BBA First Year Teaching Innovation Award Winner (2004)

Christina Sue-Chan - Teaching Statement

In semester A, 2003-2004 academic year, 449 students were enrolled in Management (FB2300), a core course for all BBA students. The students were divided into two sections. I, Dr. Christina Sue-Chan, a new member of the academic staff in the Department of Management, was assigned to teach this course for the first time in my teaching career, in place of the regular instructor of this course, who was on sabbatical leave. As the course co-ordinator, I was also responsible for administering all aspects of the course, including developing and implementing new exercises and answers for 13 tutorials, co-ordinating the work of 7 different tutors across 20 tutorial sections, and preparing all examination material.

Projected Impact

To add to the challenge of administering and teaching this course, I learned, anecdotally, that previous instructors of this course had reported spending some portion of each lecture on disciplinary rather than teaching matters. In particular, students speaking on their mobile phones, or talking to each other at the back of the lecture theatre, or coming to class late have been issues confronting each instructor of this course. These disciplinary problems have sometimes interfered with the delivery of all the course content as planned. As well, the size of each section, at approximately 200 students and above, was problematic for generating student interaction and participation in the lecture.

Nature of Innovation

To address these two issues, I introduced two innovations in the lecture, which, to my knowledge, had not been tried in the FB2300 course before. First, with funding from the College of Business, I was assisted in each lecture in the latter half of the course by a student helper, equipped with a microphone, who selected students at random to respond to questions I posed during the lecture. Though some students were reluctant to respond and refused to response despite gentle prodding both from me and the student helper, some students responded very enthusiastically to the opportunity to have their opinions heard by other students in the class. This innovation was effective in generating more class participation and in reducing talking in the back of the lecture theatre; however, the problem of some students still being reluctant to respond in a large class setting was not completely solved. Therefore, a second innovation was introduced.

The second innovation was piloted tested with the full support of the Dean of the College of Business, Professor Chan. This innovation was designed to reduce any inhibitions to responding to questions posed in a large classroom setting that students may have because they are afraid of answering incorrectly, are too shy to respond, don’t want to appear to be more intelligent than their classmates, etc. This system is known as the Personal Response System (PRS). It consists of a hand-held response device, which generates a signal that is picked-up by receivers placed in the classroom. The receivers, in turn, are linked to software running on a notebook computer in the classroom. Students use the hand-held devices to respond to questions posed by the lecturer and projected from the computer onto the viewing screen in the lecture theatre. Confidentiality of answers is preserved as only the students themselves know their own device number. Anonymity can also be preserved. Because of these two features of the PRS, inhibitions that students may have in participating in a large class are minimized.

PRS was implemented in the last two lectures of the course. No formal feedback was taken at the time as the pilot test was conducted to allow the College’s technical team to determine possible obstacles to implementing the system and how best to implement the system in the future. Anecdotal feedback, communicated to me either directly or indirectly through tutors of the course, indicated that students were extremely positive about using the PRS but were concerned about the technical problems experienced at the time the PRS was pilot tested. Students thought PRS would allow them a chance to participate more in the lectures, thought PRS would enhance their learning of the material, liked seeing their responses appear on the large view screen in the lecture theatre, and liked comparing their responses to others’ in the class but were frustrated by their inability to input their responses without having to press the response button on the hand-held devices several times. In some cases, students reported that though they kept on pressing the response button on their devices, the receiving units in the lecture theatre were still unable to pick up their responses. For these students, initial enthusiasm turned into frustration and dissatisfaction with the system.

Results

Despite some problems with the implementation of the PRS, these two innovations -student helpers equipped with microphones encouraging students to respond and the PRS - did achieve their objectives of minimizing the number of disruptions due to disciplinary problems and did motivate students to participate in the lectures. First, I was able to complete all the planned content of the course. Second, there were no complaints from students about the disruptive behaviour of other students. Third, teaching staff (e.g., Dr. Chris Wagner), who were observers in some lectures, remarked positively about the behaviour of students in both sections of the lecture. Fourth, attendance in the last two classes of the course in which the PRS was pilot tested was as high as 90% in one of the sections. Finally, students appeared to be satisfied with their learning experience in the course as, to my knowledge, no appeals of final course grades have been filed. While formal evaluation of these innovations need to be conducted should either be implemented on a regular basis, I have no doubt that these two innovations, student helpers in the classroom to encourage student participation and the PRS or similar response system, would greatly enhance the learning experience of students, and would make the teaching experience of instructors of large classes more rewarding and enjoyable.

Tutorial Team

Neither of these innovations, student helpers in the lecture theatre or the PRS, would have been effective had their purpose and their implementation problems not been explained and debriefed by the team of tutors who very ably supported my teaching in the lectures. These tutors were Dr. Paul Hempel, Mr. Jonathan Kwok, Dr. Pinky Lau, Ms. Anna Tsui, Ms. Jody Wong, and Ms. Ma Yuan. In particular, Mr. Kwok, Dr. Hempel, and Ms. Wong were particularly helpful in communicating to me student feedback on the course including the two innovations described in this application essay.

Christina Sue-Chan, Ph.D.
Department of Management
City University of Hong Kong