My Teaching Philosophy
I teach because I enjoy the social and intellectual aspects of teaching. There is no better feeling than when a class is going very well, the technology is working and actually saving time, problems are being solved, great questions are being asked, and the students are excited about doing new things!
Many of the students that I teach are looking for additional education so that they can improve their economic situation. As a professor, I believe that I should be providing value to these students so that a university education remains a strong investment in the future.
Teaching GIS is a constant challenge; with such a fast-developing field, everything is in flux, and yesterday’s fascinating new technology is often obsolete or has become background noise. The educational environment is not static either. Every few years, a new group of students with a different social, educational and technological background start university. By recognizing that change is a constant and by regularly re-evaluating my assumptions and methods, I remain relevant in a changing world.
How My Teaching Philosophy Affects Teaching Practice
A number of themes that permeate my work flow from this philosophy. These are: Playing it Straight, Building Confidence, Providing Value, Being Understanding, Maintaining Integrity, Being a Strong Teacher, Making it Real, and Keeping it Fun.
Playing it Straight
I’ve come to realize that it is best practice to cultivate and build up students. When I teach complex topics, I attempt to split them into logical parts to explain each in an easily understandable fashion. Once the student has the basic picture, then the details can be added to build simple analogies into sophisticated understandings.
On exams, there’s a fine line between asking challenging questions and asking what students would call “trick” questions. I try my best to avoid questions of this type. In a multicultural class, such questions are doubly unfair because they often rely on figurative speech that many English language learners will fail to grasp.
Building Confidence
Many students are unsure of themselves, particularly when it comes to learning about technology. I show them how staying calm, applying what they already know, and looking at all the clues can help to surmount most technological problems. When they work with me, they see that there is no magic in technology, and that their instructor runs into the same software bugs that they do. We all have to adapt to changing technology. My only advantages are that I debug the labs before students see them and that I have more experience, so I know what to look out for!
Providing Value
I strive to educate my students instead of merely training them about how to push buttons. Understanding the technology behind the button pushes (e.g. why vector and raster data storage methods are complementary or why a 16-bit integer raster might not be able to store their data) helps students to think through problems thoroughly so that they can solve them.
Building Understanding
Hamming it up during Geomorphology class field work at Piper’s Lagoon in Nanaimo, BC. (Photo: J. Craig)
Having spent many years in classes, I understand and share many of the concerns for the future that my students have. With increasing tuition fees, a challenging job market and many responsibilities outside school, it can be a scary time to be a student. I try to always be friendly and approachable and try to see things from the student’s perspective. When problems arise, I do what I can to work through them and come up with a mutually acceptable solution, if possible.
Maintaining Integrity
Understanding the student’s perspective does not mean that I automatically agree with them. There needs to be integrity in the educational process, and it is important to know when that integrity is threatened. If there is no integrity in the educational process, then an education is of questionable value. My approach is to try to be a role model, demonstrating the value of hard work, consistent effort and strong ethics, and ensuring that I hold myself to the same standards that I expect of my students.
My students come from different ethnic, cultural, economic, and educational backgrounds, and I expect all of them to make a good effort, whether they are fresh out of a bachelor’s program or already have a Ph.D. Although there are no free rides in my classes, I will go out of my way to help those students who are struggling but are making a reasonable effort to learn the material.
Being a Strong Teacher
When working in a rapidly developing field, it is easy to become outdated. My approach is to pursue constant training that forces me to develop and apply new skills. When I was in university, the most interesting professors were those who could show students the research in which they were engaged. I enjoy seeing students get excited when they see some of the things that I am working on or have worked on in the past. The best teaching occurs when there is a balance between research time and classroom time, with information flowing in both directions.
Making it Real
Students collect data for a Campus Wi-Fi signal strength map for a Geog. 321 exercise.
When appropriate, I like to use local examples to give students a sense that they can make a difference. This also allows mature students to integrate their new learning with what they might already know about a topic. Local data collection allows students to get away from their screens and better understand where their data comes from and how it is collected.
Keeping it Fun
There are some parts of education that are unavoidably tedious, and it is important to note that the ability to complete plain hard work is important for anyone’s success. However, when possible, I try to make assignments interesting, inspirational, relevant, and fun, but not to the extent that lab assignments become “canned.” Producing great labs makes things more difficult for me as an instructor, but it also makes my job more interesting and enjoyable.