Note: a video presentation of my teaching philosophy (12 minutes) can be found on youtube at:
University teachers make a difference. Of course our students already know how to learn. Yet, I took this path because a professor contaminated me with his passion for organic photovoltaics. Yet, I got there because some educators had the patience to correct me again and again. My first motivation as a teacher, is to return the favor and transmit my passion and my skills.
The second is to solve a mismatch: some students with excellent grades fail when facing real laboratory problems while many of my best PhD students had only average grades. My point is: we fail to prepare our best students to real-life problems and to detect some of our most promising students.
To transmit my passion and train students to be good at what they are going to do, not only at being students, I ambition to guide them through an active, purposeful, and inclusive learning path. I want students actors of their development: they are about to enter the job market and be given responsibilities. It is time to get them ready for that.
The most old fashion version of our education does not reward enough active individuals. To caricature, we reward with good grades those good at passively absorbing knowledge while boring to death those who thrive in action. Problem: real world problems essentially need exactly the opposite skills. To reward more active profiles, I use a large variety of activities and assignments. Active learning has also proven its efficiency at improving and deepening knowledge retention.
Purpose is critical: I studied for fun or by curiosity. I want something better for my students: I make sure they know what we are doing and with 3 simple regularly repeated questions: “What have we done? Why? Can you guess what our next step is?”. I also add abundant real-life examples. Finally, my largest assignment is a long running group project, trying to solve a real life question, via experimentation, programming, simulation, etc.
Inclusive, finally: some students shine orally, some on written tests, some individually, and some in group activities. I vary assignments and learning activities so that each student can prove he has reached his learning objective regardless of the support he is the most comfortable with. However, reinforcing their skill in essential communication techniques (graphing, writing, presenting) is also one of the objectives.
More than an idealistic view, this inclusivity is a necessity in the field of organic semiconductors that gathers so many different profiles coming from chemistry, physics and engineering. This offers a good balance of knowledge, technical skills (laboratory work, simulation, data analysis) and communication skills, which opens the way for a large variety of learning activities.
I divide my courses between classical and special sessions. Classical sessions include an exploratory phase for students to find the frame of the topic on their own. Then the classical content delivery phase, with numerous reflection breaks. And final reflection on the day’s findings, and take home message. Special sessions include communication workshops, laboratory experiments, programing / simulation, assessments discussion, project presentations, etc.
Last but not least, my students always must have a chance to improve. My assignments have at least 2 rounds. After the first, they receive my feedback, their peer review, or a chance to reflect by themselves but no grade and have to improve their first version. I feel I am a good teacher if my students improve, and a successful one if they know it.