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James Hillenbrand Fall term 8/30/2017
Robin Criter
SPPA 6030
Anatomy & Physiology of the Auditory System
Mondays & Wednesdays, 9-9:50 a.m., CHHS 2024
Course Catalog Description: “A study of the anatomy and function of structures important to audition and balance.” Credits: 2 hours.
I. Texts (required)
(1) Deutsch and Richards (D&R), Elementary Hearing Science (On reserve in the Learning Resource Center, CHHS, 1st floor near the café.)
(2) Online: Chapters from Hillenbrand, Principles of Speech and
Hearing Science (You will be able to download this material as soon as I get a
web page up and running. I’ll let you know.)
(3) Musiek, F.E. & Baran, J.A. (2007). The auditory system: anatomy, physiology, and clinical correlates. Pearson: Boston.
(4) I may make additional reading material available to you.
II. Grading
Your grade for the course will be based on three exams and at least one quiz:
Exam 1 (acoustics review) (20%)
Decibel Quiz (5%)
Exam 2 (anatomy & physiology of aud sys) (35%)
Final exam (vestib/central aud systems & comprehensive) (40%)
Exams will be a combination of short answer, short essay, multiple choice, and making and/or labeling drawings. The dates for exams 1 and 2 and the quiz will be announced at least a week in advance. The final exam will be comprehensive, but with greater emphasis on the new material since exam 2. The date for the final is published in the schedule of classes. Note that the final exam is comprehensive, with greater emphasis on the material that is new since exam 2 (the central auditory and vestibular systems). There may be additional quizzes, in which case adjustments will have to be made to the weighting scheme above.
How to figure your final grade (assuming no other quizzes are added): (exam1 x 0.2) + (quiz x 0.05) + (exam2 x 0.35) + (exam3 x 0.4)
Assignment of letter grades to scores will occur using something fairly close to the scheme shown below. Adjustments might be made to this scheme depending on the exact distribution of grades in the class.
93–100: A
88- 92: BA
83- 87: B
80 -82: CB
70-79: C
66-69: D
65 and below: E
Assignments. There may be a small number of homework assignments that are graded pass/fail. Failure to turn these assignments in (and on time) will result in a two-point deduction from your final grade. If you followed the directions and there is something wrong with your assignment you will be given one chance to fix the problem(s) and resubmit. Resubmissions are due on the class period immediately following the original due date.
III. Attendance
I will not take attendance unless there appears to be a widespread problem. However, experience has shown that even fairly minor attendance problems can sometimes create major problems in this course. This seems to be especially true of the material that is covered in the first ~one-third of the course. Unless there is a scheduled exam, you do not need to call or email me if you are unable to make a particular class meeting. However, if you have something going on affecting more than one class meeting (health problems, family issues, etc.) please do let me know. Use your own judgment about weather and driving conditions, regardless of whether the University is officially closed. You are way better off missing a class than getting into a car wreck.
IV. Miscellaneous
Hillenbrand
Office: CHHS 4468, 387-8066
Office Hours: MW after class, or by appointment. Please let me know (email is best) if
you are planning to see me during office hours. Note: I get very few visitors
during office hours, so I do not necessarily hold that time open if I have other obligations. But let me know you’re coming and I’ll be there. Short
notice will usually be fine.
Homepage: homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr
6030 page: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr/603.html
Email: Note: I am happy to answer questions sent by email if the question can be answered in a sentence or two. If the answer requires an essay I’ll ask you to stop by my office.
Criter
Office: CHHS 4489, (269) 387-8371
Office Hours: Mondays 2-4 p.m. or by appointment, starting October 30, 2017
E-mail:
V. Advice from Dr. Hillenbrand
Most of you will not find this to be an unusually difficult course. However, experience has shown that there is an important minority of students who will have some trouble. There are several straightforward things that you can do to avoid trouble.
1. Pay attention in class and take good notes. This sounds like a very simple thing because it is, but a fair number of students do not do it. This is the single most important thing you can do. When you leave the lecture hall you should have a decent understanding of most of the material that has been taught. This is far more valuable than spending long hours preparing for exams. The importance of this simple idea is illustrated by an experiment that I unintentionally carried out a little while ago.
The parable of the vestibular system. To illustrate how important this point is, I’ll describe the most important accidental experiment of my career. This happened a few years ago in an undergraduate hearing science course. We had an exam coming up and I was taking questions about the exam. The last topic we had covered was a short lecture on the vestibular system, and I was asked if that material would be on the exam. Ordinarily this material is included, but we had covered quite a bit of material since the previous exam, so I made a last-minute decision to save the vestibular system material for the next exam. However, I accidentally printed off a version of the exam with six questions (12 points) about the vestibular system. It was not until the end of the exam session that a student pointed this out to me. So, I did the obvious thing and announced that I would not count the vestibular system questions that should not have been on the exam. (Important Note: None of these questions were difficult. I only spend about 40 minutes on this topic, and the six questions that should not have been there covered only the basics.) So far, all we have is a story about a teacher who is a jelly brain, which is not newsworthy. But here’s the revealing part of the story. I graded the vestibular system questions, though I did not include them when calculating exam scores. But now, for each student, I had a score for the vestibular system questions and a separate score – the real one – based on everything except the vestibular-system questions. What I thought I noticed was that students who did well on the vestibular system questions seemed to be doing well on the remainder of the exam. I checked this in a simple way: I sorted the scores based on performance on the vestibular system questions, then split the class into a top half and a bottom half based only on the vestibular-system scores. The average exam score (with the vestibular questions tossed out) for students in the top half was a 91, and the average for the bottom half was a 74. These two averages are night and day, and there is only one way to explain the difference. The students with the average of 91 did not know the vestibular system material because they had studied it. No one had studied that material. So how did they know this material so well? Easy: these students must have learned the concepts right then and there on the day this material was discussed in class, and/or they learned it from the readings (almost certainly some of both). More importantly, since they did so well on the remainder of the exam, they must take this learn-concepts-as-they-are-taught approach to everything. On the other hand, students in the bottom half, whether they are consciously aware of it or not (and my guess is that usually they are not), must tend to let things slide, forcing them to rely heavily on long hours of study prior to exams; i.e., cramming. This accidental experiment shows very clearly that the cramming strategy does not work well. It also shows that learning things as they are taught, rather than a great fury of studying in the last few days before an exam, is not only far more effective, it is the lazy way to do things. Students who keep up with things put much less time into their school work than crammers do. When exam time rolls around, slow-and-steady students do not have all the much to do. So, there you have it. Take the lazy way out and learn things as they are taught.
2. Don't miss class, especially in the beginning of the course. If you have to miss class for some reason, study the notes from a student or students whose work habits you trust. (This will not necessarily be your best buddy.)
3. Keep up with things. I have basically already said this, but here goes: If you wait until a day or two before the exam to study, it can sometimes be very difficult to put things together. Paying attention in class, taking good notes, keeping up with the readings, and reviewing your notes between classes are the most important things that you can do. A modest amount of time invested in these ways is far more important than many hours of cramming for exams. If your find yourself putting in long hours preparing for exams it’s pretty well guaranteed that you are not keeping up well enough. This is true of all your classes, in my opinion.
4. Waves and graphs. An item on our course evaluations asks the student for an opinion about the least valuable aspect of the course. Some years ago a student gave this three-word response: “Waves and graphs.” I found this very discouraging. Your goal in this course is to understand the fundamentals of the ear and that part of the nervous system that processes sound. This cannot be done without understanding some basic principles of acoustics. I try very hard to teach these concepts with as little technical detail as possible, but these ideas cannot be understood without understanding the meaning of a small number of very important graphs. For example, the first one that will be introduced is a sound wave, which is a graph that shows how air pressure changes over time. It is extremely important that you learn, as quickly as possible, (a) what is on the horizontal axis (for a sound wave, it is time) and what is on the vertical axis (for a sound wave, it is instantaneous air pressure), and (b) what that graph tells you about the sound that this graph describes. The main point I am trying to make here is that your life will be far easier if you learn (once again, as soon as possible) what these graphs are all about; i.e., what the axis labels are, and what the graph is telling you about the sound that is being described. The good news is that you will only need to learn a small number of these basic types of graphs. But without this basic understanding you will be reduced to trying to memorize a bunch of meaningless squiggles.
5. If you have difficulty interpreting these graphs, or with any other aspect of the course, I am available to provide help outside of class and am very willing to spend time with you.
6. Focus on understanding the material. If you understand how sound and the auditory system work, along with the anatomy that we cover, your exam grades will pretty well take care of themselves. Many students sit in class with a constant, all-encompassing worry about getting a good grade. There is nothing in the world wrong with wanting to get good grades. But if you sit in class with constant worries like, “What if he asks a question about that thing he’s talking about right now? What should I say?” – you will find it more difficult to learn. I know that some students have these thoughts because these things are sometimes said out loud, especially around exam time. Learn the concepts and your grades will follow along behind you like the tail on a puppy.
Summary:
a. Do things the lazy way: Learn things as they are taught.
b. Do not focus on your grades per se. Focus instead on understanding the concepts. If you do that, your grades will take care of themselves. That is the simple truth.
VI. Readings
The readings for each major section of the course are given in the course outline. Note that the outline does not tell you what you should read on the 17th of September, and what to read on the 19th, and so on. You can make decisions on these details on your own. The sequence of topics that are listed in the course outline matches the sequence of topics that are covered in the lectures. I recommend that you read ahead of the lectures rather than behind them. Please download the online material in the 1st week or so. I only have so much disk space on my web page, so I remove that material as soon as I can. Last point: I strongly recommend that you actually do the readings. I was astonished to learn a little while ago that a significant number of students are not in the habit of doing the readings. It may be possible to do well in a course without doing the readings, although I doubt that this is common, and I find it very hard to believe that this is the easy way to do it.
VII. Final exam date
The date for the final exam is listed in the schedule of classes. It’s also available online. Do a web search for wmu final exam schedule spring 2017 (or whatever the actual year happens to be). Note again that the final exam is comprehensive.
IX. Academic honesty, diversity, religious observance, and student disabilities
Students are responsible for making themselves aware of and understanding the University policies and procedures that pertain to Academic Honesty. These policies include cheating, fabrication, falsification and forgery, multiple submission, plagiarism, complicity and computer misuse. The academic policies addressing Student Rights and Responsibilities can be found in the Undergraduate Catalog athttp://catalog.wmich.edu/content.php?catoid=24&navoid=974and the Graduate Catalog athttp://catalog.wmich.edu/content.php?catoid=25&navoid=1030.If there is reason to believe you have been involved in academic dishonesty, you will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct. You will be given the opportunity to review the charge(s) and if you believe you are not responsible, you will have the opportunity for a hearing. You should consult with your instructor if you are uncertain about an issue of academic honesty prior to the submission of an assignment or test.