السلام عليكم و رحمة الله
March to June, I taught a course lab that I used to hate when I was a student in FCIS :D Well, this has changed after becoming a teaching assistant in it. I was assigned to Computer Graphics course, although I didn't choose to, but it was a good experience after all.
It wasn't my first teaching experience ever, as I used to give some voluntary math lessons to primary years students 3 years ago..
There are some aspects of my teaching experience I'd like to talk about, but before I start on that, let me say that I was extremely lucky to get some of the very unmotivated students on earth in this class :( and it's not a pleasant experience to teach a class where half of the students don't even wish to know whatever I blabber about!
We asked them to regularly fill and submit a feedback form about the sections we give, to help us evaluate how they perceive the lab materials, practical part and assignments, etc.. and also to see if they have any comments or suggestions about the TAs or the course in general. Responses were sent individually to the TA the students chooses in the form.
Believe me when I say that I only got about 10 responses in the whole 3 months of the semester! other TAs got similar small number of feedback entries too..
So how can I evaluate my work and improve it if students aren't helping me with their opinions and feedback?
Finally, I found out that they don't care to evaluate because they believe that it's a useless thing, and no one will read what they'll write anyway.. and this's what I literally call negativism! .. However, I believe that it's not their fault if they were raised in the past 19 years of their life on being negative.. It's a cumulative issue anyway.
Before the semester begins I was happy that I'm getting to do what I really like, I'm finally able to pass my knowledge to others. I remember a sentence I read long ago on my school walls saying:
"إن الله و ملائكته ليصلون على معلم الناس الخير"
and since then I wanted to be a teacher, to spread knowledge, and take this thawab :)
The experienced friends told me that this enthusiasm will vanish when I start into actual work, they said that one begins with some high expectations and hopes, and end up hating everything in the whole country :D
Well, they were partially right, I ended the semester hating just FCIS :D maybe hating the country will be the next level, which I wish I never reach.
Teaching was very very time consuming. The experienced people again told me that this will be so for the first few years (years? really? :D) In the beginning I took almost 5 to 6 hours to prepare one section. Although all materials were set a year ago but I spent most of the time reading the textbook and preparing how I should present the material, and deciding if I can make a slight change to it so it could be more interesting to students. Noran and Sara (two of those experienced friends :D) helped by a lot of nice illustrative ideas.
During the semester, I used to take notes about some observations and notices, and I learned a lot from doing this. I'd like to post them here so they can help anyone else:
- The types of questions students asked (if they rarely did!) could be divided into 2 types. Type #1: very naive questions which can often be answer with "read the problem statement :huh", and type #2 are any other questions not in type #1 :D which can be answered happily.
- When a student asks a question in the online group, they want the answer to be provided by a TA, if it's by another student then it's not a "good" and "trusted" answer. I tried to tell them more than one time that this's a wrong idea; knowledge isn't exclusive to TAs only, and judging the validity of information can be done by searching among many sources, and rejecting other students' answers may decrease the spirit of competition between them, which is not good at all.
I remember that my class used to ask and answer A LOT, the question zone in each course was reaching 200 pages sometimes. - Students get annoyed when they're told to search for an additional point by themselves. I noticed this on their faces during the section whenever I mention the "this is a side topic, you can Google it" thing, and I once got a feedback point saying something similar to: "Please if you have info to say, say it, otherwise mat3a2adinash" !
- Sometimes (well, a lot of times) I got that type of questions where they want the answer to be "send me ur code and I'll fix the problem for you!". I guess this's related to the previous point, *searching for the bug and fixing it by myself is not my job as a student*!
- I don't know whether this is a normal thing or not, but I can see that 90% of the class uses a totally informal language in their questions and e-mails, they even use an incomprehensible version of franco :D I remember that I never dared to e-mail a teacher in franco!
- Facebook groups are the worst way to communicate with students. I have witnessed the most perfect misuse of FB groups ever.
My advise: never create one to communicate with your students, you can use Google groups, or any other forum or so. - I found out that the seeking for an answer process was as follows:
1. post the question on the FB group
2. If you get no answer from a TA, then mention all the TAs in a comment.
4. If a friend answers you, go to 2.
3. If you still get no answer, send them personal messages.
4. If they disabled accepting messages, finally think of e-mailing them!
//and I get 100+ daily notifications for mostly useless stuff :S
Finally, I'd like to mention some mess ups while teaching and lessons I learned for the next time. Here I'd like to thank my students for being tolerant (or careless? :]).
There was a section I messed up real bad (lighting and light sources). The good thing about teaching a course, as opposed to giving a talk, is that you always get another chance. You get the next section to undo your mistakes. The mess ups were mainly because there were times during the semester when some other issues cropped up and I couldn't give enough time to preparing.
There was a section I messed up real bad (lighting and light sources). The good thing about teaching a course, as opposed to giving a talk, is that you always get another chance. You get the next section to undo your mistakes. The mess ups were mainly because there were times during the semester when some other issues cropped up and I couldn't give enough time to preparing.
The lessons I learned are: make full notes of the section before going in for teaching. For students, discuss with them the entire course map well before the course begins. Be ready to accept your mistakes while teaching.
Read this quote which fits exactly in this context:
"One of the big misapprehensions about science that we perpetrate in our classrooms is that the teacher always seems to know the answer to any problem that is discussed. This gives students the idea that there
is a book somewhere with all the right answers to all of the interesting questions, and that teachers know those answers. And if one could get hold of the book, one would have everything settled. That’s so unlike the true nature of science."--Leon Henkin
