BBA First Year Teaching Innovation Award Winner (2004)

Alex Tham - Teaching Statement

Nature of the innovation (the new practice or activity, changes from teaching practice of prior years)

New Practice: Active Learning Program and Awards

Introduction:

In order to motivate first year students to learn and feel owning the learning outcome by themselves, the concept of facilitating our students to create their own successful stories which they may even not believe they can has been developed concretely in 2003/4. If the students in FB2601 Marketing taught by me can achieve 10,000 bonus points by submitting extra comments and summary on e-Student Relationship Management System, they can get the title of “Active Learner Award”.

Besides, with a view to motivate the students to start early, extra bonus points of 400 will be given to them whenever they can submit the value of assignment worth per 2000 bonus points before Nov 2, 03.

Aim of the Active Learning Program:

To provide a learning environment for students to share what they have learnt with their learning partners: lecturer, groupmates and other stakeholders such as the public and the companies and to equip themselves to cope with the difficulties in future career.

Rationales:

In this learning environment, proper learning attitude such as active and positive attitude can be fostered via different tools, activities, and systems. Tools are the skills in learning and studying, theory applications, quick response in Q&A, etc. These kinds of tools can be learnt via various learning activities such as seminar, pre-semester workshop, summer and winter camp, company projects, company visits, study tours, guest talks and dinner with different guests. The learning attitude can be instilled via proper motivating systems such as marking system, homework submission system, classroom evaluation and Q&A system, and response system in internet discussion and email. The details are discussed later.

The most important aspect in teaching our students is NOT how much we teach, but how much our students learn. An excellent teaching professional can stimulate the students to learn continuously by themselves, pay attention to surrounding related issues, and strive for excellence.

We all know that there are mountains of valuable resources. The problem is not where the students can get but how to motivate them to get as much as possible and understand how much they learn. Therefore, a bonus point system is set up on my website. Besides the mark the students can earn in group projects, they are encouraged to read as many as articles on the press, websites, comment the advertisements and websites, join competition related to Marketing, comment the content of the seminar they have joined, etc.. Moreover, they have to report what they have learnt. All of the submissions are on my website. Then, I can give bonus points to each submission, which can be positive or negative in order to make them pay attention to the quality and quantity of their work. The bonus points will be accumulated in their own account. They can check their bonus points at any time.

Actural Practice in FB2601:

The bonus points is not only to carrot to stimulate students to get the title of Active Learner, but it is also the stick to push them to learn in FB2601. There is a percentage adjustment ranging from 1.15 to 0.85 to their group marks. These adjustment is according to the ralative comparison among their classmates in how many bonus points they earn. That means the student with the best performance will get 15% more on his/her orginal mark while the poorest student’s final mark will be deducted 15%. They can check the bonus points and percentage adjustment real time on my website at any time to design the proper learning strategy for themselves. The bonus points and percentage adjustment will be plotted as graph like those in stock market. They will visulise their learning progress.

The reason for deduction is to give the students a motivation to work harder. They may not want to be the best but they still have to read more so as to get at least “1” continuously in percentage adjustment. The students can really feel that if they don’t strive to do better than others, they will fall behind. If the students perform poorly continuously or do nothing to strive for better, the system will send an email to invite them to have a chat with the instructor and prompt me to take care of them.

2. Impact and Results (who was affected / how many students, in what way were students affected?)

90 FB2601 students taught by me are motivated. The extra individual submission of the assignment is 18.43 pieces besides the normal group assignments required in FB2601. Definitely, the submission of good quality will be awarded in high bonus points while those of poor quality will be granted negative points.

Though some students will pay attention to the bonus points too seriously, it may be a good incentive to stimulate their drive for learning more. A lot of “mediocre” students are motivated to take part in a lot of seminars, read more articles, think more of the surrounding issues and advertisements. Their business and marketing sense is the sharpest among the students I have taught in the past 12 years. Their submissions can reflect the great improvement on the analytical skills, and organization of the ideas. Their responsiveness is praised by all of the speakers in guest talks since they will earn bonus points if they respond properly and ask questions smartly. Some even prepare well before attending the guest talks. Each student will pay the highest attention to their classmates presentation because the comments on their classmates can affect their performance under this system.

More actual impacts can be seen in the attached emails from the students.