1. What were / are your personal hopes and goals as a participant in the TLI?
- I wanted to learn about what professors do behind the scene. I wanted to learn about their efforts, thoughts, and goals. I also wanted to learn and help with experimenting with more practical strategies used in classes.
- I believe that the communication between students and faculties is vital…It also occurs to me that how different the professor’s perspective/perception of the class and the students’ perspective/perception is. So I think bridging between these two is of great necessity and importance.
2. Why do you usually see your teacher for office hours?
- I usually go to office hours to ask questions about the class material and prepare for the exams. Sometimes I will talk about my anxiety and worries with my professor and maybe ask for an extra credit opportunity.
- The first trip to office hours is often the most terrifying–I end up feeling much more comfortable in office hours when I go in for the first time for an issue unrelated to the class (e.g. general advice, just to chat). After I have some established trust and relationship with the professor, it is much easier for me to feel comfortable going to office hours for questions on homework, papers, etc.
- I go to office hours when I know that the professor will devote the time to listening to me work through the problems out loud and interject periodically when I get stuck or have a question. It’s very hard to go to office hours when the professor uses the time as an opportunity to continue the class’s lecture or to provide too much information about a particular topic without really listening to the specific reason why I came to his or her office hours.
3. How do you make the best of a class that is not in your area of expertise or with which you do not feel completely engaged?
- I would persuade myself that the class is useful for my future career and can broaden my horizon.
- If there are research papers that allow for a more unique topic, I try to find a topic that really interests me.
4. How do you approach really dense or long reading?
- It depends on whether the topic interests me or whether I have enough time. If I don’t have time, then I will just quickly scan it. I will just focus on the beginning and end of each paragraph. If it’s a research paper, I will just read the introduction, discussion and conclusion part, then quickly look at the rest of the paper.
5. How do you usually start a conversation with a teacher when things do not feel comfortable or when you are struggling in a class?
- I think it is helpful for the students to realize that not “everything” is confusing but likely a few key concepts.
6. What prevents you from going to office hours?
- I guess it’s the time conflicts and my own laziness…Sometimes I just don’t feel like walking around or leaving my dorm…Sometimes I just don’t have time.
- I think admitting that you cannot solve something yourself is difficult…and it’s much easier to stay home and struggle than face that you’re stuck and go admit that to a professor.
7. How do you take notes on assignments and in class?
- I usually don’t take notes on assignments since most of them will be available on Moodle. I sometimes only take notes on some key terms. For most of the time, I write down almost everything since I type really quickly. Students can also bring an audio recorder with them if they have the professor’s permission.
- I suppose I don’t normally take notes on assignments, unless the professor says something very important that’s not explained on the assignment itself. In class, I generally write down whatever is on the board, and sometimes add notes to myself if I think I’ll need an additional note to understand what’s going on later.
1. What were / are your personal hopes and goals as a participant in the TLI?
- Teaching is traditionally a very lonely profession. Collaborating with a student consultant in designing and implementing a course is a much more satisfying experience.
- I was particularly interested in moving from a pure lecture format to one in which students are much more actively engaged in their own learning; and to a large extent I have now done this.
2. When and why do you want your students to come to office hours?
- To clarify material they are struggling to understand and/or to ‘check
in’ with me about any issues or concerns they have, or to obtain
advice related to my field of research. - For conversation about: themselves, their evolving/emerging interests and goals, summer and career opportunities, future planning, and of course academic consultation and writing brainstorming and revision.
- As we go along, I’m happy to see students who want to delve more deeply into topics we’ve covered in class.
- I feel frustrated when students who have struggled with something (e.g., on an exam or writing assignment) don’t seek me out for help in fixing the problem. I can understand that some students feel shamed by less than perfect performance. But, helping students over rough spots is what I most enjoy as a teacher. When a student struggling over an issue doesn’t come to office hours, I begin to wonder whether she really cares – about the course, about me.
- I find that teaching in office hours is an important supplement to class time. In that setting, I am able to tailor my explanations to individual students’ concerns and questions. I feel very comfortable and effective working with students one-on-one and find that when students come to my office, we develop a different kind of relationship—I gain a greater understanding of their needs, fears, and desires and am able to respond to those kinds of things directly. In general, it enhances my teaching even in the general class as students’ concerns often raise my awareness of issues that are often widely shared.
3. What do you want students to have done before they come to office hours?
- Formulate specific questions for me. Look to see if some of these
questions can be answered by reading, peers, or our question centers.
Then bring the remaining questions to me. - I find it very frustrating if a student comes in to talk about an exam or paper simply because they weren’t happy with their grade, but didn’t make an effort to review their work before our meeting.
- Nothing, necessarily. It depends on the situation.
4. How do you recommend that students approach reading, particularly when it is long and dense? (read it all at once, read it in pieces, do a ‘book club’ style, etc.)
- For my science classes I would prefer they read in pieces and take
notes or make mind-maps of the concepts and essential details. - It depends on the source. There’s a different art to reading textbooks than academic journal articles than policy briefs. It’s never a good idea to read an assignment straight through from beginning to end.
- The best strategy is to make multiple passes through the reading with different goals in mind
- Textbooks usually are full of clues about what the author considers important. I suggest getting a sense of the major subtopics, key words, etc. before tackling any detailed material. Don’t dig too deeply into the detailed material until you figure out what I want you to master. (So returning to the textbook after class can be as important as what you read before class.)
- With journal articles, start with the abstract, conclusion and introduction. Flag the thesis – the primary assertion. What’s the major contribution of this article over the previous literature? Then skim over the sections to see how the author supports or reaches that conclusion. Is the argument compelling?
5. How do you recommend that a student approach a class that is not in his or her particular field or with which s/he has limited experience? In other words, what is the most optimal way for students to fulfill distribution requirements or explore new classes to get the most out of them?
- Ask questions! — of other students and of profs.
Find out what excites other people about the field.
Try to suspend fear of incompetence or discouragement based om past experience. Consider this as an opportunity to re-write self!
Explore ways to bridge from prior experience to this one, even if the way is not obvious.
Play. - Now, it is true that one student might consider a course to be a stepping stone to the major, while another might see it as an opportunity to learn a bit more about the discipline, and another might see it as a complement to work in other fields. But, I don’t see how those differences should alter the way the student commits to meeting the learning goals of the course.
6. How do you prefer that students format emails to you?
- I think students should show appropriate respect for their professors in e-mails. A salutation should be used “Dear…” or “Hi…” And, most importantly, students should ALWAYS sign their names!
- Standard letter format with:
“Dear Professor” at the start if we don’t know one another well; “Dear
[first name]” if we know one another quite well. - I don’t care for just Hi, with no name, or for just nothing . . . it jars me. Not because of the status issue only — I use a salutation almost all the time, with my nearest and dearest as well as with people I don’t know.
- I like emails that are short and that contain a clear “ask.” Once one gets beyond a simple yes-no question, we are probably better off talking face-face. So, I prefer emails that introduce a topic that the student wants to raise during office hours.
- Any way they wish, the shorter the better.
- I don’t have a preference about this except that I’d prefer not to be addressed as simply ‘Professor.’
7. What are your feelings about computers in the classroom?
- I know the students can use them for more distracting reasons and I have colleagues who dislike them in the classroom for this reason. But at the end of the day I trust my students to use their computer in class
wisely and if they don’t then it will show later in extra work they
will have to do. Also the distraction aspect isn’t so different from
“spacing out” or doodling etc! So I think overall the gain outweighs
any negatives and many of the negatives would happen anyway in a
different format. - It puzzles me that so few students bring computers to class. I look forward to the day when it becomes easy for students to share with the rest of the class what is on their screen. I look forward to software that makes it easy to take notes and to annotate readings.
- I’d welcome suggestions from students about how I could make my classes more welcoming of their effective use of their computers, iPads, etc.
- Laptops, iPads, iPhones, Blackberries, tape recorders, and other electronic recording devices: If use of a recording device facilitates your processing and thinking about the material in our course, you are warmly encouraged to bring it to class. Under NO circumstances, however, is anyone (you or me) to use such a device during class for texting, checking or writing email, surfing the web, taking and uploading photographs (of me or your classmates), social networking, listening to music or ANY NON-CLASS RELATED ACTIVITY.
- Since most of my classes are small and discussion based, I generally do not allow students to use computers in class. I also encourage them to bring printed copies of the readings or to buy books (not read just the e-books from the library) and I stress that the tactile engagement with the text—through underlining and writing marginalia is important to their learning and processing of complex material and also enhances class discussion. I explain to students that the laptop screen in the up position at the seminar table creates a wall that I feel significantly impedes discussion. Thus far, students have been understanding and have not complained about the lack of computers in seminars.