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As a member of the Departmental Teaching Excellence Committee, I am involved in the selection of nominees for the Teaching Assistant Award. The committee members have to carefully look through qualitative comments from students’ feedback for candidates with good ratings (our definition of a good rating is ‘above 4.000’). While reading students’ feedback, I discern some common practices and qualities of these good tutors. They are: effective teaching, good preparation, good communication, involving the students, personal character, innovative measures and passion for teaching.
Although the cases studied are restricted to either teaching assistants or graduate tutors in the Department of Mathematics, the findings below may provide some relevant tips to all teachers in general:
- Effective teaching
A good teacher must be able to explain concepts and convey ideas simply and clearly. He/she should speak at a level students can understand and be good at summarising the main points of a topic.
- Good preparation
It takes good preparation to become an effective teacher. Besides making sure that he/she has a comprehensive grasp of the subject, a good tutor also plans his/her lessons carefully in advance. He/she always thinks of the best way to conduct his/her class. Whenever appropriate, he/she also provides alternative approaches to problem-solving.
- Good communication
Good communication skills are vital to teacher-student interaction. A tutor must ensure that his/her speech is understood by students, especially if he/she speaks with an accent. A good tutor should also make his/her expectations clear to students. He/she should make an effort to learn more about students’ backgrounds and find out what they have learnt in lectures so as to understand their needs and difficulties.
- Student involvement
A good tutor does not turn a tutorial class into a mini-lecture. Instead, he/she encourages students to participate in class activities such as presenting solutions and group discussions. He/she also asks students questions from time to time to test their understanding as well as to collect feedback from them.
- Personal character
Through students’ feedback, I have observed that good tutors possess character traits such as approachability, friendliness and patience. In addition, a good tutor should also strive to be interesting, humourous, lively, cheerful, confident and straightforward with students.
- Innovative measures
Personal character traits (e.g. sense of humour and cheerfulness) are not something that can be easily acquired or mimicked. Some good tutors who lack such qualities make it up in some other innovative ways (e.g. distributing extra notes, scheduling extra classes, using IVLE).
- Passion for teaching
Passion for teaching motivates a tutor to put effort into his/her teaching and to make sure that students learn well. It is evident from students’ feedback that most students do appreciate tutors who teach with passion and give them due respect.
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