Purdue University
Topic: Observation of an Effective InstructorName: Tianru Jiang If I’m asked to name the greatest teacher I have ever known, I would definitely say “Dr. Ward”, who is a teacher in Purdue University and a researcher at GWU this year. I was so lucky to attend his class last semester. There was nothing too difficult in that class, and the main topic was probability introduction. I came to love statistics because of him, not only his attractive personality, but also his teaching styles. There are several things he did in class that impressed me and provided me guidance in my work as a teaching assistant.He organized the lecture so well that students easily remembered and absorbed his lessons. Every time he went to the class, he always did reviews at the beginning of class and gave a brief preview of what we were going to learn that day. As Ron and Susan Zemke write in 30 Things We Know For Sure About Adult Learning, “They have expectations, and it is critical to take time early on to clarify and articulate all expectations before getting into content”. Dr. Ward structured this part the best. He spared no effort to make sure that students knew their destination and the many roads leading to it. Thus, sitting in his class, you would feel like there was a map in your mind, and clearly understand what you needed to do step-by-step. An effective teacher should understand this quote: “With an understanding of the structure of the discipline they are teaching, teachers can provide cognitive maps of the terrain to be learned, along with content-specific strategies, examples, analogies, and diagrams to make material meaningful to students and to address common misconceptions”. Beyond that, Dr. Ward also tried his best to avoid overload. “If the lesson becomes too complex and stimulating, students will begin to lose the larger message in the hands”. There is a research about how much information people could gain from a class. We might feel that students may acquire a lot since we can tell from their eyes that every time professors turn back from the blackboard they seem to pay their one hundred percent attention. But, unfortunately, the result of that research shows that a student could only absorb 40 percent of information given in a class. Is this number depressing? I think yes. “Adults tend to prefer single concept, single-theory courses that focus heavily on the application of the concept to relevant problems.” In short, KISS – keep it simple, stupid. Besides his well-organized lecture, another outstanding thing about his class was the “physically and psychologically comfortable” learning environment. No one can deny how essential this atmosphere is for efficient work and motivated study. “Effective teacher can organize the environment to provide students with active, hands-on learning and authentic tasks and audiences.” Dr. Ward is one of them. He is good at getting all the students involved in class. His patience and kindness encouraged students to raise their hands and express their opinion. Since “Adults tend to take errors personally and are more likely to let them affect self-esteem.” Dr.Ward never said “that’s wrong.” Instead, he always guided students to step out of the wrong place and let themselves find out what was wrong. What I listed above is not exhaustive. Actually, it is easy to find other amazing things about him. Most importantly, he is himself. What I mean by that is he always kept his own style. A good teacher sometimes should be humorous. “It’s about being self-deprecating and not taking yourself too seriously. It’s often about making innocuous jokes, mostly at your own expense, so that the ice breaks and students learn in a more relaxed atmosphere where you, like them, are human with your own share of faults and shortcomings.” I still remembered the day that Dr. Ward invited all of his students to his house. His wife cooked a lot of delicious food for us, and we met his two sons and two daughters that day. We had the chance to get really close and to see the daily life of our professor. That experience was fantastic. Also, in class, he would like to draw pictures to help us understand and often made jokes about how his children were surprised to find a lot of cute drawings in graduate-level notes. All in all, he made the lecture seem like an easy talk between friends, one of whom happened to be good at stats while another one was not.“The key to the instructor role is control.” In class, many tasks need to be finished in an exact time period. How to balance “the presentation of new material, debate and discussion, sharing of relevant student experiences” counts a lot. It is often the case that professors make the class seem longer than it should be. However, Dr. Ward never put students into this terrible situation. He had an incredibly good control of the clock. It seems that he made maximum use of every single second. I am not exaggerating here. Every time he finished the final example, time came to an end. Moreover, he “implemented the use of collaboration and exercises that reinforce learning”. What surprised me the most about his class was that everyone complained about how difficult the homework problems were, but nobody blamed him, instead, they studied hard and enjoyed solving problems. From my perspective, that might be because of the high connection between theoretical knowledge and practical problems; Variety of applications always incite students’ interests. ................
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