Introduction

What does a student expect from a lecturer in this day and age? Having once been a student myself and being a teacher at present puts me in a very strategic position to look at teaching from the standpoint of the student as well as from that of the teacher. A typical student perceives of a teacher as someone who is paid a salary to do just that—teach. Since the student is the one paying school fees, the more the teacher teaches, the more the student thinks he is getting his money’s worth. This is understandable since in the commercial world, this is the way with consumer products. On top of simply teaching the basic concepts of the subject and covering the entire syllabus as laid out in the subject synopsis, the student also expects the teacher to run certain errands for him, in the same way as a travel agent makes life easier for the busy traveller, such as checking and recommending flight connections, booking tickets, preparing visas, settling the airport tax, re-confirming the return flight, and so on.

In this hectic society, students tend to favour one-stop-shopping, expecting the teacher to do all the groundwork for them, such as compiling easy-to-read notes, photocopying relevant sections of recommended reading material for them, and giving out tutorial questions that have user-friendly definitive answers (the less open-ended the better). A ‘Santa Claus’ lecturer who is able to fulfil these requirements would certainly live up to their expectations. Such a notion is obviously flawed, according to the new teaching paradigm.

From the teacher’s viewpoint, however, if he has caught on the new vision of what good teaching is all about and what he ought to do, he will probably act as a mentor and a guide to the student, leaving plenty of room for the latter to explore the subject further and to realise the fact that there is no end to true learning in spite of the confines of the syllabus. The teacher would have understood the import behind the famous adage, “If you give a man a fish, he will have fish to eat for just that one day; but if you teach a man to fish, he will have fish to eat for the rest of his life.”

Under the present circumstances, a truly good teacher, namely one who is able to excite the students to life-long learning on the subject that he is teaching, will probably not get the good evaluation he deserves. In contrast, a teacher who panders to the students’ demands for a user-friendly type of teaching will probably score high marks in the students’ feedback. It is therefore imperative that we change our students’ mindset on teaching.

Educating students on the new teaching paradigm

1. The most convenient way to educate students on the new teaching paradigm is to publicise it as much as possible, thereby creating a general awareness of this new concept among the students. This can be done through the Internet, websites, email, notices, etc. However, experience has shown that such methods have not proved to be effective because students do not usually pay much attention to email messages that have been mass mailed or any of the other means mentioned above. Nevertheless, such mass-media methods could be of some efficacy if employed in conjunction with one or more of the methods listed below.
2. Another method, which may be more effective, is to conduct seminars for the students in the same way as we do for staff for the primary purpose of inculcating in them a thorough understanding of this new teaching paradigm. During such seminars, one can at least capture the attention and imagination of the students concerning this burning issue. In addition, through the various workshops and discussion or buzz groups, the new paradigm can be further reinforced in their minds. One can also get feedback from the students on how they feel and whether they are adapting to the new paradigm.
3. Another solution to this problem, which has been suggested before in some departments on campus, is to conduct student feedback only after they have left the university. After our students have worked in the real world for a few years, it would be quite enlightening to find out from them whether a particular lecturer had indeed done a good job in imparting skills and interest in the subject that enable the graduate to continue learning and exploring further in that particular subject.
4. Since the lecturer is the one who has most contact with the students, it might be effective to entrust him with the task of educating the students on the new teaching paradigm. The lecturer can explain right from the start of his first lecture how he intends to teach, what he intends to do in class, and the rationale for doing so.

Conclusion

Although the new paradigm has already been introduced and is here to stay, most of our students are still functioning under the old mindset. This is obvious from the present situation in which students tend to give very high marks to lecturers who are teaching easy-to-grasp subjects and very poor evaluation to those who are teaching subjects whose concepts are difficult to grasp or that involve much self-study. Such a trend shows that students still evaluate lecturers based on how easy it is to score in exams or to sail through the module instead of basing their evaluation on how successful the teacher has been in inculcating in them a burning passion for the subject and guiding them in the life-long process of self-study. Hopefully, our students will soon realise that it is actually much more important for them to ‘learn how to learn’ than for the lecturer to ‘learn how to teach’. After all, the latter is but a passing phase in the student’s life whereas the former is a permanent and invaluable asset which will belong to him/her for the rest of his/her life.