First Day of Class

I met the faculty member I was going to observe, in his office about fifteen minutes before the class was scheduled to start. He was going over the material he was going to teach in class that day and putting in some final touches to it. He asked me regarding my teaching experience and I told him that I had been a T.A. for this class before but under a different professor. He also gave me some background information on the structure of the course, specifically the evaluation scheme which involved bi-weekly home works and quizzes, and also on class composition.
After I entered the class I made my way to the back of the class, because my intention was to observe the teacher as well as the students. The professor greeted the students and formally introduced me to the class and he was all set to go. He presented great positive ideas from the very beginning of the class by suggesting that he will go over review material from the previous Computer Science courses specially C.S.1401. That way the students could recapitulate from the past and not find themselves lost. So he started off with 1D arrays, a topic that has already been covered and forms the base for the 2D arrays he was later on going to teach. I found his method of teaching to be highly appreciable because I could see from my view of the class that the students were gradually becoming interested and starting to listen.

I was also pleased to note that even though I was at the far end of the classroom I had no trouble whatsoever in being able to hear the professor, nor had any difficulty in following the material. His ideas were well constructed, relevant and tangible, and he made an excellent job of presenting the material which held almost everyone’s attention. There were quite a few questions from the students which he answered and conversely a few questions from him which the students also had no problem answering. I noticed that his handwriting was legible even from the last row.

Almost halfway through the class the professor wanted to test how much the students were familiar with the material he was going to teach. So he gave a short quiz on “Writing a method to finding the average of some numbers” and allowed the students a few minutes to give it a shot. At this point I noticed that quite a few of the students frankly did not take the trouble to give it a try, rather they waited for him to put the solution on the board.

I found the professor's method of teaching effective and his delivery impressive. He employed pitch modulation while delivering the lecture, which kept the students attentive. The lecture was well-organized with nice real-world scenarios and examples. There was enough interaction with the students to make me happy, and collecting the answers from the students gave me an idea that I can look into. Observing someone instructing a course in the first day of the semester was a very interesting experience for me and one that undoubtedly is going to help me become a better teacher in my future endeavors.