Teaching Philosophies

                 

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Teaching Philosophies

1. Teaching Philosophy

Research has always captivated me in spite of starting with a career in the petroleum industry immediately after my bachelors.  After being a teaching assistant (TA) for two semesters at Texas Tech University, I have realized that the actual joy lies in disseminating the knowledge in addition to gaining it.  Teaching has always been regarded as one of the most successful ways of sharing information. With this in mind, I like to envision myself as a professor sharing my knowledge of physics to the graduate students. In the following paragraphs, I discuss my ideas in terms of qualities required for being an effective mentor and teaching methodologies that I strongly believe will help me (anybody) in becoming a successful professor. 

Regarding the qualities for becoming a good instructor, I would like to stress that teaching is an art. Wealth of knowledge in a particular field doesn’t promote a person as an effective instructor. Good communication skills in addition to proper organization of ideas are the basic skill set that are required in a person to become an effective mentor.  In addition, clarity on the subject along with the inquisitiveness to learn (update) new things will definitely help a person to convey their thoughts effectively.

In terms of methodologies of teaching, I would promote imagining of the concepts before getting into their details. As every one of us is aware of the breakthrough discoveries that happened in science due to Einstein’s thought experiments, I would like to inculcate the same ability in the students as it helps in tapping their out-of-the-box thinking skills which are crucial for revolutionary ideas.

Also, being a strong believer of the idea that nature has answers to all the questions and we as human beings can unravel a lot of mysteries by observing nature, I would strongly urge all the students to understand nature in its minute detail.  Instilling this quality along with developing their out-of-the-box thinking would help in the overall development of the students. As a part of this method, I would promote educational field trips in various forms such as hiking and camping. These outings will not only help in learning about nature but also help in developing a good relationship with the students that are crucial for effective learning.

In addition to the above methods, to encourage interactions and develop sharing of ideas, I would assign group activities involving the entire class. Instead of bombarding the students with a variety of information, I would structure the class in the form of a discussion.  These types of discussions will help in the development of bigger ideas and strengthen the basics of the subject.

To summarize, good communication skill with the ability to organize the ideas coherently along with tapping the analytical skills of the students will absolutely make a person an effective instructor.  (Sriramvignesh)

2. Teaching Philosophy

                  For me, teaching has one simple mission, to help my students become knowledgeable about the topics I teach, and well prepared to use this knowledge in practice.

                  In order to achieve this mission, I usually try to establish a strong relationship with my students, which makes them comfortable to ask questions and freely express their opinions. I also believe in the effective use of visuals and technology, like a nice looking presentation or a YouTube video; this is simply because human brains are better equipped to recall visual memories compared with written ones.

                  I use many real life examples to simplify complex topics and make them easier to understand; I also encourage class participation and discussions, as to me, this is the best way to assess their level of understanding of a certain topic.  

                  I often encourage students to engage themselves with activities and events taking place within their field, this can happen by several means like participating in relevant events and conferences, or writing reviews and providing feedback to news and publications.

                  In addition, I always pay attention to developing presentation skills of my students, as it is one of the most important assets, which they will need in their professional careers as managers and business professionals.

                  Finally, I prefer to reduce or eliminate unnecessary pressure usually associated with exams, and this could be achieved by several techniques like “take home” or “open book” exams. 

                  The above illustrates my teaching philosophy; please feel free to contact me for any clarifications or inquiries. (Muhammad)

3. Teaching Philosophy

                  In my opinion, teaching itself is also a learning process. As a history lecturer in a Vietnamese university for seven years, I recognize that what I have received from my job is as much as what I have given to my students. It is really a long-term, daunting but amazing exploration of myself, my students and my subject.

                  To begin with, being an instructor has been one of the best chances for me to learn about and eventually to improve myself. It seems like a process during which I gradually understand my intimate feelings and the potential powers inside myself as well as figure out the ways to control or take advantage of them.  For example, I clearly realize the importance of self-confidence. If I do not believe in either my knowledge and skills or my personality, how can I dare to stand in front of my students and teach them? I am not trying to build myself beyond my real ability, but at least I should show to my students that I deserve to be their instructor on their knowledge journey.

                  The next thing that I have been doing with my teaching job is to get in touch with my students and respect them. Normally, university students are considered adults; some are older and more experienced than I am. They are actually my companions in the knowledge journey and I highly appreciate their contribution to classes. Therefore, I always encourage them to get involved deeply in class discussions, teamwork, workshops, etc. Also, some forms of regular surveys are designed exclusively for my students to give feedback or comment on my teaching. Sometimes, I am really stunned by their new, fresh perspectives and ideas contributing to my classes. For me, the more students get involved into my class, the more successful my teaching is.

                  While teaching, I also find out the way to make my history subject more interesting and beneficial. Normally, history in terms of a subject is supposed to provide the knowledge of human experiences in the past. A large number of young people, especially in my country, do not like this subject as they find it too boring and useless for their modern life. Taking this view seriously, I step by step have tried to apply something new to my teaching of historical topics. For example, when teaching the Vietnam War, I requested my students to study this war from different perspectives, either from that of Vietnam or from the United States, from bottom-up or from top-down. Also, the students were encouraged to watch as many movies or document films related to the class as possible and were assigned a wide range of readings such as memoirs, diaries, letters and novels.  In addition, during my lectures, I intentionally make a link between the past of the students’ families and the past of a country or history in general as well. For instance, in one of my classes on Modern Vietnamese History, I asked my students to conduct an interview with their parents or relatives who were the live participants or witnesses of the Anti-French Resistance War.  By doing that, learning history seems to be more accessible and more fun to students. At last, they feel themselves a part of it and obviously perceive the connection between past and present.

                  To sum up, I believe that a teaching job is actually a dynamic learning process in which my students and I learn from each other, and together create a vivid life for our subject. We do not only learn history but we also make ourselves a part of the past and gain lessons for being better in present.  (Nam)

4. Teaching Philosophy

                  As an ophthalmologist in a hospital who taught undergraduate students in the ophthalmologic field for more than seven years in China, according with communicating with a huge number of different kinds of characters, my teaching philosophy is strongly linked to my philosophy as a doctor.      

                  For a student in the medical school, the final goal of education is to learn methods and techniques in order to solve questions or problems in everyday life, not just knowledge that is limited from teachers in school. However, it is very competitive to enter good universities, especially in the medical schools in China; most teachers use a cramming teaching method, which is to make students remember as much knowledge as possible in order to get a high score. This method cannot improve the qualification, because the student will not remember anything after the examinations. So interest is the best teacher. If students can study something that they like, they often study much better. Moreover, it is more relaxed and easier for students to study things that they are interested in. So it becomes a big issue, how to raise the student's interest. In my class, I took two steps in order to improve students’ interest and get a good memory. First, imagine that each student has the position as a patient or the patient’s family; they should show their deep concern for the patients and their families. Second, imagine that each student has a position as a doctor; they should get familiar with methods and techniques to solve issues for the patients. All of my students like this role transformation and they will never forget the methods and techniques that benefit them. Thus, it is more important to learn method and techniques than only remember knowledge.

                  It is the teacher’s goal to help the student synthesize the knowledge and apply it in the clinical practicing. It is more difficult when practicing the patient teaching in the hospital, because we must maintain the confidential privacy of the patient, and at the same time we also should let students to know the details of the patient in order to get familiar with the disease. Sometimes patients are also afraid of the new doctors. During their clinical practicing, I help students to make a connection between what they memorize and the clinical picture of a patient. I want students to realize the level of knowledge and use the knowledge in the real patient. At the same time, I give students enough time to think and provide more opportunities for students to talk about their opinions, ask questions, and even query teachers’ views instead of cramming education. That is because they will have a good memory after they think a long time. And this thinking is helpful in the further because there will be different kinds of disease in clinical patients.

                  It is more important for medical school student to be creative and have critical thinking abilities. In the hospital, doctors will face different kinds of patients without any books. It requires doctors to solve the questions by themselves. So the student should be creative and have critical thinking abilities. In China, students get used to the cramming teaching method; they seldom point out teachers’ mistakes or ask any questions in class, because they are afraid of making their teachers embarrassed or they dislike thinking when they are being taught. During my education, I offer the students’ opinions several times in the class; they could let me know which knowledge they didn’t understand and we can also discuss it together, and I think it also is a good way to improve my teaching skills.

                  As a teacher, my teaching philosophy is improving students’ interest, communicating with the students in teaching class, continuing to improve personal teaching skills, and learning advanced knowledge all the time.  (SongHe)

5. Teaching Philosophy

                  Based on our experience as a student it can be relatively easy to understand that there does not exist a unique way to teach. There are several types of classes associated with Mechanical Engineering. Some of those require developing specialized techniques. Others demand the recognizing of process, but most of them imply the development of critical thinking. Classes such as design, stress analysis, material processing or production have an important quantity of theoretical knowledge. However, it can be difficult to internalize effectively the concepts if the lectures are not complemented with practical experiences. In this way, laboratories and workshops are important tools to complement the learning process.

                  Like a teacher or assistant, I need to have tools to demonstrate or apply the theoretical knowledge. I frequently bring instruments, tools, or mechanical specimens to the classroom.  The intention is not only show things, but to create instances to experiment, improve the critical thinking and the reasoning. When is necessary, I use computational laboratories where students can simulate mechanical components by representing of stresses or designs. Computational tools led us to characterize infinites scenarios at low cost. It is the best way to apply the concept “What happens if…”

                  On the other hand, lectures such as production, manufacturing or welding can be very well complemented with activities in workshops. In this way, I am convinced that many concepts are better learned when students have the opportunity to make things. For example, many concepts of welding can be better internalized if the student learns to weld. In the case of a production process, if a student knows how a machine works, he or she can make better decisions related with improvement of the process. Students can develop self confidence when, moreover, they have the theoretical knowledge, and they know how to do the thinking.  (Elliot)

6. Teaching Philosophy

                   Any field has different teaching philosophies and techniques. In the field of mathematics, a large number of people believe that mathematics is very difficult to understand and some of them are not interested in studying this subject. However, if the instructor is talented and tried to use alternative techniques such as teaching by playing games during the class, that would help students to be more likely to be interested in getting new knowledge and to change the idea of the mathematics difficulty. When I was in middle school, I remember that my teacher was playing games with us in order to make the class fun and to help us love mathematics, which she accomplished. Additionally, her talented skills made my classmates and I have the ability to create new things such as a new technique to remember the multiplication table.     

                  The positive experience that I had with my teacher encourages me to be like her. I would like to teach at a middle school because they still need the fundamentals of mathematics.  Their minds are fresh enough to get a lot of information. I also want them to love mathematics and love to study it. My students should leave the classroom feeling successful and proud of themselves. In order to achieve this goal, I will try to use different strategies, which are more effective than the traditional ones, in my opinion. For example, my students will be encouraged to use electronic devices and technology in general. Additionally, I will heavily rely on visual presentations such as Power Point, which will help students to easily remember the given information. I will work with students and be effective in various ways.

                  Mathematics helps our brain think about everything around us.  I want to learn, and then teach how we could use mathematics in real life. So far, I used some of my studying in the real life. I started by utilizing the basic knowledge such as calculating numbers by using algebra. However, there is a lot of knowledge that I have not figured out yet, such as Topology.  

                  I would like to be an inspiration to my students as teachers have been to me in the past.  Also, I want them to achieve their goals. (Samah Qadah)

7. Teaching  Philosophy

                  I am a PhD student in the Chemical Engineering Department at Texas Tech  University and being a graduate student, I have to be a Teaching Assistant (TA) for some  of the professors who teach undergraduate  level  courses. Being a TA in the past two  semesters  has been a great learning experience for me because it made me grow not only as a researcher but also as a teacher.  From the little experience that I have of  teaching undergrad students, I can say that my teaching philosophy is to make the  classroom  environment very interactive, lively and enriching so that  the  students are  eager to attend the class.

                  Most of the students as soon as they enter the class start keeping an eye on their watch wondering when the lecture would get over. This happens because either the teacher is not an effective speaker or the students find the subject too easy or too difficult to understand. This also sometimes happens when the teacher has not prepared the lecture notes quite well, or is not very confident while delivering the lecture, which  makes the student lose  interest or confidence in the course. 

                  When I was given the TA job, the first thing I did was to prepare my lecture notes and go through them at least twice a day before delivering the lecture to the  undergrad class.  It was a class of 99 students, which was a huge number for a person like me who was teaching for the very first time in her life. I made sure that I was audible to the entire class and also my language was very fluent and clear so that the students could understand me with ease. I feel it is very important for a teacher to be a good speaker so that the entire class in listening to him/her with an interest to learn the subject. Also, the body language of the person giving the lecture should be quite appropriate which could clearly reflect that the person is very prepared and knowledgeable.

                  I feel that sometimes in engineering, solving problems on the blackboard isn't enough and doesn't help the students entirely to imagine a 3-D figure. In such a scenario, showing short videos or schematic diagrams is always a good idea to help students understand the concepts better. I showed the students generally 2-3 minute videos at the end of the lecture which made them very curious to learn the subject. 

                  It's always good to keep a lecture interactive by asking questions to the students and giving them a difficult problem to solve at the end of the lecture. It tests how well they have listened to lecture and understood the concepts. I also believe that students learn more when you appreciate them for trying to answer a question even if they have answered it wrong, because this helps in increasing their self confidence and makes them put in even more effort the next time the teacher asks a question. 

                  Overall, my teaching philosophy is that a teacher should be an approachable person for the students from whom they can ask questions without any hesitation. The teachers should make an effort so that  the students find their lectures so  interesting  that they forget to look at their watches to see when the lecture would end. (Harnoor Kaur)

8. Teaching philosophy

       As a teacher in Chemical Engineering who giving lectures to undergraduate students, my teaching philosophy would include three aspects – lecture preparation, teaching quality, and homework assignments.

       In order to make a fluent speech in the classroom, preparing the lecture before the class begins is necessary. According to my experience as a student, if I do not know what is the subject is used for, I will lose the motivation to dig into the books. Rather than getting an ‘A’ in the course, most of people like to put what they have learned into their lives. Therefore, as a teacher, I am responsible to activate the study interests of my students by telling them what contributions they can make to the society after they master the knowledge in terms of multi-media such as PowerPoint and videos. Apart from that, giving the speech logically while pointing out the key points and potential difficulties in the textbook also plays an important role. In Chemical Engineering, our courses are mostly related to equations derivations. In this case, some simple examples are really helpful to understand the concepts, which requires me to stand at the perspective of students’ considerations to prepare for my lecture.

       The next step is the most crucial part, which is giving the lecture in the classroom. I really enjoy having interactions with student other than just putting everything on the board. Doing interaction have two advantages; one is knowing how much my students have understood the lecture, and the other is improving the relationship between me and students. Students’ face expressions and response can tell me whether I should adjust my lecture speed. Talking about the lecture speed, one of my favorite math teachers in China told me that his knowhow of improving the teaching quality is to mix his speech with jokes, and this is also a great interaction. I can understand it is hard for people to get focus for a whole hour; involving humors or sharing life experiences during the class offers a small break for both teacher and students, and this is a win-win strategy.

       Homework is a good way to hone students’ critical thinking skill. I prefer to give homework as open questions or group projects since in this way students will have chances to discuss and learn from each other. Moreover, the ability to make an impressive presentation will be very helpful to their future. In the workplace, teamwork, critical thinking and presentation skills are more practical than test scores, and I am happy to give them advices and help them if they have any trouble.

                  To sum up, my teaching philosophy is to prepare well before the lecture, to do my best to interact with students while giving the lecture, and to train their critical thinking skills in homework. (Jieying Wu)

9. Teaching Philosophy

                  In my concept, teaching is a noble profession by which one can help the students to understand and visualize the scientific concepts in the classroom and also utilize those acquired skills to conduct successful experiments in the laboratory.  In my experience, by creating a positive learning atmosphere in the class room will encourage the students to learn more. I will utilize all available resources to create students interest to learn the subject.  Being an aqueous geochemist, my course will have a lecture and laboratory component.

                  In my experience, a good teacher always makes his class very interesting and lively by interacting with the students. In that way I feel that each student will get a fair chance of asking questions and clarifying their doubts within the class. I will makes myself very approachable to students, so that those who do not like to ask questions in the class, have the choice to clarify their doubts by emails or meeting me in person. I believe that, well prepared and organized lectures are always easy to understand. Hence I will make sure that, I will be always prepared and make my presentations well organized. The power point presentations will be used for presenting the lectures.  I will post the power point presentations online before the lectures. Reading the presentation before the class makes the students prepared for the lecture.

                  In the lab, I like the students working in small groups to complete laboratory assignments.  These groups serve as a conduit for information and discussion.  They are not a substitute for individual knowledge and work. I expect each student is expected to complete his/her own assignments. 

                  I will do the grading based on the performance in the class, homework, exams and the quality of the lab report. The homework will be based on what I teach in the class. The homework assignments are designed to reinforce the concepts presented in the class and prepare the students for exams. Being a student, I am always been punctual in attending the classes and submitting assignments. Which always helped me to develop as a well-organized researcher. So I expect my students to be punctual as well.  During the course, students will get the chance for improvement, if the student is found hard working and punctual. 

                  Finally, I believe that interest in a subject create enthusiasm to learn more and understand the subject well. The main purpose of my teaching is to improve the problem solving skills, critical thinking and also help them to learn how to work in groups.  In my course, students will have an opportunity to learn the fundamental concepts and tools used by working aqueous geochemists. (Sankar)

10 Teaching Philosophy

                  In my personal experience from studying computer engineering at a Thai university, I found some strategies from my favorite lecturers.

                  Firstly, using the white board or writable things is very good. Most courses in engineering are Math, which requires sequential descriptions; that is why most students prefer seeing slow drawing to sudden picturing. They can easily draw the sequence of content along with the teacher drawing into their heads. However, using the white board may cause unrecoverable content, that everything has to be erased from the board after use. Nowadays technology can help. One of my favorite lecturers uses his tablet connected to the projector. He writes on his tablet instead of the white board. He writes page by page and uploads them to his website after class and those materials will not be lost.

                  Secondly, using power point was acceptable. However, it should looks like a movie. Another one of my favorite lecturers touched me using power point but his class was not boring. In his Computer Algorithms class, his presentation slides are composed of animated contents. It shows every sequence of algorithm step by step clearly, like he's drawing on a white board.

                  Lastly, sometimes similes are requirements in teaching. When a teacher sees some confused faces of students, he has to change the form of problems to the others to make them easier. For example, while teaching object oriented programming in JAVA, my lecturer assumed an object of JAVA Class as a character in Japanese manga and assumed the instance methods as the character's special powers. He has become the favorite lecturer for most students in the department. Every subject and every section he teaches was full very quickly.

                  Although I'm not formally a teacher, I used to be an Android Programming tutor to some undergraduate students. I used almost all those philosophies. Then I could feel that my students clearly understand my class. (Ariyawat Chonbodeechalermroong)