Lessons learnt Fall 2009

I believe I have come a long way since I taught my first class of the semester. I have always tried to make my teaching sessions lively and interesting by making them interactive and I have achieved this by using active learning strategies such as group discussions, question answer sessions, one minute papers in my class. This way the students can learn more effectively than what would result from just plain old lecture sessions. But this is only a part of all the new things I have learnt about teaching this semester.

In applying these ideas, I was really fortunate to get such helpful feedbacks from the peer observation and the teaching observation projects. The feedbacks were encouraging but had lots of important suggestions. For example, as mentioned earlier, the practice of breaking the pace of the lecture from time to time, the practice of encouraging the students when solving a difficult problem, by being part of their team in the endeavor rather than just giving out the solution, from a position of superior knowledge. I believe that all these things have been really helpful in improving my teaching and should continue to help me, when I teach this course next time.

Also the complementary experience to being observed was observing faculty members and peers from whom I learnt a lot. Observing some of my peers was almost like being able to observe myself, so it gave a good grip on what works and what does not. For example, if a problem is posed for the students to solve, it might be a good idea to collect the answers, even if only for show, because it imposes a minimal sense of official importance to the procedure and encourages better participation. Also it helps to be cheerful and encouraging, but that varies from person to person.

However, these are only details, important only for preparing for next time. But the memories that I take away from this experience has nothing to do with how hard the course was to teach or how much time I spent preparing notes - rather this has been about being involved with so many amazing young persons, each of whom is as different from the other as possible, and watch with an amused smile, as the scene plays out.