Email is one of the trickiest things to get right. It's simple and quick, but lacks nuance. Therefore it's especially important to take care. I like to receive student questions by email, and I like to answer them by email, because it's much more convenient for all of us. However, I have some recommendations as to how to ask me questions more helpfully! If you're in one of my classes then I encourage you to take a moment to read my teaching philosophy statement, below. Hopefully, that will provide some context.
It does take more time to ask questions carefully in this way. However, it will save us both time, because I will not be as likely to suggest any dead ends.
During your degree you're going to be spending up to 90 hours listening to me talking about numerous things, another 90 putting them into some kind of practice, and (hopefully) many more thinking about it all. So it's probably useful to explain why I do what I do the way I do it.
Our definition of teaching is: the selection, organization, and adaptive presentation of information that is relevant and appropriate to an established agenda. This can happen in the lecture hall, the lab, office hours, or when we meet on the street. Of course, the agenda is partially negotiable. Our agenda covers not only the facts that are encompassed by a discipline, but also the ability to use those facts in an efficient and credible way. But I don't want you to merely remember facts, I want you to understand them and how they work together, and understand Ill enough so that they're really useful to you, today, tomorrow, and in your careers.
This way of thinking has practical ramifications for the way that I teach. I prefer to have an interactive classroom. This means that I will ask you questions, and wait for an answer. It also means that you should ask me questions, ask me to clarify a point, or provide an example, repeat ourselves, slow down, etc. It may not always be appropriate for me to do so on the spot--if this is the case, please be patient and visit with me at another time.
In higher-level classes, I don't provide a lot of structure for assignments. I know that this makes many people uncomfortable, as the responsibility will be increasingly upon you to motivate and structure your own work. However, it addresses one of the most important skills you can learn: knowing how to answer a question. You must make sure that you understand the question, and all its ramifications. You may need several attempts. You may need more information. The process of identifying what information is missing, figuring out where to find it, finding it, and integrating it, is essential! When you're applying these different skills in your vocation, you'll commonly be asked to do things by people who don't necessarily know more about them than you do. Then, you'll be responsible for negotiating the terms of reference of the project. Less structured assignments are ideal to prepare for this more flexible situation.
In all classes, I hope to be able to ask students to be self-motivated to find out their own information about a topic. So if I flag something as being important, and provide links to find information about it, then I hope students will go ahead and get it. Then this information is fair game in all assessments. This strategy is again directed at vocational training: your manager is not necessarily going to be able to give you all the facts. You'll need to identify the missing portions, again, and go and find them out.
Of course this is not all one-way. I want to make the material in the class as relevant as possible. I want also to give you as much support as I can. Finally I promise to tell you when I do or do not know the answer to a question, and share with you the process of learning about it. In this way, our classroom becomes a community of learning.
Date created: 4 June, 2007 |