The hard thing about hard things: Teaching experience Feedback
Today was the last day of my Statistical Analysis Software course I gave at the Higher School of Statistics and Data Analysis of Tunis.
The only thing that's left is the final exam, so the work is not over...Yet!
It is important to mention that teaching is a -very- hard thing to do, especially if you are a "caring" person and you do CARE about perfection and small details.
I have tried to be as reachable as possible to all my students, especially at the beginning of the class, when they were new and haven't had any significant statistical of computing background.
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| A Summary of the points I have given in the class this semester |
Making everybody happy and all the course material easy is not the goal here. The most important thing is to make sure that all the details are delivered to all students and that all the questions they ask about the course are answered.
Grading class projects was not an easy task as well, it requires patience and attention to details, and a very good memory ( and I'll tell you why you'd need that).
After giving the final project grades, some of the students were a little dissatisfied with what they had.
EVERYONE IS A GENIUS SAINT !
Well, yeah in a way, we all had this look to ourselves, where we consider ourselves as intelligent, hard working, honest,angelic, never late, never make spelling mistakes, never forget to send projects before due time, never copy other people's work and send it as mine without bothering to change the documents creator property..etc
And here is where you, as a teacher, will need a good memory. Because students will consider a low grade as a personal evaluation of them as persons, not putting in mind that the grades given to them are only the evaluation of their work during the semester and the evaluation of their work on projects.
So when you'll get :"Why I had this grade and the other student got more?" type of question, your memory will come in handy to remind the student of their work on each project, on the class tests, on the late work sent after the due date.. and many other details.
A more useful thing I used is o keep everything transparent, to give the students their exam sheets so they can see for themselves where they did wrong. It will be more convincing to them.
Finally, I want to emphasize the fact that it was a very good learning experience to me. In a way, teacher learn more than their students. I have learnt many things about myself and how I can manage teams, organize work and manage many variables. It will be useful for me ..
I am sure of that!
Here is a link to all the course materials and slides on my Academia page