Teaching

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY/APPROACH

My overall philosophy of teaching is to enable learning as an intellectual exercise that is beneficial to my students. I feel that I, as a teacher, should be able to make a significant contribution to their thoughts and knowledge if I am to consider myself successful as a teacher. My goal, as a teacher, is to challenge my students to learn more and learn better, and help them in this process. Furthermore, what I teach them should be useful to them at some point of time in their future lives. Be it in their personal lives or their professional ones, I would love it if my students could apply my teaching somewhere. While my aim is to make them learn more and learn better, I try my level best to make it as enjoyable for them as possible. Overall, my focus of teaching is to make my students successful professionals and good human beings.

In line with this philosophy, one important aspect of my teaching is to enable my students to not only be acquainted with existing knowledge, but also to critically apply that knowledge. Thus, I emphasize originality in thinking in my course assignments. Often I include a writing paper assignment, which should be of potentially publishable quality. Further, in my exams, especially at senior and graduate levels, I often assess students’ ability to apply their acquired knowledge to practical scenarios involving proposing solutions and strategies. My teaching philosophy thus assesses not only students’ mastery of the course material, but also how well they can develop constructive solutions and intellectual contributions based upon what they have learnt.

I believe in being fair to the students in all respects. Coming from a background of doing research in ethics-related areas in IS, I am very conscious of fairness and justice and try my level best to be fair and just to all my students. I encourage fellow feeling and camaraderie between students so that they become good team players in their professional lives. Furthermore, my aim in teaching is to make myself available to them all the time, so that if they need me, I am always there for them. A teacher in need is a teacher indeed!

I should end this teaching statement with something that comes straight from my heart. I feel that teachers and students share a relationship that is unique and perhaps not replicable in any other relationship. Teaching is not a profession; it is a way of life where one nurtures young minds to help them realize their potential. It is an act in the process of creating better individuals and I, as a teacher, want to play a significant part in this process.