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Helping Chinese students to open up, innovate and realize potential
By Eric Davis |
June 29, 2009, Monday
|
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Print Edition
IN the face of a frightening financial fiasco, university students are undoubtedly worried about the kind of future into which they will step when they graduate, and rightly so.
Given these conditions, educators cannot be content with just imparting knowledge and claiming it holds intrinsic worth.
While any knowledge is valuable, not all knowledge is in demand and not every bit of knowledge will lead to a secure future for its possessor. Thus, educators must be attuned to the current realities.
Those who refuse to descend from their ivory towers to imbibe the current waters of life may inadvertently be ill-preparing students and thus sending them forth to a markedly less bright future.
How do we teachers ensure that we are enabling our students to overcome the challenges of job-hunting?
This quintessential question drives much that we do in the Department of Foreign Languages at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
The result of our serious reflection upon it is that our students continue to be offered employment at healthy rates even in this severe economic downturn. What have we learned? Well, the answers are manifold.
Novel ideas
First, teaching must be student-centered. Gone are the days of mere talking heads in front of podiums and sleepy students at desks.
Teaching must focus on fostering each individual student's engagement and interaction with novel ideas and with their classmates as well.
Classes must, therefore, provide a platform upon which each student can stride and safely stretch to discover his or her own voice.
Much of this involves breaking students of the unproductive process of mere recitation of others' words, which tends to passively promulgate the problem of plagiarism.
To do so, introducing individual research can help. There is a marked lack of familiarity among university students about the process and key components for doing strong academic research.
By having students conduct research and by guiding them carefully on where their voices must begin and end, students can learn much about critical thinking and take large steps towards identifying their own values and towards effectively expressing them.
Beyond these things, teaching must without fail open doors to the next level. Thus, focus also must be placed on presentation skills.
That does not merely mean formal speaking, although that certainly is a component. By presentation skills, we mean the whole package.
Students must learn the nonverbal as well as the verbal, the artistic as well as the scientific and the nuanced as well as the unequivocal.
To do this comprehensively means that our reach extends well beyond the core curriculum. Our teachers are engaged professionals that meet with students well after hours.
They participate in English Corners, speech and debate clubs, mock interview sessions, cultural performances and much, much more.
However, even with our engaged teachers and our dedicated, bright students, more is needed: innovation is constantly needed.
Accordingly, we have instituted a feedback loop that is integral to our success. Our courses and teachers are evaluated by students and administrators each semester.
Furthermore, recent graduates are regularly surveyed to see what activities or lessons were most beneficial both in the job-hunt process and after jobs were secured.
This information is scientifically studied and lessons grasped to further improve our foundation.
Suggested improvements are quickly integrated between semesters. There is nothing easy about any of this, but then we are not easily satisfied.
We must constantly identify areas that can be improved and never be afraid to innovate.
In a world that is so rapidly changing, finding new insights and new applications for old knowledge is central to enabling students to well adapt to the ever changing environment.
Thus, we boldly chart our course, always knowing that we bear a heavy and solemn responsibility - to serve well those in our charge. To well dispatch that mission, we have committed ourselves.
(The author is a foreign language lecturers' team leader at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.)
Given these conditions, educators cannot be content with just imparting knowledge and claiming it holds intrinsic worth.
While any knowledge is valuable, not all knowledge is in demand and not every bit of knowledge will lead to a secure future for its possessor. Thus, educators must be attuned to the current realities.
Those who refuse to descend from their ivory towers to imbibe the current waters of life may inadvertently be ill-preparing students and thus sending them forth to a markedly less bright future.
How do we teachers ensure that we are enabling our students to overcome the challenges of job-hunting?
This quintessential question drives much that we do in the Department of Foreign Languages at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
The result of our serious reflection upon it is that our students continue to be offered employment at healthy rates even in this severe economic downturn. What have we learned? Well, the answers are manifold.
Novel ideas
First, teaching must be student-centered. Gone are the days of mere talking heads in front of podiums and sleepy students at desks.
Teaching must focus on fostering each individual student's engagement and interaction with novel ideas and with their classmates as well.
Classes must, therefore, provide a platform upon which each student can stride and safely stretch to discover his or her own voice.
Much of this involves breaking students of the unproductive process of mere recitation of others' words, which tends to passively promulgate the problem of plagiarism.
To do so, introducing individual research can help. There is a marked lack of familiarity among university students about the process and key components for doing strong academic research.
By having students conduct research and by guiding them carefully on where their voices must begin and end, students can learn much about critical thinking and take large steps towards identifying their own values and towards effectively expressing them.
Beyond these things, teaching must without fail open doors to the next level. Thus, focus also must be placed on presentation skills.
That does not merely mean formal speaking, although that certainly is a component. By presentation skills, we mean the whole package.
Students must learn the nonverbal as well as the verbal, the artistic as well as the scientific and the nuanced as well as the unequivocal.
To do this comprehensively means that our reach extends well beyond the core curriculum. Our teachers are engaged professionals that meet with students well after hours.
They participate in English Corners, speech and debate clubs, mock interview sessions, cultural performances and much, much more.
However, even with our engaged teachers and our dedicated, bright students, more is needed: innovation is constantly needed.
Accordingly, we have instituted a feedback loop that is integral to our success. Our courses and teachers are evaluated by students and administrators each semester.
Furthermore, recent graduates are regularly surveyed to see what activities or lessons were most beneficial both in the job-hunt process and after jobs were secured.
This information is scientifically studied and lessons grasped to further improve our foundation.
Suggested improvements are quickly integrated between semesters. There is nothing easy about any of this, but then we are not easily satisfied.
We must constantly identify areas that can be improved and never be afraid to innovate.
In a world that is so rapidly changing, finding new insights and new applications for old knowledge is central to enabling students to well adapt to the ever changing environment.
Thus, we boldly chart our course, always knowing that we bear a heavy and solemn responsibility - to serve well those in our charge. To well dispatch that mission, we have committed ourselves.
(The author is a foreign language lecturers' team leader at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.)
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