--- Staffordshire/CityU BSc program year-3 student project in Smart Ordering System

--- Staffordshire/CityU MSc program final-year student master-degree thesis

--- CityU BBAEC program year-3 students' course projects in E-Commerce Security, Legal & Payment Infrastructure

--- CityU BScCS program year-3 students' course projects in Information Systems Auditing

--- CityU MAISD program year-1 students' course projects in Business Software Construction

--- CityU MAISM program year-2 students' course projects in Object-Oriented Systems

--- CityU MAPAIS program year-2 students' course projects in Analysis & Design in e-Business Systems

--- IS3237: Information Services for Business Organizations

--- IS3435: Business Process Analysis

--- IS4233: Innovative Technologies for Business Enterprises

--- IS4501: Information Systems Auditing

--- IS4533: Project Management and Coordination

--- IS4537: IS Security, Control & Audit

--- IS4635: Business Process Re-Design for e-Business

--- IS4636: Business Process Management

--- IS5311: Business Software Construction (I)

--- IS5312: Business Software Construction (II)

--- IS5411: Systems Analysis and Design (I)

--- ACASE: Advanced Methods and CASE

--- SIP: Strategic Information Planning

--- IS5313: Foundations of Electronic Business Systems

--- IS5414: Analysis and Design of Electronic Commerce Systems

--- IS5416: Analysis and Design of Electronic Business Systems

--- IS6523: Infrastructure and Security Management for Electronic Commerce

Note: Average score 1 = excellent, 2 = very good, .... , 7 = extremely poor

--- Teaching should be a kind of duplex communication: A case study on MAISD class

• I am XXX (student ID: XXX). I very much enjoyed having the opportunity to meet you and to be one of your students in this year. I am writing to express my heartfelt gratitude for your generosity in teaching for the IS4635 Business Process Design for e-Business this year, which broadened my horizon immensely. I really find that your teaching attitude is very serious and useful for me.

  In your lessons, I learnt many things for academic as well as many useful skills for my future career. Every time I find you, you are always feeling free to answer my academic questions. During the lectures, you are always giving very clear speeches making me very easy to understand the concepts and theories. In many time, you are patient to answer my questions repetitively.

  In the first lesson, you encouraged us to be a leader of the group in order to learn more leadership skill. I followed your advice and became the leader of my group in L61-Apple. As a result, I really learnt much skills of being a leader such as communication skills and leadership skills.

  Apart from being a leader, during your lesson, I always answer your questions. This behaviour helps me to understand the concepts, so that in the study period I can easily to prepare for my exam.

  Also, you always share your working experience to us, which equip us a lot for our future careers as the keen competition in Hong Kong.

  You are the best teacher I meet in City U. Thank you again for your excellent teaching. I hope to see you again in the future.

  Yours Sincerely,
   

• To whom it may concern

   I have attended IS5311 Business Software Construction (I) conducted by Mr. Daniel Tse in Semester A 20xx.

   Both the teaching attitude and teaching approach of Mr. Daniel Tse are very encouraging. Through his clear presentation during the class, difficult concepts can become easy to understand! More importantly, he is always available to us. He expresses his care to every single student and he can take care of every need of his students.

   He is outstanding among all other teachers I have ever met. He has lightened me up, for my direction of learning, not only in the IS5311 course, but also for the whole postgraduate course. I enjoyed every single part of his course and I have learnt a lot than I have expected from the course.

   Here I would like to express my greatest thanks to Mr. Daniel Tse for his brilliant teaching. I think he worth getting the Teaching Excellence Award and I wish him the very best in the future.

  Yours truly,

   

• Dear Mr. Tse,

              I was one of the students of your Business Software Construction (course 5311) in Semester A 20xx, and I have just received my grade report. I consider it appropriate for me to send this letter now expressing my appreciation to your constructive guidance during the last semester.

              During the first class meeting, I was impressed by your strong encouragement to all of the students.  It was very helpful since we were new to the University.  You are highly commendable in helping us to build up confidence, not only to your course, but also to the program as a whole.

  Your teaching materials were well prepared with the key points of each topic highlighted.  Given the current economic situation, jobs are demanding and time is very invaluable.  These highlights are definitely very helpful.

   In addition, you gave us constructive comments in our project and motivated us to think critically on how to improve the control points of the fictitious company in our project.  All these demonstrated your expertise not only in the technical part of the subject, but also the planning and design of it.  Also, your proposed teaching schedule included the introduction of VB.net that made us excited to these up-to-dated knowledge.

  Although we were part-time students, you were amiable and approachable to help us.  You always responded our email and gave us good advice in a timely manner.  During the class meetings, you have been demonstrating a positive teaching attitude.

              As a token of appreciation, I would cast my vote and extend my full support to your Teaching Excellence Award.  Definitely, I would say that you deserve the Award!

  Yours truly,

   

• Dear Daniel,
  
  To the truth, I would say you are the best educator that I've seen
  during the university life. In particular, I appreciate very much that
  you try your every best to explain the most difficult concept, which is
  indeed very clear and comprehensible and to discourage us to learn by
  reciting.
  
  To me, this course is such a unique experience in my degree programme
  since this course requires a different dimension of analysis and
  thinking as well as a relatively abstract concept than other technical
  subjects. I like your class very much since you brought us wealth
  knowledge. I differentiate you from other scholars in that you are not
  just knowledgeable but also has invaluable practical experience. More
  than that, you always share with us about some critical survival skills
  in the workplace and your own experience, which I found it to be
  invaluable. If this course is offered in semester A, I can afford to pay
  more time in it. I couldn't find any problem with your teaching at all.
  I would say that the only problem may arise is when student don't find
  interest in this course, then it turns to the "alive or dead" scenario
  due to the non-trivial concept, which results in an all-or-nothing
  knowledge gain despite the amount of effort spent.
  
  Best Regards,
  

 1.           Previous Background related to Teaching

Before I came here as an instructor, I have been in the industry for many years including positions of supervisor, officer, department manager, consultant, senior consultant, and general manager (owner of a small company).  These jobs have brushed me up in how to deal with people inside and outside the company.  Though I have not taught any academic courses before I came here, I had conducted many courses in top executive briefing, user training and technical staff training.  Since I had run my own business for more than 6 years, I got the real experiences of handling a product's life cycle from feasibility, design, production, promotion, selling, supporting and obsolescing which led to creation of its enhanced version or new substitute.  Thus, I have already equipped with enough product management experiences that are quite similar to the course management.

2.           My First University's Course Teaching

My first teaching assignment was a technical master-degree course to the non-technical business students.  This course was a computer-programming course teaching the students with no IT technical background to build business software.  Programming can be a very interesting subject if students like to think logically.  On the contrary, it can be a nightmare to the students if they do not like thinking logically or dealing with complexities.  Actually, it is easier to teach the technical people advanced technical things than to teach the non-technical people simple technical things.  Moreover, unlike other management courses, programming courses can easily detect the incapability of the students because they need to demonstrate their ability in writing a workable program that requires must-pass techniques.  In addition to this, I found that students' technical backgrounds were very diverse: Some of them were programmers and engineers who knew much about computer programming logic but some were business administrators who knew nothing about computer programming.  On the other hand, I was told that previous instructors for this course received so many bad comments like lousy instructor? Crazy course? etc.  Several big questions thus appeared: How can I help the non-technical students to conquer their first psychological barrier?? How can I maintain the technical level of this course while not frustrating the non-technical students, etc.  Eventually, my teaching evaluation score for this course's lecture was 2.6, which is between good and very good sectors.  Though not so optimistic and just a bit better than the departmental average, I have absorbed many valuable lessons and learned many important techniques that paved me in acquiring critical success factors in excellent teaching for other courses (please see the following teaching philosophy for details).

3.           Teaching Philosophy

a)      Traditional Teaching

Criticisms for traditional teaching give us the impression of bureaucratic, parental and one-way communication.  Students are not motivated to express their ideas boldly.  Teachers are like broadcasting penguins to transmit knowledge to the students who would not yell out their grievances nor discuss their studying problems with their teachers.  As a result, the students cannot fully utilize the chances to learn during class time.  Who is at fault?  For the students: Poor learning attitude?  Too shy?  Too passive?  Lower educational level?  For the teachers: Poor teaching attitude?  Has tried his/her best to motivate? Already overloaded?  Poor ability to teach?  Think of a day when both students and teachers are at fault.  Definitely, chaos will appear.  How about accepting better students?  More teachers?  For the time being, because of scarce resources, our university needs some time to shape ourselves so that more good students can come to study.

 b)      Teaching Style Lattice Cube

Before I can describe my teaching style, let me introduce my proposed model of teaching style lattice cube.  This cube has 3 axes in this model: Students' background whether they are technical or managerial persons; Course's nature whether it is technical or managerial course; Teacher's strength whether he/she is a technical or managerial person.  In other words, there are at least 8 combinations of teaching styles.  If the situation were more complex that students are of different technical backgrounds, then number of combinations would be proportionally increased.  Another impact is that new generation is smarter than previous generation and this is true to our university students, we cannot teach like a robot, we have to dynamically adjust or tune our teaching style to meet the needs of modern teaching.  In my case, since I am an IT technical person myself and I had run my own business and possessing MBA degree and was studying a doctoral degree in business administration, I have no problem in the axis of teacher's strength.  Thus, I just needed to control the other two axes.

 c)      Teaching should be a kind of Duplex Communication

The word duplex is a computer communication term meaning a two-way communication between the two parties.  Duplex can be further divided into full duplex and half duplex meaning two-way communication at the same time and one at a time respectively.  I borrowed this word to my teaching dictionary because I found that teaching could be sometimes full duplex and sometimes half duplex depending on the situation.  To achieve this, I would use a practical and interesting problem to strongly encourage students (please see Appendix B impressed by your strong encouragement to all of the students' helping us to build up confidence) to raise questions initially, i.e. half duplex.  Using a practical example is very important to arouse the students' interest in learning.  Particular for this course, using an abstract example must be avoided because the weak students would have the first impression of the topic being too technical for them.  After they are accustomed to ask and become not so shy, I would bring them into brainstorming world, i.e. full duplex, in order to let them help themselves eventually.  From the appendix A, it is a common but interesting problem.  Initially, they think it is an easy problem, thus willing to have a try.  Gradually, when they have some ideas of problem solving, they would automatically pursue the solving algorithm through discussing with other classmates (please see Appendix B through his clear presentation during the class, difficult concepts can become easy to understand).  Actually, this problem is not easy and it needs to employ artificial intelligence concept to solve.  In other words, I have controlled the course's nature.  Thus, the critical success factor in this scenario is the use of practical and interesting examples and leads them to solve the problem through duplex communication technique.

 d)      Teaching can be a kind of Marketing Action Research

How to control the axis of students' background?  This question is frequently encountered.  If they have different technical backgrounds, the strong students would say the teaching materials are too easy for them that they can learn nothing new while the weak students would say the teaching materials are too difficult for them that they also learn nothing.  How to make both ends meet?  I have used marketing concept with Action Research Methodology to implement this marketing plan.

i)              Plan

--- Know your students: Know the students' background and their needs & wants in order to narrow the gap between the teacher and the students.  This can be achieved through a simple students' background survey at the beginning of the course.  From this, I can know what kind of persons they are so that I can apply suitable treatment to them.

--- Segmentation: Divide the class into technical and non-technical students; help them form project/study groups with mixture of technical and non-technical students but with similar industry sector.

--- Targeting & Positioning: Plan the course contents to suit the majority while designing some more technical chances and simpler examples to the strong students and weak students respectively.  This can be achieved by giving them supplementary information (please see Appendix B extra notes you have given us really helped) and welcome their questions after class.  From this, I have solved the problem of the axis of students' background.

ii)            Do

--- Product development: Develop the course materials for various levels using supplementary handout method.

--- Fulfill needs and wants: Besides teaching necessary theories and concepts, design practical examples / exercises and share personal experiences with the students so that they can have resonance and easy to absorb (please see Appendix B by sharing your real life experience makes the lessons more interesting and easier to understand).

--- Keep students' loyalty: Besides periodic email communication with them in order to keep them aware of the course, make use of the students' late time to let the early students have a review of previous topics learned or have a feedback, somewhat like a market survey, of my previous lectures.  I would emphasize the importance of counseling the borderline students intensively because once they are saved please see Appendix B at the beginning of the term I was afraid of handling the subject, you have made me change the previous negative feeling); they would act as good examples to motivate other weaker students to become borderline students.  In fact, I would not easily abandon any student and let them drop the course (please see Appendix B expresses his care to every single student and thinking back in the first term I really thought of giving up the course).  From the students' assessment evidence (please see Appendix B you were amiable and approachable to help us and you are really very helpful and approachable), they considered me as a helpful and approachable teacher.

iii)          Check

--- Test market: Conduct small and informal attitude survey (e.g. chatting) in each important milestone to test the usefulness of all treatments taken particular the difficulty of course materials and teaching progress.

--- Measurement: Besides the above attitude measurement, some quizzes (counted as coursework) have to be done by the students to make sure they know the subject well and can proceed further to next milestone.

--- Monitoring: Make sure they understand what you mean, closely monitor those weak students' response and do some secret checking of what they are doing in the tutorial.

iv)          Act

--- Controlling: If the result of checking is not so optimistic and / or students' performance is not so satisfactory, suitable prescriptions have to be applied to control the environment.  Sometimes, it is necessary to halt the teaching progress in order to let the students have sufficient time to assimilate the materials.

 e)   Bring the students to learn independently to explore new knowledge

Besides the above basic necessary tasks a teacher should perform, i.e. providing a good yardstick to the students, a teacher should motivate and bring the students to explore their knowledge world so that they can get up-to-date knowledge and expertise themselves.  In some of my courses, I have an assignment that requires the students to find the new knowledge through intensive searching and then present to the class with limited time.  This can make them have a habit to study independently and also prepare them to do the research since research can acquire new knowledge directly while learning can get knowledge from the teachers.  Initially, students are reluctant to start but after my patient guidance, they found that this exercise is really good for them to acquire up-to-date knowledge (please see Appendix B) at first, I even did not think I could do it well acked by your guidance I learnt a lot through the process of gathering information knew different new issues by listening to the other classmates' presentations).

 f)    Conclusion

My critical success factors are: Understand our students; Share personal real experiences with them; Know their progress and feedback; always make them aware of the course; Counsel the borderline students as they really need our help.  Last but not least, sincerity is a very important word to every teacher.  If the teacher's attitude were not good enough, this would be a mirror to the students that they would act like that teacher's attitude when they study.  Motivating a student to learn is not easy but de-motivating a student is very easy.

 4.           Self Assessment

I have tried every effort to improve my teaching style and refine my above teaching model.  Last May, I have conducted a teaching seminar to our department staff, the topic is teaching should be a kind of duplex communication: A case study on MAISD class? 

Except my first course teaching, i.e. Semester A in 20xx, all my courses' teaching evaluation scores were consistently between Excellent grade and Very Good grade.  Moreover, my rankings inside my department were all nearly among the top 5 positions (please see Appendix C Teaching Evaluation Table for IS Department).  If I am qualified to teach research students in the future, I think my teaching technique can be more complete and perfect.

5.           Students' Assessment

Though I was lucky that I have not met the worst students as my colleagues described, my previous students ranged from several disciplines and levels.  They were undergraduates, newly graduated, junior executives and top executives like vice-president, director, etc; They behaved differently: Some were very nice while some were wicked persons.  Through thick and thin, most weak students could overcome their studying problems or change their learning attitude.  Please see Appendix B students' appreciation letters.  Overall speaking, I am regarded as encouraging, helpful, approachable, responsible, good teaching technique, good materials preparation and able to lead them to acquire up-to-date knowledge.

6.           Peers' Assessment

One of the reasons why I can get such good teaching performance is the help from my colleagues.  I can learn from their success and failure stories to further enhance my teaching model.  Sometimes, I would co-teach with my colleagues for some large class where I can learn a lot from them.  Our BBA program leader (now the program coordinator) most of time encouraged me and actually he recommended me to compete for this year's Teaching Excellence Award.  Please see Appendix D for my peers' assessment, they both have got the Teaching Excellence Award already.