Find out what motivates students and teachers in the process of learning and teaching as the authors discuss Student Motivation/Teacher Motivation in this issue of CDTL Brief.
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| Motivation for Mandatory Courses |
| Elsie Chan |
| Professor Faculty of Human and Social Development University of Victoria, Canada |
| University students are often required to take mandatory courses with contents that few students look forward to. As a result, students experience ‘negative motivation’—a situation where teaching strategies need to be developed to motivate the students to learn and perform beyond the minimum requirement to pass. Continue reading |
| Driven to Teach |
| Vandana Ghai |
| Human Resource Management Specialist Human Resource Management Unit |
| Richard Feynman (1918–1988), winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, was an inspiring teacher. He brought his own idiosyncratic style—a passion for the subject and a mixture of irreverence and disrespect for received wisdom—into teaching. “What came to Feynman by “common sense” were often brilliant twists that captured the essence of his point” (Feynman, 1995, pp. xx). Continue reading |
| On Graduate Students and Teaching |
| Dr Alan K Szeto |
| Department of Chemistry |
| Professor Charles M. Knobler, former chairperson of the Department of Chemistry at UCLA, once spoke during the opening address of a graduate student orientation week about preparation for teaching. In his speech, Professor Knobler emphasised the anticipation of a change of roles—from being a student to being a teacher and from taking examinations to writing them. Continue reading |