Learning. Life.

About my Teaching

I’ve known that I wanted to teach for a long time. In my first job as an IT graduate I got to train the users of a package I’d helped to program. I loved it, and so did they. I’ve since worked in different roles in the IT Industry, loving it, and building my skills so that I had a well-rounded IT skill set, and somehow always managing to sneak in some training.  Officially, I have run industry training courses in database administration to professional (and skilled) programmers in Mount Eden and taught business courses to unemployed people in Glen Innes and Papakura. And in the non-training roles I still managed to teach recruits about database administration and internals when working as a Support Manager, and train users in all sorts of IT systems.

At the end of 2002 I had just returned to New Zealand after living in the UK, when friend rang me up and said “your job’s just been advertised in the paper”. She was looking at a vacancy for an IT Lecturer at EIT, and she was right.

In my first year of teaching at EIT I completed a National Certificate of Adult Education, which opened my eyes up to a lot of different theories about how people learn. Looking back on the theories I first learnt about then, I’m surprised how many have quietly worked their way into my teaching and the way I teach my classes. Having read Vgotski, Kolb and Honey & Mumford  I do a lot more group work and varied learning activities. Gilly Salmon’s work informs the online material I provide for my students. And my students provide an ongoing source of inspiration to think more and learn more about how best to help them develop skills to succeed in their chosen field.

Finding my personal teaching style

Early on in my teaching at EIT I did an experiment with how my students respond to me. One term I had one course with 2 streams on different days – so half the students saw me on one day, and the other half the next day. In those days I wore suits at EIT, as I had running training courses for IT professionals. As I had the 2 streams on different days, I decided to wear a suit always for the first stream, and “smart casual” (trausers and top) for the second stream. I was careful to keep everything else the same – same activities, same tone of voice, same stories. I was fascinated to find that the 2nd stream (where I wore more casual clothes) approached me a lot more with questions or for help, where as the 1st stream (where I wore a suit) found me less approachable. From then on I’ve left the suits on the hanger, because while they seemed to engender respect in my students, that respect was getting in the way of their learning. It was the start of my thinking about my own teaching style, how I want to relate to my students, and how I want them to relate to me. Now I aim to earn their respect through a solid knowledge of my subject matter and being responsive to their needs.

I recently came across a saying that I love:

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” - William Arthur Ward.

I had been working on explaining and demonstrating. It seems I’ll have to up my game

One of my favourite comments on a student evaluation was “Kim sets high standards, and helps us achieve them”. I’m pretty happy about that.

Inspired by Mikey Goldweber’s keynote presentation at the 2011 CITRENZ conference, I’m trying to show inspire students with the power that IT has to do positive things in the world. This year I have encorporated that idea in my choice of case studies for the Systems Analysis and Design course, choosing to have the class develop systems for emergency management and civil defence purposes, in light of the recent earthquakes in Christchurch and around the world. This is also demonstrating gobalisation of IT, showcasing global volunteer development efforts such as the Crisis Commons, and the idea of “using IT for good”.