretty heartily as we struggle to sort out AI’s impact on writing. “While the general public debated whether or not calculators should be allowed at school, educators were forced to grapple with how the devises (sic) would change math instruction” (Watters, 2015).

1975: National Advisory Committee on Mathematical Education recommended that starting in eighth grade, students should be able to use calculators in class, including on exams.

1980: National Council of Teachers recommended that calculators be used by all students regardless of grade level.

1983: The College Board okayed the use of calculators on the AP Calculus exam.

1984: The College Board changed their mind. Calculators were now banned, because it wasn’t fair to students who did not have a calculator.

1986: Connecticut required the use of calculators on state-mandated tests.

1992: New York followed Connecticut’s lead.

1994: The College Board mandated the use of calculators on the AP Calculus exam and allowed calculators for the SAT.

1997: California allowed the use of calculators on its state-mandated tests.

“In some ways, it’s difficult to separate debates about the usage of calculators in the classroom from debates about math education writ large. Much of the ‘Math Wars’ of the late 1980s (and onward… still) involved how much technology was appropriate, what technology would mean for the acquisition of basic math skills, and what – thanks to new technologies – math education should or could look like (what math curriculum should or could like at the K-12 level, as well as what it should or could like in college.)” (Watters, 2015).

With apologies to the author of that paragraph, we can seamlessly replace calculators and math with AI and writing.

“In some ways, it’s difficult to separate debates about the usage of calculators [AI] in the classroom from debates about math [writing] education writ large. Much of the ‘Math [AI] Wars’ of the late 1980s [mid 2020s] (and onward… still) involved how much technology was appropriate, what technology would mean for the acquisition of basic math [writing] skills, and what – thanks to new technologies – math [writing] education should or could look like (what math [writing] curriculum should or could like at the K-12 level, as well as what it should or could like in college.)” (Watters, 2015).

Unfortunately, the math educators never did completely get it sorted. “You can read the comments on almost any story today about math education and see these same, long-running debates: fears that students’ computational abilities will be ruined by calculators/computers/cellphones, that students will become too reliant upon machines, that they won’t be able to learn from their errors and teachers won’t be able to help them, that they won’t learn basic skills” (Watters, 2015). And so appears to be our future with AI.

We have managed to learn to live with technology, such as calculators, GPS, word processors (now called apps), and the Internet. What they all have in common, including calculators, is that we cannot turn off our brains.

We cannot blindly follow what our calculators (okay, calculator apps) or our spreadsheets or our statistical tools tell us. We have to have some idea of what the output will look like. If my calculations tell me that I owe the IRS $15 or $15,000,000, something has gone horribly wrong.

Stories abound of people who blindly followed their GPS down boat ramps and into water (such as these two incidents in Hawaii, and this one in British Columbia) or took GPS-suggested alternate routes when interstate highways were closed due to snow (such as these). And then, as an example of garbage in/garbage out, drivers can end up in the wrong city if they enter the wrong city name in their GPS (such as these tourists). We have to keep our brains engaged: does this route make sense? If I see water directly in front of me, does it make sense to drive into it? If the major highways are closed because of snow, does it make sense that a rural road would be clear of snow? If I’m in Chicago and want to drive to Portland, Maine, does it make sense that my GPS map tells me to drive west? Could it be that I inadvertently told my map app that I wanted to go to Portland, Oregon?

Every instructor who gives writing assignments has examples of students who blindly accepted whatever their word processing program told them to do. My favorite was the student who was trying to write a paper about “concentration” but however they misspelled it, their app told them to use “constipation.” It took me a couple pages to figure out what was going on. It may or may not be surprising how well those words can work in the same sentence. Of course, we have the same problem with autocorrect in our text messages. Again, we have to keep our brains engaged: do these sentences make sense?

In my final example, we have the Internet. When it first appeared, there was much gnashing of teeth about students not learning to do research using library sources. They could just Google it. Google and library databases are both useful tools, but, again, we cannot turn off our brains. Ultimately the question is “can I trust what this source is telling me?” In education, we still hammer into students the need to evaluate their sources. Just because someone says it on TikTok does not make it true (such as these examples of bad financial advice and these example of bad medical advice). And just because someone does it on TikTok does not make it a good idea (such as these TikTok challenges).

I imagine this will be our future with AI and writing. We cannot turn off our brains. We have to have the skills to evaluate what AI tells us—and the motivation to do so.

Reference

Watters, A. (2015, March 12). A brief history of calculators in the classroom. Hack Education. http://hackeducation.com/2015/03/12/calculators

I was saddened to receive this email yesterday (Nov 26, 2023).

Dear Nudgers

We are sad to say that despite the support we’ve received from you over the years, Nudgemail is losing money to operate. As much as the love we’ve had for this product has never stopped (we ourselves still use it to this day), we unfortunately cannot afford to support the efforts.

Nudgemail will be shutting down in December – but with any luck this could be temporary. If you would like to remain notified if we have the capacity to resume in the future, please let us know here.

In the meantime, if you have open Nudges, we recommend you take immediate action and send an email to status@nudgemail.com to get all of them sent your way.

This is a difficult moment for us, as it has truly been one of our favorite inventions. Thank you for all the support!

Team Nudgemail

Nudgemail has been my go-to email management tool since 2010. After a brief moment of panic, I realized that Gmail, Outlook, and Mailbird (my current email app) all have improved their “snooze” game. When you snooze an email message, it gets pulled out of your inbox and then reappears at the time you designated at the very top of your inbox.

While this built-in snooze doesn’t have all of the features of Nudgemail—such as the ability to set up recurring messages—it’s not a bad alternative.

The tool most similar to Nudgemail and at the most affordable price of the tools in this category is FollowUpThen. In the free plan, you get 50 reminders a month. Although, this really isn’t any different than snoozing messages. If you want the power-user tools that include recurring followups and features that Nudgemail didn’t have, e.g. followups with attachments, a calendar subscription (see your followups on your calendar), and SMS texting of your reminders, it’s $48/year. Take advantage of their 14-day free trial to explore these advanced features.

Everyone who writes needs a solid pdf and reference manager. I’m a big fan of Zotero. Zotero is free, and you can back up 300 MB worth of stuff on their servers for free. If you want more space (and I do), it’s $20/year for two GB, $60/year for six GB, or $120/year for unlimited back up space.

While I could go on and on about Zotero’s features (and I have in workshops), in this blog post, I want to focus on how Zotero handles article titles. When we import article data into Zotero—through a doi search or by dragging a pdf into Zotero—the title we get is whatever the publisher entered. For example, the title may come as “title case.” If you use MLA style, this format works fine for you. For those of us who use APA style, however, we need to use “sentence case.”

Fortunately, Zotero makes this easy to change. Mouse over the title (do not click on the title, just mouse over it), and then right click. Select “Sentence case.”

Done! The only capital letter is now the first one. But wait! In APA style, the first letter after the colon needs to be capitalized, too.

Zotero knows that. Even though it doesn’t capitalize the “a” after the colon in this view, when we tell Zotero to generate a bibliography in APA style, it capitalizes it.

Pratkanis, A. R., & Turner, M. E. (2013). Methods for counteracting groupthink risk: A critical appraisal. International Journal of Risk and Contingency Management, 2(4), 18–38. https://doi.org/10.4018/ijrcm.2013100102

One quick word of caution about title capitalization. Zotero does not know what other words in the title may need to be capitalized, such as proper nouns. After switching to “sentence case,” we will need to manually fix any other words that need capitalization.

If you are still typing out references, please try out Zotero. There are many other things you can be doing with your time.