Statement of Teaching Philosophy
Lixiao Huang
My goals of teaching are to help students understand the basic concepts and methods in the discipline and transfer them to real life and career of interest. I believe that teaching is both an art and science. It is an art because a good teacher has passion in teaching the subjects, cares about the students and is an inspiration to the students. It is a scientific endeavor because good teaching requires having strong organization skills, knowing the materials well, and implementing effective teaching methods.
Learn My Students in Order for My Students to Learn
Students are all unique in terms of backgrounds, abilities, and interests. I work to know my students to motivate them and help them learn. I provide a variety of teaching methods when I see fit, including PowerPoint, video clips, informal quizzes before and during classes, games, small group discussions, online forum, field trip, etc. Students benefit differently from these methods due to their learning style preferences. For example, I will survey students to know their general learning habits, goals, and career interests at the beginning of a course, and instruct them to write brief reflection journals each week to reflect their learning progress, emotions, and which methods work well so that I can adjust my lesson plans accordingly. Teaching is an iterative improvement process for each group of students.
Bridging the Gap between Classroom and Real World
I believe that the ultimate goal of learning is to use what is learned either to understand the world or to change the world. Therefore, in addition to mastering the materials, it is also important for students to see the values of the subjects and possible ways to apply them. For example, I encourage students to apply learning theories in their own study, apply design principles to their club advertisement or personal websites, and share interesting lessons with friends. When I first taught the course PSY340 Ergonomics in fall 2013, I asked the students what they wanted to do in the future and what they thought ergonomics was about. One student wanted to become a doctor, so I introduced the applications of ergonomics in healthcare, such as usability of medical devices, bottle labeling, smooth working processes, fatigue issues, and assistive robots. I also would allow students to choose topics of their interests for tasks. When teaching students how to analyze good designs and bad designs, I asked students to analyze the interesting items they personally encountered. In addition, students had five exercises to identify technological objects of bad design and to explain what design principles were violated according to the design principles. For the final project, they also had the exercise to propose a new design and make prototypes and test the improved design on potential users. The whole project used design analysis, survey skill, basic statistics, prototyping, teamwork, and usability testing to solve a real world problem. These exercises prepare the students to use entrepreneurial thinking and practice: seeing the usage of the subject and its connections with practical problems, increasing their transfer motivation, enhancing their abilities to create practice opportunities for themselves in future work environment, and using the knowledge to make a difference in life.
In summary, I care about my students and strive to motivate them to learn and to inspire them to transfer what they learn into actual usage when pursuing their interests in their life and career. Continuous adapting and testing effective teaching methods along the career will help achieve my teaching goals.
First posted: March 24, 2016
Learn My Students in Order for My Students to Learn
Students are all unique in terms of backgrounds, abilities, and interests. I work to know my students to motivate them and help them learn. I provide a variety of teaching methods when I see fit, including PowerPoint, video clips, informal quizzes before and during classes, games, small group discussions, online forum, field trip, etc. Students benefit differently from these methods due to their learning style preferences. For example, I will survey students to know their general learning habits, goals, and career interests at the beginning of a course, and instruct them to write brief reflection journals each week to reflect their learning progress, emotions, and which methods work well so that I can adjust my lesson plans accordingly. Teaching is an iterative improvement process for each group of students.
Bridging the Gap between Classroom and Real World
I believe that the ultimate goal of learning is to use what is learned either to understand the world or to change the world. Therefore, in addition to mastering the materials, it is also important for students to see the values of the subjects and possible ways to apply them. For example, I encourage students to apply learning theories in their own study, apply design principles to their club advertisement or personal websites, and share interesting lessons with friends. When I first taught the course PSY340 Ergonomics in fall 2013, I asked the students what they wanted to do in the future and what they thought ergonomics was about. One student wanted to become a doctor, so I introduced the applications of ergonomics in healthcare, such as usability of medical devices, bottle labeling, smooth working processes, fatigue issues, and assistive robots. I also would allow students to choose topics of their interests for tasks. When teaching students how to analyze good designs and bad designs, I asked students to analyze the interesting items they personally encountered. In addition, students had five exercises to identify technological objects of bad design and to explain what design principles were violated according to the design principles. For the final project, they also had the exercise to propose a new design and make prototypes and test the improved design on potential users. The whole project used design analysis, survey skill, basic statistics, prototyping, teamwork, and usability testing to solve a real world problem. These exercises prepare the students to use entrepreneurial thinking and practice: seeing the usage of the subject and its connections with practical problems, increasing their transfer motivation, enhancing their abilities to create practice opportunities for themselves in future work environment, and using the knowledge to make a difference in life.
In summary, I care about my students and strive to motivate them to learn and to inspire them to transfer what they learn into actual usage when pursuing their interests in their life and career. Continuous adapting and testing effective teaching methods along the career will help achieve my teaching goals.
First posted: March 24, 2016