Excellence in teaching

Ray Fells is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Organisational and Labour Studies. His main interests are industrial relations and negotiation. He won the Excellence in Teaching Award for Economics and Commerce in 1998. This award represents a joint effort by the Guild and the University to recognise and reward exemplary teaching.

Academia is my second career, which is an advantage in a way. I first started giving presentations and seminars in a previous work-life; the presentations were to managers and union officials. I've tried to maintain that practical orientation but I realised even then that people understand things better if the issues are presented in a framework, if they can see the 'why' as well as the 'what'.

As a result, I've taken the view that students should learn rather than be taught, that they should enquire and explore rather than expect the lecturer to deliver them the answers. At the same time, the learning process should not simply be a process of contemplative introspection but should lead to clear, practical answers. For example, students in a negotiation class want to know what to do when sitting at the bargaining table. I suppose my answer to them is 'don't do anything yet - think!' If I can open the subject up and get the students to explore it in different ways then they can construct a framework of understanding which will guide them into the practical applications. Only then can we properly move into the area of skill development. Similarly in our first year industrial relations unit we would hope we have prepared students to critically examine other subject areas - human resource management, economics and politics for example, and thereby help them develop a broad and durable understanding of what is going on in Australian workplaces.

I also believe that we should offer our students 'more' - more than they can get elsewhere. And of higher quality, too because that's what UWA is all about. At one stage, I (wrongly) thought that providing 'more' amounted to huge reading lists (the current equivalent would be to provide a never-ending list of websites). Now it involves providing a more carefully integrated unit so that students know the essentials well, and do not just skim the 'new and exciting' topics in the subject. Providing 'more' involves motivation, encouraging students though my interest in the subject and though my (hopefully evident) desire that they should learn. I also believe that motivation and quality learning come through building a bridge between research and teaching and through providing flexible learning opportunities. As an example a Masters class last year developed their own peer assessment tool. Collectively they established a number of criteria which characterise effective negotiation and then developed descriptor statements of good and poor applications of each criteria. It proved to be a powerful learning exercise - deep learning, yet experiential. As a result, they taught themselves to be better negotiators.

As a confirmed Luddite, the challenge I now face in this era of on-line delivery it to work out how to do all this 'on the net'.