Shanshan Wang, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT)
From September 2021 to October 2023, I worked as a language lecturer at the Language Centre, within the School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). Over these two years of teaching, aligning my teaching methods with the university's standards posed challenges but also brought many rewards. I intend to reflect on the valuable teaching experiences in this article.
QMUL implements peer teaching observation, which encourages peer lecturers to observe each other's classes to improve teaching quality mutually. The specific procedure is as follows: find a partner, agree on the observation date, write feedback during the observation, and then meet to discuss how to enhance teaching. This teaching observation process is two-way and iterative. For example, when Lecturer A observes Lecturer B's class, it's crucial to provide feedback to Lecturer B by completing a feedback form to help them reflect on teaching strengths and offer constructive suggestions. Additionally, Lecturer B must observe Lecturer A's class. Through this exchange, both lecturers can learn from each other, thus enhancing their teaching abilities.
The Language Centre has a SharePoint page that all lecturers can access, housing teaching materials like syllabi, teaching schedules, shared teaching experiences, meeting minutes, video recordings of meetings, student lists, past exam papers, and more—all categorized and stored. This practice offers great convenience for lecturers to access necessary materials, saving time otherwise spent searching for them.
All teaching materials at the Language Centre are uploaded to a unified teaching platform. Repeated training sessions are offered to students and lecturers on how to use this platform. The advantage of a unified platform is its convenience for lecturers to manage and its facilitation of post-class learning for students.
The platform's functions are comprehensive. For example, lecturers can set objective questions that can be automatically graded and link webpages, making it convenient to assign post-class learning materials to students. If the powerful platform is universally adopted, it will eliminate many of these inconveniences.
The Language Centre invites external reviewers for various subjects to provide feedback on exam questions. It operates as a closed loop, meaning the feedback from external reviewers should be given to the lecturers who set the questions. This process ensures the quality of the exam questions and helps enhance the abilities of the lecturers who create them.
Additionally, to guarantee fair grading, each exam paper must undergo examination by one examiner and one reviewer. The reviewer is responsible for re-grading subjective questions, calculating marks, and checking for accuracy in recording and aggregation. For instance, when assessing essays, having two lecturers oversee the process will ensure the rigour of the marking.
The Language Centre sponsors lecturers to take an offline course, enabling them to experience the students' learning process. This allows lecturers to empathize with students, enabling them to design teachings that better meet students' needs and learning characteristics when they teach.
Lecturers need to fulfil their professional responsibilities, and students also need to respect lecturers. Except for special circumstances, students should not contact lecturers outside of working hours, such as weekends and evenings. Granting lecturers respect and rest allows them to fully dedicate themselves to their work. Additionally, if a lecturer needs to record videos or take photos of the class, they should obtain prior consent from the students.
Some lecturers opt not to use PowerPoint (PPT) in their classes and instead employ diverse teaching methods. For instance, they may manually design creative handouts that better engage students, thus fostering their enthusiasm for learning.
Reflecting on my teaching in recent years, despite designing each page of the PPT myself, I've pondered whether delivering a good lesson fluently without relying on PPT is feasible. If I possess a solid understanding of the content, I should be able to teach effectively without PPT.
While PPT can serve as a valuable aid, excessive reliance on it can limit a lecturer's flexibility. A lecturer from the UK once remarked, "If, during class, most of the time students are reading the PPT and fixated on it, then the classroom becomes a communication between students and the PPT, which hampers the connection between lecturers and students."
If there are students with special needs in a class, the Language Centre will inform substitute lecturers about these students. This enables substitute lecturers to pay attention to these students during class and understand the reasons behind their potential struggles, such as completing assignments on time, among other things.
The midterm week of each semester is designated as "Reading Week." The university suspends regular classes and requires students to dedicate time to reading. Each subject provides students with a list of recommended reading materials through an online platform. The online teaching platform and library catalogue interface are interconnected, enabling students to access the recommended books through the online platform.
The School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film places great importance on the annual teaching conference. The focus of the conference is on lecturers sharing teaching experiences rather than inviting experts or scholars to create a high-profile event. The conference themes and content centre around practical and feasible teaching experiences. Any lecturer can sign up to share effective teaching methods, like demonstrating how to help students learn vocabulary or facilitate group discussions. Attendees can replicate successful teaching practices in their classrooms, contributing to the improvement of teaching capabilities. The entire teaching team fosters mutual learning and advancement, creating a positive atmosphere for teaching.