Interview questions and design considerations

Education -- Interview Questions

What specifically interests you about becoming an instructor? Why do you think you will be successful?

Part of my motivation to become an instructor comes from my own early educational experiences. Specifically, I was not necessarily a student who learned easily or naturally, especially in subjects that did not interest me particularly. In retrospect, some of my teachers seemed either not to notice or not to care to help average students improve their performance and devoted more of the attention to their strongest students. Some of my other teachers took a much greater interest in their other students and made a much more genuine effort to help all of their students equally. I am committed to becoming that kind of educator precisely because of the difference some of them made in my educational experiences.

When facilitators have a passion for teaching, it shows in the classroom. How would you create a positive learning environment?

To the best of my ability and the opportunities I am afforded to do so, I hope to emphasize active-participation over rote memorization and the traditional emphasis on strictly passive, lecture and textbook-based learning methods. I understand that commercially available active learning teaching materials are somewhat expensive but I am looking forward to the opportunity of using my creativity and resourcefulness to devise original supplemental course materials to vary my teaching approach as much as possible.

3. If we match you to a course that you have never taught before, what will you do to prepare yourself for this class?

In that situation, I suppose I would take a two-step approach to my preparation. First, I would familiarize myself with the substantive subject matter by researching and reading about it online. Second, I would make the effort to obtain the actual teaching materials that will be used in the course for the purposes of familiarizing myself with them, making sure that I understand them, and trying to anticipate how I will present the material and test academic performance.

4. Participation is very important for the student as well as the facilitator. As a facilitator, you will be required to stimulate participation in the classroom environment. What types of techniques would you use to get students to participate?

First, I would observe the class and try to determine the reason why some students may not be participating as much as others. In my experience, low participation can be attributable either to distractions or to difficulty in understanding that causes some students to lose interest or give up. With respect to students whose low participation is a function of distraction, I would make seating (and other) changes necessary to reduce distractions. With respect to students who seem to give up because of comprehension limitations, I might conduct short one-on-one tutorials to help me identify and overcome specific learning barriers.

5. Aside from your education and experience, what will you do to help better educate your students? What methods would you implement to aid in their education?

I am a proponent of the Multiple Intelligences concept of cognitive learning, according to which many students have much greater capacity to learn from different instructional methods than the traditional focus on textbooks and passive lecture. If permitted, I would take the initiative of developing various alternate methods of presenting course material to help 1. identify the strengths of students who do not seem to respond to traditional teaching methods and 2. re-engage those students in learning.