Students come to college with different backgrounds but one common goal: learning. Despite the fact that learning can occur anywhere, this is particularly true of the information age, students come to colleges/schools to give structure, duration, focus and validation to their learning. The purpose of seeking higher education is to achieve, under supervised instruction, focused or concentrated learning that can lead to a certain level of accredited/validated achievement that comes with recognition and value.  The question is that, given all the diverse and uneven backgrounds that students come with, what are the ideal ways of catering to the needs of the modern day student?  In response to this question Colleges are becoming increasingly student centric in many ways like the design of curricula, the hiring of faculty etc and embracing the findings of educational research which is pointing to active learning as the way to go. 

My teaching philosophy, in line with these same educational research findings, revolves around the concept of active learning.  I see my role as an instructor, guide or mentor in active learning and hope to continually learn, discover and grow with my students.  My ongoing training in the MSC program in college teaching at UNH has led me to develop a set of objectives for my students. In my capacity as an instructor, I will strive to:

·          cultivate the ability of my students to acquire, filter and integrate scientific information

·         motivate my students to develop critical thinking, evaluation, and analysis skills

·          foster in my students the development of interpersonal and group work skills

·         pique the curiosity and enthusiasm of my students for scientific inquiry

My philosophy of teaching is based on these ideals and I will endeavor to implement it through:

Respect:              As an instructor I will always respect my profession and my students. I will keep abreast of development in my field; update the content of my syllabi and the formats of my assessment methods. I believe in treating all students equally and fairly and coming to class freshly prepared. I will seek to know my students and interact with them openly and frequently and give and receive feedback routinely.

Student Involvement:   I would shun the traditional master/disciple type approach and adopt a much closer co-inquiry path that involves the students in their own learning from the beginning. I will strive to design my courses progressively around the requirement of my learners.

Nurturing environment:               Everyone has a different background and learning tendencies. As the instructor, I will provide a nurturing environment that caters to their different ways of preferred learning that starts with determining whether every student has the necessary foundation to tackle the subject matter. I will implement a pre-class assessment and a remedial session, if necessary, to get them started as evenly as possible.  I will also exercise positive reinforcement consistently.

Effective formative and summative assessments:            Learning without assessment is ineffective. A bricklayer would not lay another layer on a wall that has not solidified enough or the wall would crumble. Educators and learners have to view assessment similarly. Assessment would allow the learner either to build more or bring the student to face his/her inadequacy and afford them the chance to go back and rectify what is amiss. I strongly believe that assessment should weigh more on formative rather than summative aspect of evaluation. I will make my students aware of what they are expected to accomplish at the end of their study so they will learn with focus towards a defined goal.  I will integrate a good measure of formative assessment - assignments, projects, discussions, presentations etc – that should gauge and guide their progress as learners and serve as wake up calls when they slacken.  My summative assessments will focus less on fact memorization and more on simulating real world scenarios that require the student to apply the facts acquired by learning in solving problems.