Excellence in teaching

Mr Iain Brash is a senior lecturer in the Department of History where he has taught modern British history since 1961. He won an Excellence in Teaching Award in 1994. These awards represent a joint effort by the Guild and the University to recognise and reward exemplary teaching.

This afternoon I spent two hours returning essays to first-year students: demanding essays on complex historiographical issues in later modern European history. I had ten to fifteen minutes conversation with each student. We discussed how they had approached their topic, what difficulties they had encountered, and how they could have improved the essay. It was an opportunity to assess further the quality of the students' understanding, and to discuss their progress in the unit generally; and if a student had experienced difficulties I had the opportunity to identify and examine the problems. These meetings are typical of the less formal, one to one, situations in which so much of our best teaching is done. They are time-consuming, yet an invaluable part of the process of teaching, and when as in this instance the quality of much of the work is high a most rewarding part.

Last week students in my second- and third-year unit submitted annotated research bibliographies they had prepared on self-chosen topics in modern British history. These represented the first stage in the preparation of their main written work for the unit. We began in the first week of the semester when I took small groups of students round the Reid Library to introduce them to the rich holdings we have for research in British history and to explain the bibliographical guides available for exploring the historical literature and primary sources. Students are encouraged to formulate their own topics in discussion with me. If they are going to invest a large amount of time, energy and imagination in a research essay it had better be on some topic about which they can be enthusiastic. The requirement that students provide some lines of critical comment with each item included in the bibliography means that they have to read their proposed sources fairly closely in order to assess them, so they are already engaged in fashioning what will become the completed essay. This approach is invaluable in fostering research and critical skills; and again provides opportunities for me to work with students individually and informally in the initial stages when they are developing their topics and locating appropriate sources.

These examples from recent experience illustrate the value and importance of working with students as individuals whenever possible, which is what so often makes university teaching for me, and I am sure for many of my colleagues, such a satisfying experience.