Statement of Teaching Philosophy
My teaching goal is to encourage the pursuit of knowledge. I believe that students are the main players in the learning process; the teacher’s role is to inspire their interest and advance their abilities in life-long learning. My teaching emphasis is on motivating and helping students learn, which is especially important in teaching an emerging subject, such as new media. In particular, it is a teacher’s responsibility to help students develop a vision of the future, to enable them with fundamental concepts, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and to exhibit the excitement of the overall learning process.
An interactive and inspiring environment is vital to achieve my teaching goal. I want students to actively participate, collaborate and communicate in class. Even though computers are the major tools that students deal with in my classroom, I constantly encourage them to talk in class either to the teacher or to each other about the topics covered. When designing a course plan, I attempt to create opportunities for students to cooperate with each other. I teach students to switch roles from a communicator to the audience so that they can not only improve their professional projects, but also understand the value of a communicator relies on the interaction with the audiences.
To create an inspiring environment, I use multimedia to provide a vision of the subject matters; my teaching materials are designed relevant to students’ lives. Moreover, having a faith in the benefit of ‘good moods’ on learning and creativity, I strive to establish a stress-free style in my presentation. When students work on their projects, background music works effectively in terms of keeping them patient and stimulating their inspiration. In addition, I offer students a chance to revise their projects, by which I express my high expectations for them and move them forward.
Enlightened by Confucius, I pay special respects to diverse talents and ways of learning to make every student enjoy the journey of pursuing knowledge. The first thing I will do in every quarter is to survey students about their prior knowledge of the subject that I am teaching and their expectations for my course. In addition to taking care of the majority of the class, it is beneficial to provide other students with extra learning materials and special office hours.
Assignments and projects are the major approaches to measure students’ learning. However, the emphasis is on detecting their improvements during the overall course. The initial survey functions as a baseline for evaluating individual student, whereas their progress can be more easily observed from the revision for each assignment as well. To let students review their fellow classmates’ projects can promote critical thinking and role-playing.
In order to achieve the ultimate goal of encouraging students’ active pursuit of knowledge, I attempt to employ various strategies to establish an interactive and inspiring environment. Under a helpful and pleasant learning circumstance, students’ enthusiasm can be stimulated and their skills of further learning can be enhanced.
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