Teaching Belief/Philosophy
My fundamental teaching belief is that good teaching (the instructor side) comes with good learning (the student side). They are two sides of the same coin. In an ideal education environment, I try to achieve the following three basic related goals:
- Generate and sustain student interest.
- Maintain teaching/learning balance.
- Provide complete educational experience beyond courses.
1. Generate and sustain student interest.
I believe interest is one of the most important and common driver for learning (and other activities). Generally people will devote more time to the things they are interested in, be more active and proactive, thus experience more and learn more. However, this is the most difficult one. Interest may be vague, dynamic, inconsistent, and pure interest driven may not be good. It is an art to maintain a reasonable level of interest and effectively utilize it.
2. Maintain teaching/learning balance.
Teaching and learning are interactive. A preferred teaching (and learning) environment is built on a balanced information exchange between the instructor and students. Neither instructor nor student should dominate each other. I try best to engage students in the learning process, following the Heuristic Teaching method: of or constituting an educational method in which learning takes place through discoveries that result from investigations made by the student (more about heuristic teaching).
This means that students learn best from their own experience and effort, rather than directly from instructors. The process consists of cycles of learn-act-think. The more they think and act, the more they learn. This is also consistent with what Confucius had said, "不愤不启, 不悱不发, 举一隅, 不以三隅反, 则不复也", which basically means that an instructor should not directly tell students answers until they have thought and worked hard.
Some practices:
- Problem solving oriented teaching. Through analysis and work on typical problems to illustrate concepts and theories.
- Small exercises in classrooms to let students experience applications and technologies, and then have them analyze them and summarize their own ideas and thoughts.
- I try not to simply give answers; instead, I offer hints or guidance that could lead students to answers if I think they are able to get it. The process seems to take more time, with possible wrong direction and vain effort; and it requires patience from both students and instructors. But I often see students more satisfied once they get through and become more confident. However, be careful if students are trying to guess the answer instead of discovering it though active thinking.
- I encourage students to do some research about their questions before asking. I will often ask them: "how much do you know about this?"; "what have you done to know it?"; "why don't you do some research and report it back?". Eventually they should develop their own ways of investigating and solving problems. A better student often extends the learning into a bigger context, defining and answering his/her own questions.
- Effectively and flexibly utilize all kinds of relevant resources: news, events, cases, videos, exercises, presentations, assignments, discussions, examples, etc.
- I especially like student research and presentation project for higher level courses.
To summarize, rather seeing myself as a lecturer, I also see myself as a/an:
- Organizer: I organize and manage learning plan by focusing on fundamental and important knowledge in a limited learning period.
- Guide: I guide and assist students in a reasonable way of thinking and doing within the teaching domain.
- Information source: I provide sources that potentially extend and expand students' understanding of the subjects.
3. Provide complete educational experience beyond courses.
College education (teaching) goes beyond simple aggregation of classroom or online lectures. Courses are only a part of a complete education environment that the college provides (Barr 1995). Out-of-class student engagement is one important aspect. Student organizations, specially arranged projects, blogging, student advising, managed internships, student research and external competitions: all of these are effective ways to learn and gain experience. It also helps to build up the trust between students and instructors.
Reference
Barr, Robert B., and John Tagg, From Teaching to Learning: A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education, Change, Vol. 27, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1995), pp. 12-25