Tuesday, December 7, 2010

What makes a good lecturer?

You can read an interesting post here where a lecturer in UTAR had to adapt to the spoon-feeding culture in that university. That post was written in 2006. Such culture is not just restricted to UTAR but it is prevalent throughout Malaysia especially in private colleges/universities.

I share her predicament as I faced a similar situation a few years back when I first started out as a lecturer. I, too, managed to adapt to this spoon-feeding culture after teaching for a few semesters and only then I received positive evaluations from my students. The positive evaluations were encouraging and motivating for me but honestly, I felt that this whole spoon-feeding teaching is not right. What to do...."if you can't beat them, join them!"

In short, to be a "good" lecturer, you have to spoonfeed your students. Yes, I am serious. You have to "teach" if you want to be a lecturer in Malaysia.

What must you do?
- You have to prepare very detailed notes.
- You have to teach very thoroughly on every single part of the syllabus.
- You have to point to them the important areas of the syllabus that will be examined in the exams.
- And most importantly, the notes/slides must be distributed days in advance before the class starts or else the students will not be able to follow your lessons.

1 comment:

YW Tay said...

Haha. Exactly! I have to agree with that. Spoon-feeding policy not only practiced in Tertiary Edu in M'sia nonetheless students are taught in such a way since secondary school!What a shame~ Especially in Tertiary Edu. all students suppose need to be self-learning, discover and explore their own problems by referring to various kinds of books, or through extensive reading materials to find out their own problems...But, very sad, students nowadays failed to do so, they just demand tips from their respective lecturer! I'd say lecturers and tutors are just part of the facilitators, students have to be more independent in learning and this is the the only way we are proud to be excel in academic because our hard works are truly pays off.