I am very much interested to learn from those lecturers who have experienced in teaching leadership, management, organisational behaviour and cross-cultural business. How would you structure your teaching to help the business students in general ?
In my opinion TEACHER is one,who Trains to develop skill, Educates to impart knowledge, Assesses the performance, Cares for holistic development, Has knowledge about recent developments in the relevant fields, Evolves interactive environment, and is Research oriented. Management is a professional course, where new concepts are evolving through research, for addressing various business situations. Hence, business management teacher should continuously update his/her knowledge in the relevant field and finally should be conversant with institutional knowledge acquisition,storage and transfer mechanism.
Yes , I agree with your answer ,Teachers have a huge impact on how much students learn . Students who get best teachers learn a lot and student who get the worst teachers fall behind . Education is a shared committment between dedicated teachers , motivated students and enthusiatic parents .
I am not a professor but I do teach. I will say that for the many professors that I had in college, less than a hand-full ever showed an actually interest and I made sure to visit with all my professors. I would always prepare, as they say to do, before I went to make sure I had questions to talk about. Majority were always in that mindset of, get the students in and out and fast as possible so they can go back to doing their work. The associate and new professors were the ones I saw who were interested in actually talking with students.
I thought about answering this question and then I almost did not. The reason I decided was that the answers given all came from professors and no answers coming from the view point that is most important to learn about, the students.
All the answers provided are you standard textbook responses for how a professor should teach. But GREAT teachers are hard to come by. A great teacher is someone that remembers names, histories, personal events of their students and follows up with them as side conversations or small talk whenever they pass one another on campus, at work, or special event. It is expected that a professor be knowledgeable about his field, they should be update to date on all the research. That are all givens. But what takes a regular professor to the next level is how proactive they are with their students. It is the professor who invites his struggling student over for dinner so he/she can get to know him better and find out why he is having trouble with the material, even if that is not his major. That very act, shows they care about the student. How often does that happen? Blue moons happen more often.
What the professor who looks for the struggling students in class and requests personal time with them to actually help them, instead of waiting for the student to come to them? The students who are affected the most though are the ones who are struggling in their field of studies and no professor helps them. It is the professor who gets to know their student and offers to help make connections. For example, a student who shows promise in his work asks for the best companies he should think about working for. A regular professor would say, "company A, B, C are good ones. You should contact them and see what they say." A great professor would say, "I'm visiting this one company that does some amazing work next week, would you like to come along? I can introduce you to some people that I believe would be interested in talking with you about your research." And that right there is what makes that professor better than all the others. The regular professor is knowledgeable about companies but that is it. The great professor is knowledgeable about companies and has industry connections for his students he/she thinks are worth their time and not only that but also knows what kind of research that student is doing. Great professors are ones that are concerned with also taking on the role of being a mentor. A mentor is one that wants to help, they want to get involved, and they want to make a difference, even if it means lending a hand now and then.
show what the difference between a regular teacher and an exceptional one looks like. The regular one is smart and knows what they are doing and just waits, the exceptional goes out and looks for talent they can help. They make a proactive effort in helping their students, even the ones that are new to the field or just taking the course for personal interest. They go on to make a world of difference in the lives of ever single student they meet.
So to answer the question you had in your paragraph, how to structure your teaching,
First quarter of the semester, find out who your students are, let them know who you are and what you are all about. Identify the ones you think have potential and talk with them.
Second quarter - find industry leads that would help them learn more about what they are interested in doing; talk with colleagues who might know people that can help and make that connection
Third quarter - follow up with how they are doing with the course, their life goals, and the connections you gave them. Not all with follow through, but it's the effort that counts.
End of the semester - Reward your top students with something special, make the students aware that you do care about them and those who work hard, have something to look forward to. One of my professors offered a research position to the top performing student in the class as a reward.
I realize that all this sounds hard and lots of work for each semester, but then again, no one said being great was easy. For my style of teaching, I make an effort to get to know the names of all my students and talk with them. The one thing I do to make my courses fun, because some of them can get hard, is I use humor throughout my teaching and I make it very interesting to learn. I turn everything into a story that can be repeated back so that it's not just a list of bullet points each and every time. Students enjoy my classes because its entertaining. When you can take away the feel of it being in a lecture and more like a conversation your having with a family member or best friend, suddenly, everyone wants to listen. And when I see some one struggling, I identify their learning style and adapt the material to their understanding of things. I go the extra mile in helping people learn an I think that's why people enjoy them so much.
HI Chris, I like your down-to-earth answer. I see a more human to human teaching and learning rather than an insensitive robotic way of getting the things done fast such as on target and on time each day. Thanks!
Oh, I did just remember this one story about a business professor I had once and how he made it a point to really help his students.
Business Professors who are great at what they do have industry connections. The business world is all about who you know in order to make things happen. One day in class, we were all working on a project that we felt would help certain companies. One group of students thought of a new way to track luggage for airline companies. The idea was so inventive that the professor called up a CEO of a major airline that he was very good friends with and put him on speakerphone for everyone to listen in on in class. He told the CEO that he had some students here that he felt should meet. He told him about their idea and the CEO liked it. He said he would be happy to talk with them further about how to turn their new idea into a real working product. The students, who were mostly of different majors and disciplines were shocked at the instant connection the professor made for them, and how in the world of business, it is all about connections. The phone call lasted only three minutes, but changed their lives. The week after that, the CEO invited them over, which was in another city not to far away for a meeting so he could look over their protype. By the end of the semester they were in plans with the airline to make it a real working model.
I think Business professors should be aware of their connections and how important it is to use them whenever they see a new idea come up and to connect the people together who would benefit. This story is a perfect example of that, but then again that is why that professor is on so many boards, knows so many CEO by name, and has so many industry contacts. He runs one of the best Think Tanks for his university and is always looking out for the next best idea.
So yes, going back to what you said, Professors need to know that it is all about that human connection. If all you do is walk in and read off the board in all of your lectures, it does nothing to help the students, but if you make it worth learning about, you suddenly have everyone listening. I have had professors who are so focused on their research that they can only be reached by email. One of my professors, who I failed his class, told me that because I always came and talked with him about the material in class said that he would write me a letter of recommendation if I ever needed it because I knew how to apply the material better than the student who got top grade because he saw how I used the material. He told me, "just because you didn't anwser all the questions right doesn't mean you don't know it, it just means you missed those narrow questions, but you know exactly what this course was about."