Week 6_How to become a good teacher?

Discussion topic: How to become a good teacher?

Prof. Pang: I want to talk about teaching. I told you that teaching may not be as important as research in research schools, but it is still very important. I want you to think about your favorite teacher that you’ve met one by one and why that professor in your previous institution was a good teacher.

Student 1: One of my favorite teachers is from my master degree. He teaches data mining. He uses a lot of good examples to let us know how to use the different models; he also did surveys in our class.

Prof. Pang: So it’s like his class is more interactive. He lets you get involved in class.

Student 2: I want to share a story of one of my favorite teachers. He was also an advisor of mine. Beside he is knowledgeable, he is trustable, and he set a good example for us. He helped us solve problems not limited in academic but also in our life. We couldshare our study ideas and experience with him.

Prof. Pang: So he cares about students’ life and personal interests, beyond the classroom.

Student 3: My favorite teacher is from my undergraduate studies. He taught a supply chains analytic course. I think he is good in that he made many good examples to demonstrate some complex models. I took a very impressive course of his at the end of the semester. In that class, we did not have any real material. He told us why supply chain analytic is important pretty much like what you are doing in our seminar. I think at least that course did deeper teaching style than any other courses. Not only the class materials are important but also the philosophy of ideas is important.

Prof. Pang: He must have a very good ability to explain difficult stuff to students especially for undergraduates. That’s would be your job to explain technical or IT stuffs in the IS field to undergraduate students.

Student 4: I’d like to share my favorite teacher. He has a different background. I have some background with a history major during my undergraduate. I kind like the editor of the class. I remember a course named invisible city. He was facing a group of undergraduate. But he never stopped with half of class a break. He used one slice by another; it seems like the knowledge inserted into your body. This motivates me to be a professor. I want to be a professor that is knowledgeable like him.

Prof. Pang: So, I hope that you are going to become professors/teachers like them. Teaching is important. You won’t get tenured for becoming a super fantastic teacher. However, you still have to be a good teacher to survive.

Here is a kind of the criteria in most of the business schools. You have to get at least 4.0 out of 5.0 in your teaching evaluation. 4.2 to 4.3 out of 5.0 is good enough for tenure and a job market.

We are multi-taskers. We have to do many different works such as research, teaching, etc., and as our Dean says, we have to solve optimization problems every day. Here is an optimization problem(just consider research and teaching) to evaluate your value to get a job (or tenure):

Max V(R, T),   R+T ≤ 24.

This illustrates that your value (in a job market or tenure) V depends on your Research and Teaching, but you don’t have unlimited time to spend in both. So you have to split your limited time between two. How you do it? It depends on the marginal returns from R and T, which is that the marginal return from R is much higher than from T. Therefore, we have to spend much more time on research to get more publish while spending not too much time on teaching, enough to get 4.2 out of 5.0 (at least 4.0 out of 5.0) in teaching evaluation.

The problem is however, that it is NOT easy to get 4.0! Let us think about an example where 10 students give you 4, 7 students give you 3, and 3 students give you 5. Then, your evaluation is 3.8. It looks like a good evolution but actually is not. You need to have more students who give you 5 than 3. We all know that we don’t go extreme (1 or 5) in filling out surveys. This is why it is not easy to get a good point like 4.0. And it is even more challenging for us, because we are not native speakers. You students won’t like your accent.

The bottom line is it is not easy to become a good teacher. Thus, it is very important to have teaching experience during your doctoral studies and to make efforts to become a good teacher.

There are several useful resources:

http://tlc.temple.edu Teaching and learning center

http://www.fox.temple.edu/cms_research/institutes-and-centers/center-for-innovation-in-teaching-and-learning/ Center for innovation in teaching and learning

http://tlc.temple.edu/teaching-certificates/teaching-higher-education-certificate-teachers-and-professionals Teaching higher education certificate teachers and professionals

Think about how to be a good teacher from now. I think it is a good idea to teach one course in your 3^rd year after passing a comprehensive exam and becoming a candidate. I don’t think it is a good idea to teach in the 4^th or 5^th year, because you have to prepare your job market and dissertation. So the 3^rd year is the best time to teach, and you have to prepare for that from now. You can sit in your professors’ class to take some of skills about how to teach, how to manage a class, how to interact with students, etc. Any question about teaching?

A few practical advices. We cannot get 4.0 when we just deliver lectures. My advisor said: “the more you talk in your classroom, the less evaluation you get”. So good teachers make students get involved. In my classroom, I ask a lot of questions. I want my students to talk more. It is more fun for them than to just listen what a teacher talks for the whole one hour or two. Good teachers care about students’ life, career, and interests beyond the classrooms. Good teachers have to have an ability to explain difficult stuffs to students. You have to get such a skill. That’s why I want you to share your favorite teachers because you have to become like them.

Also, there is a misconception that teaching and research are two separate things. I don’t agree with this. So my teaching approach is to use my research in my classroom and to deliver some theoretical perspectives/foundations to students. I think that’s our job as an academically qualified teacher.

Student 3: So if research can benefit our teaching, in what case can teaching benefit our research?

Prof. Pang: I got one of my research ideas from my class, which was about how to make balance between new IT development and IT maintenance. You can get research ideas from teaching. Teaching helps you keep the idea fresh.