—Laurent Metzger, FASS 

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A good teacher: 

• has complete mastery over what he/she is teaching. 
• does not cut corners and avoid difficult topics and concepts. 
• prepares and re-organises the material and does not copy wholesale from existing textbooks and references sources. 
• allows sufficient time for the audience to follow and digest the gist of a theorem or concept. 
• checks on the effectiveness of his/her teaching with regular periodic quizzes. 
• does not joke too much or waste valuable time. 

—Leong Mook Seng, ENG 

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A good teacher should never promise students an "A", ask tutors to give more marks to students or spoonfeed students by solving all problems for them. 

—Anonymous 

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One can not be a good teacher if he/she just pleases the students and does not drive or lead them to learn. Many of us complain that today's students are more interested in scoring than in learning. But what were we more interested in 10 or 20 years back? Don't you agree that we were driven to learn by the less popular but good lecturers? How many of us gave those lecturers a bad comment? Who can tell me that a popular lecturer is a good lecturer? 

—Wendell Q. Sun, SCI 

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Good teaching is infection rather than injection, osmosis rather than hypnosis, organic rather than mechanical, heuristic rather than algorithmic. Good teaching is sharing what you know with your students not showing off. It entails love for the subject and the student. It should empower students to think for themselves. It requires humility (to say "I don't know. But I'll find out and get back to you."). 

—Sunita A. Abraham, FASS 

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Good teachers have the following 3 Cs. 
Character—good teachers are exemplary in their moral conduct and behaviour. 
Commitment—they have strong convictions about what they teach and are able to motivate the students because of their enthusiasm. 
Compassion—they are firm but fair and try to understand students problems during the process of learning. 

—Winston Lee, FBA 

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What deserves more attention is the ability to elicit comments from students in classes and tutorials and to encourage or enable them to think on their feet. So many teaching situations are so structured that students feel that only one response fits into the tutor's "scenario". Teachers who make students feel that their comments or speculations are potentially valuable, and who lead students to think about the implications of their comments, are sometimes made to feel that they are too "unstructured" in their approach. Students should have some influence on the interpretation of the course's basic subject matter. 

—John N. Miksic, FASS 

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A good university teacher should have first-rate and firsthand insights to impart in order to inspire and motivate novices. Hence a good teacher must be first a good research worker and, second, a teacher with teaching skill. A so-called good teacher without involvement in any significant research activity is often one that would constantly court the favours of students at the expense of educational principles. 

—Anonymous 

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Good teaching should excite the learner and inspire him/her to seek more knowledge and delve further into the subject. The result of good teaching is a motivated and independent learner. 

—Grace Ong, DEN 

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What deserves more attention is the specific measures a teacher has taken: 

• to find out what students should remember and understand in order to handle new situations, 
• to deliver what needs to be remembered, 
• to train students where skill matters, 
• to illustrate concepts, 
• to force students to apply concepts creatively and 
• to test students' ability to recall, demonstrate skills and apply concepts to new situations. 

What deserves less attention is the teacher's popularity among students on a one-person-one-vote basis, because it can deceive (has been deceiving) many. 

—W. A. M. Alwis, ENG 

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A good teacher: 

• prepares his/her course as a whole, rather than piecemeal. 
• is able to follow the student's train of thought and identify with the student's problems. 
• is able to demonstrate to the student how the course is relevant to real working life. 
• stimulates the student to continue to ferret for information for lifelong learning. 

—Winston Seah, ENG 

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Comments sometimes made by students such as "challenging", "makes us think" and "I feel mentally drained after his/her class" are worthy of more attention. 

—Anonymous 

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Good teachers inspire students to know more about the topic.They guide students to be independent and creative thinkers. They are effective communicators and they teach students how to apply knowledge to solve current problems. 

—Boon Yean Leong, FAB 

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Good teaching involves the student. It moves him/her to question, contribute, extend and subscribe to the views of the teacher. 

—Janet Lim, CELC 

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I would have thought that a basic requirement for teachers—in an international class university—is that they are highly research active in the area in which most, if not all, of their teaching falls. Good teachers should also be aware of the needs of the students they teach, and of the full range of traditional and modern methods of teaching available to them. The teaching method they choose to use in a particular case should depend upon the circumstances (e.g., the level and number of students, availability of equipment, time, etc.). There is no prescribed method of teaching that fits every case. 

—David Taylor, FASS 

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A good teacher is one who is able to reach out to students in the middle range of the bell curve (about 60% of the class) and motivate them to think about the issues dealt with in the module and develop an adequate understanding of those issues. 

—Tan Ern Ser, FASS 

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Good teachers impart higher- order learning and reasoning skills in their students. They may appear at first to be merely delivering content-specific lectures (like any other teacher) or explaining concepts in textbooks (like any other teacher) but their agenda is deeper and they make a conscious effort to direct the students' thoughts, mould their thinking habits....and help them develop the habit of self-monitoring their progress. 

—Lee Kwok Hong, ENG 

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Effective teaching need not correlate with effective learning. A diversity of teaching methods as represented by different teachers engaged in teaching diverse courses and subject matters form the very basis of a university education. What makes teaching and learning effective is the total result of a two-way interactive process in which both teacher and student engage actively and intellectually in making the classroom or lab session an inspiring and enlightening experience. 

—Cheu Hock Tong, FASS 

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Teaching is a two-way communication process. Teachers should try to understand students' needs and problems. I think it is easier to make the student understand by relating the subject matter to things or events the students are familiar with and to give them "hands-on" practice whenever possible. 

—Lim Kah Bin, ENG 

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Popular conceptions of teaching do not include the view of teaching as empowering students to learn on their own. From this perspective, a good teacher is one who poses challenges and questions and gives a few tips when needed, but never does for students what they can and must do on their own. 

—K. P. Mohanan, FASS 

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Effective teaching instills a lifelong yearning to keep on learning! 

—Herbert Eleuterio, ENG 

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Good teaching is the end result of a process. On the teacher's part, it comprises serious study and authoritative understanding of one's subject, the humility to acknowledge what is yet to be understood, unselfish love for students and an understanding of their capacity for understanding. 

—V. V. Bhanoji Rao, FASS 

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