Mentoring & Teaching ExperienceMaster Thesis Mentor| MIT, USA
Master of Engineering in Civil and Environmental Engineering 2023-2024| J. Raad 2022-2023| C. Wolfe, Best CEE Master Thesis Poster Award
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Training received about teaching
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Micro-teaching sessions during KTCP, 2023
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I believe a student-orientated course should start with a student-orientated syllabus. With a well-structured and transparent syllabus written in inclusive language, the students can decide better if the course is for them, know what to expect, and feel welcomed. I will explicitly state the intended learning outcomes of each unit and the assessments/policies (such as how the final grades will be determined) together with the reasons behind them. As the first step of backward design, intended learning outcomes should be determined first, then the assessment and in-class activities will follow naturally in alignment. Providing learning objectives and aligning the assessment with these objectives will give students a clear path of learning and also provide fairness to the final grading.
Once a student myself, I am familiar with the traditional power-point-slides lectures. I am also embarrassed by how many times I caught my own focus drifting away. Then I learned that it is not merely a student’s responsibility to keep their focus on the learning materials 100% of the time, it is simply not possible. At my various training, I have learned many active learning methods and the ideas behind them, such as think-pair-share, jigsaw work groups, live polls, among others, and I had the chance to implement some of them in my microteaching sessions.
In my future classes, students will be encouraged to engage with their peers, will participate in the activities that are designed to help them learn, and they will receive and learn how to give constructive feedback to others. When I was a child, I setup my own classroom at home using chalk on wooden doors and would lecture my stuffed animals of the materials I learned that day in school. That was also a form of feedback I could get by explaining the materials and knowing where I did not understand fully. Peer instruction, group work, peer assessment on oral or poster presentations, are all activities to provide constructive feedback for my students and to provide them opportunities to practice how to give feedback like a critical friend.
I believe it is important to help students build a growth mindset, to normalize the struggles, and to frame difficulties as an opportunity to grow knowledge and build skills. The language we use as instructors can have a huge impact on building an engaging and inclusive classroom environment. A quick phrase like “this simple example” can make students doubt themselves if they do not actually find it simple, and small things like that often slip our minds when we are teaching.
I also learned that to make the class inclusive and accommodating, it is important to have variety of activities and assessment. Students have different skills and strengths. While in classroom we want to encourage and help students develop new skills, but if all assessments in a course are in a single format, such as oral presentation, then students have strength in other skills, such as writing and visualization, may feel disadvantaged and unfair. In my class, I will use diverse assessments to help build an inclusive classroom environment for (hopefully all) students which come from different backgrounds, with different personalities and skills.
Once a student myself, I am familiar with the traditional power-point-slides lectures. I am also embarrassed by how many times I caught my own focus drifting away. Then I learned that it is not merely a student’s responsibility to keep their focus on the learning materials 100% of the time, it is simply not possible. At my various training, I have learned many active learning methods and the ideas behind them, such as think-pair-share, jigsaw work groups, live polls, among others, and I had the chance to implement some of them in my microteaching sessions.
In my future classes, students will be encouraged to engage with their peers, will participate in the activities that are designed to help them learn, and they will receive and learn how to give constructive feedback to others. When I was a child, I setup my own classroom at home using chalk on wooden doors and would lecture my stuffed animals of the materials I learned that day in school. That was also a form of feedback I could get by explaining the materials and knowing where I did not understand fully. Peer instruction, group work, peer assessment on oral or poster presentations, are all activities to provide constructive feedback for my students and to provide them opportunities to practice how to give feedback like a critical friend.
I believe it is important to help students build a growth mindset, to normalize the struggles, and to frame difficulties as an opportunity to grow knowledge and build skills. The language we use as instructors can have a huge impact on building an engaging and inclusive classroom environment. A quick phrase like “this simple example” can make students doubt themselves if they do not actually find it simple, and small things like that often slip our minds when we are teaching.
I also learned that to make the class inclusive and accommodating, it is important to have variety of activities and assessment. Students have different skills and strengths. While in classroom we want to encourage and help students develop new skills, but if all assessments in a course are in a single format, such as oral presentation, then students have strength in other skills, such as writing and visualization, may feel disadvantaged and unfair. In my class, I will use diverse assessments to help build an inclusive classroom environment for (hopefully all) students which come from different backgrounds, with different personalities and skills.