Effective teaching
When I was a college student I took a course in Macro-economic. Although I studied Software Engineering but I always interested in other fields and I thought this course would broaden my knowledge about economics. However, it was the worst course I ever took because each day, the professor would stand in front of the class with his old notes, which had been used many times because the notes was tattered after years of use. He slowly read from his notes about theories, events, and facts that were many years old and never looked at students. As a young student, I felt the class was boring so I only did what I could just to pass that course without learning much.
Many years later, when I became a professor I made myself a goal that I would never teach a class like that. Throughout the years of teaching, I saw that it often happens to professors who had many years of teaching the same subject using the same materials. What was an exciting teaching act before could become a boring routine later so I avoid that by change my course materials every two years to make sure that my students have the most current materials that meet the needs of the industry. I keep learning new things and trying new ideas rather than become contented with the notion of “This is what I've always done,” I believe that the best ways to keep fresh intellectually is to constantly learning new things to keep me stay energized. As my classes became popular with students, some friends often asked me how I could keep myself engaged, enthused, and excited about teaching after many years and I shared with them my technique:
First, I never use the same materials twice but create new materials each year. By having new course materials, it forces me to modified existing course materials and allows me to focus on how I will teach each particular section of the course. Every three to five years I redesign the entire course. By doing that, my students could not use tests, homeworks, quizzes from previous year so few could cheat in my class. I do not like to use textbooks in my course. I have written several text books before and it took me about two years to write and the publisher needed another year to edit so by the time students got the textbook, it was three year behind. In technology world, three years is a very long time so I stopped writing textbooks and used current news, articles as supplement for textbooks.
Second, I always volunteer to teach something new and by forcing myself to learn new things, I can keep the class more exciting. Of course teaching new courses requires more works and time but it is energizing me. Although I teach about technology, I often add the application of technology into other areas such as business, healthcare, and manufacturing. To learn about these things, I often audit other business, healthcare, manufacturing courses at the university. By sitting in these classes and listen to other professors, I learned much more than just reading from books. If I find something interesting, I would seek out some experts and ask them to explain to me so I continue to broaden my knowledge in other areas.
I believe that by keeping myself energized, my students have the best learning experience they can have. By commit to my own improvement and learning, I can make my students' learning more exciting, livelier and better.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
