Each year I strive to improve my effectiveness as a teacher of college-level students. I have attempted a number of different teaching methods and am constantly learning to adjust my teaching style based on the performance and feedback of students and peers. Because courses in the twenty-first century are taught in so many different formats, I believe flexibility is one of the keys to being a successful educator.
The students are the single-most important factor in being an educator. Without the students, there is no need for educators. I personally feel that it is my job to both teach and learn from students. How students react to a task is often reflective of the method of teaching utilized in the classroom. My goal is to find the most effective method to provide students with an environment which supports the greatest opportunity to learn. It is a great feeling to see when a student understands the topic which results in a positive experience for both teacher and student.
Student/student collaboration
In smaller classes, I find that one large group conversation can be useful to both teacher and student. I feel this tends to work with groups of less than twenty-five students. I feel the smaller groups allow students to feel more comfortable to verbalize their thoughts.
In larger classes, I like to have instructor-led discussions so that an organized conversation can take place. It is sometimes hard in larger classes to have all students comfortable talking in such a group, so I tend to break students up into casual two- to four-student groups. Again classroom setup is important. If students are in a classroom with fixed seats, this small group discussion plan seems to work well.
I like students to be able to interact out of class. Tend to use technology to provide an out-of-class facilitator. Students, depending on the type of course, will have access to online chat or discussion tools.
Student/educator collaboration
I’ve found I must work hard to learn the names of students for optimal face-to-face interaction with students. I feel that it is a positive addition to recognize a student and to be able to call them by their names. I try to remember something interesting about each student so that I can personalize conversations.
With the use of technology, I am able to respond to students outside of class times. I implement email forwarding in my online course tool so that I will be alerted a student is seeking assistance. I tend to be online days and evenings, seven days a week so if I can assist during any of those times, I try. With the latest version of a course technology program I use, users can check to see who is “online” and request a chat. Several times I have had my email client active and received an email forwarded from the course tool. During those times, I will immediately log in and request a chat with the student to see if a live chat will help. This way, there is no delay in assisting a student.
In purely distance learning courses I will provide my personal cell phone so that students can get in touch with me at any time. I have had students across the globe and like to be able to be available even when I’m not at home or in the office.
Evaluation methods
I tend to avoid evaluating students based solely on memorization. I do not implement courses where memorization is the only evaluation tool. I never teach limited to only, for instance, a weekly quiz, four tests, a mid-term and a final. I feel that since students learn in different ways that I should be able to provide different evaluation formats. There is no doubt that students need to be able to memorize facts and be able to reproduce such facts. I use memorization-based testing methods (quizzes, tests, final, etc) for such evaluations. In addition to memorization evaluations, I strongly support hands-on projects where the true understanding of a topic can be detected. For instance, if a student is learning decision making skills with the use of Excel, the student will be asked to actually create an Excel spreadsheet to support their understanding of a topic. This type of evaluation takes much longer to grade with appropriate feedback, but I feel strongly that it is worth the time.
Teaching rubrics have become very important in actively evaluating student performance. I currently provide my students with grading rubrics where applicable so that they can be fully involved in understanding the grading process.
Shared experiences
Whenever I teach a class I try to let students feel they are learning something useful by pointing out real-world examples. I find that the most effective examples are not just articles from the newspaper or website, but from personal experience. With my doctoral and professional research, I can often match a story with a topic. I can especially identify with student with stories from my own experiences as a student. Additionally, because of my experience outside of academia, I am able to provide an example of how a topic relates to organizations or individual jobs.
Shared experiences do not just flow from educator to student. I’m always pleased to have students bring up their own examples of topics. I then like to share those stories with other classes so that students can hear of what other students are experiencing or doing in the field. Student shared experiences an be as simple as comparing cell phones in a classroom when discussing wireless technologies or hearing a story about a student who works at a retail store in a discussion of RFID technology.
Future philosophy
My teaching philosophy is evolving with the addition of new technologies and experience. I find that my peers are a wonderful source of new ideas which I can try in the classroom. I also try to pull from my experience as a student. I think back about teachers I’ve had and projects I’ve been assigned in the past. I try to incorporate similar methods when I’ve experienced positive and interesting challenge from previous courses I’ve taken.