The teacher has to be a mentor to the students: the teaching philosophy of the world’s top institutions
(Provided by Teaching and Learning Development and Resources Center) Sleepy students pretending to listen to the professor’s lecture is a common sight. To improve the quality of teaching and the abilities of the faculty, National Sun Yat-sen University delegated Professor Shih-Chieh Jack Hsu of the Department of Information Management, Professor Chou-Wen Wang of the Department of Finance, and Associate Professor Hao-Chieh Lin of the Department of Business Management to personally experience the education style at world’s top institutions and then, organized a lecture for the three professors to share what they learned abroad. What is the role of a teacher? “Mentoring”, agreed the three professors. They shared their thoughts with participating faculty and tried to imagine the future development of NSYSU.
Professor Chou-Wen Wang gave the example of teaching by case method learned at Harvard Business School (HBS), USA, where the teachers would cold call a few students to summarize the text assigned to read for that day’s class, then discuss and summarize the positive and negative points of a certain issue, putting them down separately on the blackboard. In this way, they lead the students to thoroughly understand a problem from different perspectives. This teaching method is not only respectful to the students but also lets them see all points on the blackboard and nurtures a holistic approach.
Associate Professor Hao-Chieh Lin, who also visited Harvard Business School, further elaborated on the topic of mentoring. He said that most Taiwanese teachers concentrate on the ‘what’, but, in the case method, the teacher leads the students to analyze the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of each case and requires every student to participate in class, and, basing on direct observation of the students’ responses, tries to find other answers to the same question and continues asking questions following the keywords of the answers. The most important thing is to reserve some time after class to summarize the lesson to maximize the benefit of the students. “Harvard teachers have very good time management”.
What might be the possible development paths of the University? Professor Shih-Chieh Jack Hsu suggests we take reference of Babson College – a teaching-oriented private university in the USA. Although the tuition per semester is over USD 70,000, the institution attracts students from all over the world interested in starting their businesses. It is because of the school’s focus on innovation and entrepreneurship that all faculty have practical entrepreneurship experience and let their students study and start their businesses at the same time and ‘learn by doing’. Thus, Babson College ranks first in the world in the ranking of innovative entrepreneurship education by New York Times and occupies a prominent position on the education market. Professor Hsu further compared NSYSU and Babson College: NSYSU is a research university fairly strong in all fields. He suggests the University strengthens and fully develops its strong points. “We are a small university, but as long as we rank first in some of the fields, we will succeed!”, he said.
(Edited by Public Affairs Division)
Professor Chou-Wen Wang gave the example of teaching by case method learned at Harvard Business School (HBS), USA, where the teachers would cold call a few students to summarize the text assigned to read for that day’s class, then discuss and summarize the positive and negative points of a certain issue, putting them down separately on the blackboard. In this way, they lead the students to thoroughly understand a problem from different perspectives. This teaching method is not only respectful to the students but also lets them see all points on the blackboard and nurtures a holistic approach.
Associate Professor Hao-Chieh Lin, who also visited Harvard Business School, further elaborated on the topic of mentoring. He said that most Taiwanese teachers concentrate on the ‘what’, but, in the case method, the teacher leads the students to analyze the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of each case and requires every student to participate in class, and, basing on direct observation of the students’ responses, tries to find other answers to the same question and continues asking questions following the keywords of the answers. The most important thing is to reserve some time after class to summarize the lesson to maximize the benefit of the students. “Harvard teachers have very good time management”.
What might be the possible development paths of the University? Professor Shih-Chieh Jack Hsu suggests we take reference of Babson College – a teaching-oriented private university in the USA. Although the tuition per semester is over USD 70,000, the institution attracts students from all over the world interested in starting their businesses. It is because of the school’s focus on innovation and entrepreneurship that all faculty have practical entrepreneurship experience and let their students study and start their businesses at the same time and ‘learn by doing’. Thus, Babson College ranks first in the world in the ranking of innovative entrepreneurship education by New York Times and occupies a prominent position on the education market. Professor Hsu further compared NSYSU and Babson College: NSYSU is a research university fairly strong in all fields. He suggests the University strengthens and fully develops its strong points. “We are a small university, but as long as we rank first in some of the fields, we will succeed!”, he said.
(Edited by Public Affairs Division)
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