Reflection: Teaching

TEACHING

I was a visiting professor at Eszterházy Károly, and, as such, had duties that included a relatively small amount of formal teaching, mostly in the form of a weekly E-Teaching for E-Learning seminar. I also did a few formal teaching sessions for college age students on special technology related topics. Since I’ve been primarily an online teacher for the past few years, the opportunity (and challenge) of ‘getting in front of a class’ was welcome. I used all my instructional design skills in trying to ascertain what the needs of the audience were, in designing for individual differences, particularly in level of technology and (English) language comprehension skills. Anyone who had been in a class with me would, I think, have recognized my style—friendly, dynamic speech, well-planned and paced, with ample technology-based visual reinforcement, hands-on activities, and expectations for learner participation. Sounds good, huh?

Well, my faculty colleagues were very complimentary, even gave me a special kind of Hungarian ‘round of applause’ after the first seminar by knocking their knuckles on the tables. But I wasn’t too sure of the success, and struggled with that perception throughout my time there. But I did take notes, and keep track of observations about teaching and learning, and checked my observations with my colleagues.

Hungarian ‘students’ (even when they are teachers) are generally polite and deferential to the professor. With my status as a guest, ‘my students’ were especially polite. Language was, of course, one big problem. I tried to learn enough Hungarian for social exchanges, and for the seminar, tried to open each session with some attempts, even if just to break the ice as my colleagues alternated between discrete laugher, helpful correction, or bewilderment as to what I was trying to say. Everyone in the group spoke some English, and likely understood a bit more than they spoke. Two were very fluent, and they were most likely to speak up to explicate or to humor me by answering questions or posing examples.

Speaking of Q&A, it was exceptionally hard to maintain ‘wait time’ when asking questions—that’s never easy, but in the situation of not knowing whether you are understood, and not knowing if the audience has the confidence in their English speech to address the issue, it’s really hard.

One ‘constant’ in classrooms around the world is surely PowerPoint. My colleagues used that tool extensively in their lessons, and so did I. However, I found out eventually that my practice of limiting the words on slides, letting my oral lecture and visual symbolism carry the majority of the meaning, seemed odd to them. I found out that some of my highly educated audience thought I was using pictures instead of words because of the English language issue and could, I’m sure, have been a bit offended. When that perception came out, it provided a really good point of discussion, one of the discussions that involved nearly everyone in the seminar.

Each week I distributed my PowerPoint presentations with extensive notes pages that basically ‘said’ what I was going to say during the live presentation. This seemed to be appreciated by a couple of people especially, who said that reading the notes (sometimes with a dictionary) ahead of time made it easier to understand me in person. I was given high marks for how well I spoke English—good thing since I’ve been speaking it all my life! They found it interesting when I told them that I had grown up very near the ‘broadcast English’ center of the US, and that I’d studied broadcasting. I guess it helps to speak ‘CNN’.

One very familiar problem in the classroom WAS the classroom. Like in colleges in the US, this technology-oriented department (Institute for Media Informatics) may have gone overboard in ‘computerizing’ their classrooms. Each classroom I taught in had computers for each student, complete with CPUs that blocked knee space and monitors that blocked sight lines between teacher and students and among students. Group work, one of the tenets of my teaching, is almost impossible in such spaces. Again, that made for a good point of discussion in the seminar.

The content of the seminar, as well as other presentations that I did, was ‘what they wanted’ as explained by my assigned department mentor and friend. They wanted me to share my fairly extensive experience as an online teacher to gain insights as to how they could shape their online activities, courses, and programs to be more interactive—a very important, but foreign, instructional strategy for them.

I could (and did) show them what I do in my online classes; in fact, I was teaching a class in the US during this time and sometimes illustrated my seminar talks with real-time examples. But could I make what I do a relevant model for the instructional situation they found themselves in? That ended up being the unanswered question, but the basis of a constant learning experience for me.

Understanding another instructional context is difficult, and the challenges and constraints were numerous. I gradually found out through observation and questioning, trial and error, that they have barriers such as class size (too large), class length (variable), instructor training (little opportunity), design time (limited—in fact, the concept of instructional design was pretty foreign to them), and perhaps, a somewhat limited course management system (Moodle). No lack of familiarity with these problems in the US context. But there were also uniquely cultural barriers—for example, expectations that the majority of course grades come from end of course tests, and lack of perceived value of group activities by either professors or students. Grades result from individuals taking responsibility for memorizing the content of the course and may, or may not, be the result of actually attending class. So, sometimes the question to me was, “How do you make the students participate?” Yikes! Don’t let my students hear about this!

So, was my teaching a success? I think I set a good example, and gave opportunities for the faculty to participate in some online simulated activities that were new to them. But the majority of the value of my ‘teaching’, I think, came in the post-seminar sessions we dubbed ‘brainstorming’. Yes, they were often held at restaurants or cafes, always accompanied by wine, and sometimes, food. The topics ranged widely from online teaching and learning to explanations of all that is Hungarian, and all that is American. I think my greatest accomplishment as a visiting professor was in providing the stimulus for these busy, busy professionals to occasionally take time out, sit down with me and each other, and talk about the art and science of teaching and learning. Car trips, lunches, hallway and office conversations extended the brainstorming throughout the weeks. Anytime I could be helpful in specific ways such as peer observation, English language editing, or presenting at a conference (the only English language presentation!) with my peers, I did it. Again, nothing different than in the US—we learn from each other if we take the time to be together in social environments. That reminds me of my involvement in an important legacy to Valdosta State University…HUB.

Two comments stick with me when I think of my teaching in Hungary. One colleague complimented me by saying that he thought I had elevated the technical skill of online teaching to a work of art. An audience member at a professional conference started his questions about my presentation by saying, “It’s obvious that you are a very good teacher.” Both may be exaggerated praise, but let me tell you, when you teaching in a foreign country you take your confidence-building where you can get it!