Excellence in teaching

Tim Ackland is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Movement and Exercise Science. He received the Excellence in Teaching Award in 1999 for the Faculty of Science. This award represents a joint effort by the Guild and the University to recognise and reward exemplary teaching.

I was delighted to receive one of the 1999 Excellence in Teaching Awards for the Faculty of Science and would like to thank those students in Human Movement 100, of which I am the coordinator, for their nomination. I could begin this piece by trotting out the old clichés like “good teaching is founded on sound preparation and accompanied by good audio-visual support materials”. But I won’t. Instead, I’d like to pick up on a recurring theme in this column by my award-winning colleagues-enthusiasm in delivery.

I have two vivid memories related to teaching style from my undergraduate days at UWA, back in the 1970s. The first is of the late James Lumsden who lectured in the Octagon to 500 - odd first-year students in Psychology 100. Imagine trying to teach us rabble anything–let alone statistics using only an overhead projector. Well Dr Lumsden did it with aplomb. Even the rowdy group in the back row shut up for a while and learned. I’m sure the secret to his success as a teacher was his tremendous enthusiasm for the task, which rubbed off on his audience. Who else would, on the occasion of his 1000th lecture, arrange to walk onto the stage wrapped in the Australian flag to the strains of “God Save the Queen”, as another enormous Aussie flag was ceremoniously lowered from the roof? That got our attention!

Without casting aspersions on my colleagues in ECEL, I also remember the excruciating experience of Economics 100 tutorials on a Thursday afternoon. There were only 15 in the group initially, and it should have been a stimulating learning environment. But no, people were cutting their wrists and pleading dying relatives in order to escape the monotony.

So these two examples highlight, for me at least, that the enthusiasm of the teacher is an essential ingredient for motivating students to learn – far more important than glitzy audio-visual aids for instance. I was fortunate to win a UWA Distinguished Teaching Award in 1989 and have witnessed, over the last decade, huge changes in presentation styles for both lectures and conference presentations alike.

In the 1980s, a lecturer took on God-like status if he or she could pull off a dual slide presentation without mixing up the order, or clicking the left button while the right projector merrily advanced three slides, then chewed up the fourth. Then in the 1990s we had presenters who had suddenly discovered the animation button on PowerPoint. What with images zooming in from the left and text exploding at you from centre screen, the poor student emerged shell-shocked from the 45 - minute barrage. I guess we must guard against losing our way as teachers. We can’t put all our efforts into creating fabulous graphics and risk entertaining, but not educating our charges.

So for what it's worth, my humble advice is to polish up your personalities and enjoy the process of face-to-face information delivery. The students do appreciate the ‘human element’. Oh yes, and to make it all happen you will need to be very well prepared, with uncluttered audio-visual support materials - and a good joke or two!