My first teaching job

You know how students from all over the world come to the UK for its world-class education? Okay. Now imagine you’ve got a chance to be teaching at one of these prestigious universities. If that does not excite you, I don’t know what will!

As a funded PhD student in Brunel Business School, I was given certain hours per academic years to engage in teaching activities as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA). Last term I helped my module leader deliver a hybrid module for our MBA students. My job was quite humble—sitting in a corner, connecting with study-from-home students, taking attendance, trying to keep myself occupied. But this term I would lead several seminar discussions for undergrad students, which means I will be teaching for the first time ever! It was both exciting and overwhelming for me. Fortunately, I was so busy with my own thesis and classes that I didn’t have that much time to be nervous. Unfortunately, it also means that I didn’t take the time needed to appreciate how big of a leap it was for my career. That’s why I’m trying to capture what I have experienced with my seminars in this blog retrospectively as a way to celebrate one of my winning milestones.

Situation:

We have a big class of more than 200 first-year students, divided into 10 seminar groups. I was in charge of 5 out of 10 groups. We ran 2 seminars for each group in two consecutive weeks. Each seminar lasted for 1 hour. In total, I had 10 hours of teaching in 2 weeks, with more than 100 students on hand.

During each seminars, we would be discussing a case study that explores different dimensions of the International Business subject. The discussions are designed to help students apply the concepts they have learned from the lectures into real life scenarios, develop analytical and critical thinking skills, ask questions, and prepare for their final exam.

Tasks:

I didn’t have to prepare teaching materials because it had been prepared by my module leader. The case studies were on point, not too simple nor too complicated. The subjects were familiar and comprehensible to undergrad students.

The biggest challenge for me was not to deliver the seminars, but to deliver one seminar repeatedly for 5 times a week. This was also the first time I was in charge of the whole class (however small it was), I needed to think about what kind of class I wanted to organise. I knew immediately that I didn’t want to have boring classes, not just because I didn’t want my students to get bored, but because I didn’t want myself to get bored.

Actions:

I decided that during these discussions, I would give my students an overarching analytical framework that they could use to analyse any case or answer any question that they might encounter in the exams. The framework is based on three levels of analysis commonly used in social sciences: micro level, meso (organisation) level, and macro level.

I also decided not to rely on the power point presentations because I wanted to make the sessions as interactive as possible. So I got a few markers for the white board, and got ready for class!

Results:

On average, we achieved an attendance rate as projected. Classes were engaging with lots of questions coming from students. Purposes of the seminars were met—students explored the concept of globalisation and its implications on macro-economics, on firms, and on individuals, they understood the format of the exam and got a chance to practice in class.

Reflections:

As I was planning for my classes, I didn’t expect that the most difficult job was to manage my energy level. Classes on Thursday were fine, because they were far apart—one at 10am and one at 5pm. But Friday classes were back to back from 12pm-4pm with only one-hour lunch break. By the fourth seminar of the week, I would have felt drowsy, my throat would have been so sore I would have to take a sip every few minutes. Looking back, I could have incorporated more group activities into the classes so that my students could be more active and I could have more time to recover. The fact that most of my classes finished in less than 1 hour was an indicator that I was not using the time as effectively as I could.

Another important lesson that I learned as a teacher was that you need to be flexible in how you deliver a class. Classes with higher attendance rate were interactive and exciting, and I remember we drew a lot of ideas on the white board. But for classes with fewer students, we would sit down casually and have a deeper but quieter discussion. The most important thing, in my opinion, is that students feel comfortable coming to class and that we give them the opportunity to co-create their learning experience.

So there you have it—the story of my first experience teaching a class in the UK. Hopefully it will be a first of many more classes in my career. 🙂