[Music]
okay it’s a real pleasure to be here and
I wanted to tell you a little bit about
myself as well and I had a lot of
flashbacks to being an undergrad just
hearing Patrick’s talk and talking about
door gana chemistry brought back a lot
of unpleasant memories just as he was
sort of mentioning but my major was
actually in neuroscience and in my major
in neuroscience one of the things that I
was principally involved with was
learning about how the brain works and
at the time in the early 2000s we didn’t
really know a lot about brain plasticity
and one of the things that my lab that
was again working here at the University
of Toronto at the Hospital for Sick
Children was really interested in was
how does the brain adapt and how does it
in terms of learning and memory and that
was one of the lines of research and I
have to say I loved that research I used
to work in the lab like 20 hours a day
because not because my supervisor wanted
me to be there but because I loved that
research so much and it was one of those
things that I really loved the aspect of
the theory behind how the brain changes
how neurotransmitters change how
different types of kinases change and
how the brain learned to adapt as it
learned as as well as how memory started
to form but it was one of those things
that as I got on and I started thinking
a little bit about my research I
actually wanted to apply it I wanted to
actually know it’s all this theory about
learning and memory and all these
molecules that were finding in the lab
and that we’re publishing in these
really high profile journals is this
actually meaningful in anything in any
significant way and one of the things
that I got really lucky with and as was
mentioned a little bit earlier I was on
the Lum nie here at the University of
Toronto and one of the things that I got
really lucky with or was very fortunate
with was that I got to come back here to
be able to teach and I was offered this
opportunity to actually come back and
teach in the very same courses that I
have taken as an undergrad just to put
things in perspective for you my
undergrad was a little bit different in
terms of the types of things that
students have now my my undergrad
at the time really had nothing more than
someone standing at the very front of
the room talking and we would take down
notes and we would take down as many
notes as we possibly could
students now have very very different
types of assets available to them but
that was the way that I learned and I
and again I was really excited by the
fact that I got to come back here to U
of T to be able to teach in the very
same courses that unfortunately as an
undergraduate student I didn’t do very
well in and I have to admit that I
actually didn’t enjoy my undergraduate
experience a lot in university it was
one of those things where I felt that I
just went through the motions of
learning I didn’t really have a good
opportunity to learn it was one of those
things that I promised that when I came
back I would make all those things that
didn’t work well for me work well for
the students that I was going to be
involved with and this got me to read a
lot I I knew that I would I wasn’t going
to be able to rely on my good looks as
much as my wife said that I might be
able to get away with things that way I
knew that I actually had to put a lot of
work in a lot of effort into translating
what I did well in research and to try
to do all those things that I had
promised myself that I would do in terms
of being able to teach and one of the
things that I started to do was to read
everything I possibly could about
teaching because I had no experience in
teaching about different aspects of how
to interact with students and all of
these things were different aspects that
I was trying to learn as much as I
possibly could over a very short period
of time before I started teaching my
very first class and one of the was
really weird moments when I started
reading a journal called The Economist
was a talk that or sorry an article that
was put out there that suggested that
there was a a CEO of a company who
wanted to revolutionize laundry
detergent i sat there thinking if this
guy wants to change the way in which
laundry detergent is being sold and he
wants to make the best laundry detergent
of all time why can’t I do the exact
same thing with teaching and learning
why can’t I think right from the get-go
of trying to revolutionize the way that
teaching and learning works here at the
University of Toronto how can I
improve the experience that
undergraduate students have here at the
University and that was sort of the
philosophy that I had that I was going
to come in and I was going to use the
same principles of working long hours
and trying to get the best possible
lectures that I could and that’s what I
worked on for two years I spent all this
time in an effort and effort 20 hours a
day in some cases trying to develop the
best lecture slides that I could trying
to figure out how to engage students the
best that I could
trying to figure out through student
evaluations how I was doing how I could
get better and all of these things were
related to chasing after this ideal of
this laundry detergent and making the a
new type of lecture and I think that
overall in the long run when I look back
at that particular phase of my teaching
career is one of those things where I
was really chasing after numbers and it
was really one of those things where I
was trying to be the best at something
for all the wrong reasons and I was
trying to be the best not for the sake
of the students but really for the sake
of the numbers that were coming back
related to how effective I was as as a
teacher and it was one of those things
that when I got those numbers if I was a
laundry detergent you could actually see
this really large bubble that was kind
of forming and was floating up and I was
getting more and more full of myself in
terms of what I was doing
developing just lectures and not really
thinking too much beyond the lecturing
and one of those some watershed moments
happen when I ran into one of my
students and I had this one student this
one year and she was a brilliant student
so she’s gone on to do some amazing
things and this one student I remember
she came to office hours
she was spectacular she had like almost
a hundred percent average going into the
final exam on the very final exam one of
the things that happened was that she
had a panic attack and she had never had
one before I could see her tear drops
welling up because I was sitting right
in front of her watching her take this
exam and I could see that she was going
to cry and she did cry she had a
breakdown and this best student my
favorite student of that year where I
expected nothing to go wrong where she
knew and I knew that
she was going to end up with the best
mark in the course because she had done
incredibly well was breaking down before
my very eyes this is not what I had
wanted to do as a teacher at all this is
not something that I expected from my
student and I asked her after like what
was going on through her mind and she
simply stressed out and she was
panicking on the spot and she was having
this breakdown that she’s never had
since then but my test had really evoked
this type of stress in her I also had an
opportunity to speak
not long after with a different student
and again because of the way in which I
was trying to be the best possible
detergent where I was trying to make the
best possible product rather than
worrying about other things I ran into a
student and I was expecting all sorts of
praise back from the students the
student to tell me things like wow you
prepare this really well for this
examine that you were a really effective
teacher and all these platitudes that I
was expecting back the first thing that
the student asked me was you you
actually don’t know who I am do you
I thought a lot about that and I said
well I know you’re in my class but you
don’t know my name and I said no I have
to apologise I don’t know your name at
all and I was thinking back to my own
experience as an undergrad at that
precise moment and as she walked away
the student happened to turn back and
say you know dr. Zhu I know you’re a
really good lecturer and I know that you
try really hard but I think that
sometimes it must be really nice for you
to live your life with with these
blinders on that sometimes students have
a lot of other things going on and it’s
not just the lectures that you should be
worried about it’s the other aspects of
what the student experience is that got
me to thinking awful lot and I know that
right now in terms of the university
experience mental health is a really big
concern mental health is not just a
concern here at this university it’s a
it’s a concern overall and it’s
something that we hear a lot about in
the news media we hear a lot about it in
different meetings that we go to and the
reality is most of the time when we’re
thinking about mental health issues we
actually leave it to other people we
don’t really think about is our class is
my course is my teaching style is the
type of tests that I do is that actually
stressing out the student and actually
distributing to their mental health
disorder and I think that these are the
types of wake-up calls that he started
to have the other thing that also
happened around the same time was this
experience that I had with my wife it’s
not that type of experience by the way
but it was it was also like a really
mind-altering experience in a very
different way one of the things that I
did because my wife is a professional
cook I don’t usually do a lot of the
cooking but I decided that for that one
particular day I would actually go out
yet the recipes start to get all of the
different ingredients and I started to
actually put them all together and then
I followed the recipe to a tee and I
invited my wife to sample what I had
just cooked for her and one of the
things that then she told me was you
know actually I’m kind of surprised that
you cooked number one and number two I’m
actually you know that I actually don’t
like this type of food right because I
had gone out and I created something
that I liked not something that my wife
light and I hadn’t really thought about
that I was just concentrating really on
just getting the best possible recipe
together and cooking the best possible
thing that I could and I was not really
concerned as much with what my wife
might enjoy so all of these different
types of things were kind of coalescing
in my mind so it’s not just about making
good looking slides it’s not just about
trying to be an effective teacher it’s
not just about trying to make sure that
my lectures are delivered on time and
that all these professional things are
being checked off on a list so I had all
these different things that I was kind
of mulling over so I had things related
to how do I get students to actually
feel like they’re connected with me
because that one student who said that I
didn’t know her name actually really
bothered me it still bothers me to this
day that that student I still don’t know
her name and it really still bothers me
and I have to say that since that time
and I’ve given a lot of thought to this
you know am I really doing this for the
students that’s why while I was really
hired to come here to come back and
teach is to use my knowledge of learning
and memory and all of the different
aspects of neurophysiology and
neurologic that I’ve gained over the
past few years not just to deliver a
really solid product but to really
enhance learning and and am I doing that
am I actually getting to reduce stress
because stress as you can see on this
particular graph on the right Ashley has
a very profound impact on learning and
memory and I know that as a
neurobiologist the more stress that you
have the worse that your memory
performance is going to be and when
you’re coming into a test and it’s a
stressful situation just like with my
student you may actually find that that
stress level is going to be something
that causes you to have a panic attack
or a panic disorder and in fact what
we’re really teaching you is that is the
graph here on the Left which is showing
you that in in stressful situations all
you remember is the fearful response
that’s associated with it we’re actually
teaching you about post-traumatic stress
disorder in in a lot of ways in the ways
that we’re teaching the other thing that
I knew from my own time here as well as
in dealing with stress is that stress
often leads to isolation and if you’re
already isolated which is again one of
those things that happens in the
university I love these types of
pictures by the way the pictures that
the university uses to get students to
come here it really looks fantastic that
you know they’re they’re happy people
collaborating and working around a
particular computer on a particular
project but the reality is when you’re
here at the University you don’t get
these types of happy experiences most of
the time
and again when you’re dealing with
stress and you’re isolated and you’re
not having all of these supports that
you see here in this picture and you’re
in this really large room similar to the
type of room that you’re in you’re now
and you have this guy who’s giving this
really amazing talk because he’s put
together some really amazing slides and
animations everyone in the audience is
thinking about all sorts of different
things you’re thinking about why this
guy is talking the way that he is or
you’re thinking about what you’re going
to have for lunch and you’re even if
you’re in this room with a whole bunch
of other people actually you’re going to
be pretty isolated because your
individual your your put into these
individual components where you’re not
really interacting with each other
you’re trying to pay attention to what’s
going on in the actual lecture and all
of these things bothered me it bothered
me to a great extent so how do I
actually deal with mental health issues
how do I actually reduce stress because
the longer you experience stress for and
the more you feel that you’re isolated
which is a form of stress in itself the
more likely that you are going to have a
mental health disorder which leads back
to more stress the more that is quite
the impact on your learning and memory
while you’re here at the University and
it wasn’t until I went to a meeting
where one of the administrators actually
said you know don’t bother sending out
emails to your students because students
nowadays actually don’t bother with
email they’re actually more likely if
you try to engage them either on a
website or through social media etc and
that’s how they’re gaining their
information I had no idea what they were
talking about to be honest I had no idea
what social media actually represented
but I thought that it would be a really
good idea if students were already
learning online interacting with each
other developing social networks online
that it was have to be something that I
would have to go and take a look at and
it was one of those i opening moments
again where i had a student who came in
and asked me if she could add me as a
friend on facebook actually had no idea
what facebook was number one and number
two i didn’t really know if i want it to
be this student’s friend
in the in the long run though in the
long run I decided that I would ask her
and she did help me to set up a Facebook
account I was her very first friend I
was I was she was my only friend for
about a year and as we went along one of
the things that I spared was I could
actually interact with students they
could understand what I was going to say
to them in class where I can engage them
outside of the class I could make
different opportunities available to
them even before class started to
arrange different types of work or
research experiences sets etc and all of
these different types of experiences
kind of led students to feel a little
bit less isolated there’s also one of
those things where I looked at how I
could use different forms of social
media to actually use it as an effective
tool for learning and one of those
things that I started to do was to
actually stream some of my lectures
directly over Facebook or other forms of
social media I didn’t really care where
students were actually learning to me it
was more important that students were
learning I didn’t really care if it was
a really low low budget type of
chalkboard talk that I was giving as
long as students had equal access to it
as long as there was good conversation
about different aspects of the course as
long as students were communicating with
each other no longer feeling isolated
this was the type of learning experience
that I had wanted when I was an
undergrad that I wanted to use these new
developing tools to actually engage
these students in and for the most part
I think that these are the types of
things that I would really want to have
had when I was when I was an
undergraduate student here I also try as
much as possible because I know students
now have very very different needs than
back in 2011 I asked students on a
routine basis at the very beginning of
the school year what are the biggest
challenges for you there that you have
coming into my class how can I get you
to come and see me if you need to come
and see me how do you interact with me
and how can I communicate more
effectively with you and I think that
one of the things that students said
that it’s it’s often very very DIF
to actually get everything down in
lectures so that’s a form of stress and
it’s also really stressful for students
to not feel like they’ve missed the
lecture and they don’t know someone in
class to be able to have access to that
lecture and I think that one of the
things that we can do as educators is to
really think a little bit about how
we’re actually not worrying so much
about what we want to deliver in terms
of content but how to make the student
experience in terms of learning the key
and central point to what we’re trying
to do here at the University and I think
the last thing that I’d like to mention
as well we know that students also have
a number of different and diverse
learning styles and we have to be very
very flexible in our approach to this
not just providing them with different
types of assets but also being being
able to give them differentiated
learning and I have a fairly large class
but in that large class some students
will be really good at different types
of tests some students will be really
good at different types of assignments
and it’s up to us to make sure that we
provide them with enough flexibility
that they feel like they’ve actually
been able to demonstrate that what
they’ve learned is something that
they’re being evaluated on effectively
and it’s challenging and I’m going to
leave you with my own challenge to you
as well so in my life I’ve undergone a
lot of different changes and I think
that one of the things that I’ve
realized is that if you’re going to try
to make changes that these types of
things don’t occur overnight and a lot
of times we need a lot of insight we
need help we need feedback from the
people that we’re trying to work with or
work for and I think that those types of
communications are ones that we’re not
really that great at and I’m hoping that
whatever you feel that you’re in
wherever field where you want to be like
the best possible detergent maker of all
time that you’re going to go out and
maybe rethink the way in which you’re
doing things is it really to make the
best laundry detergent or is it really
to make someone feel better about the
clothes that they’re wearing and I’ll
kind of leave you with that thank you
very much
[Applause]
[Music]
okay it’s a real pleasure to be here and
I wanted to tell you a little bit about
myself as well and I had a lot of
flashbacks to being an undergrad just
hearing Patrick’s talk and talking about
door gana chemistry brought back a lot
of unpleasant memories just as he was
sort of mentioning but my major was
actually in neuroscience and in my major
in neuroscience one of the things that I
was principally involved with was
learning about how the brain works and
at the time in the early 2000s we didn’t
really know a lot about brain plasticity
and one of the things that my lab that
was again working here at the University
of Toronto at the Hospital for Sick
Children was really interested in was
how does the brain adapt and how does it
in terms of learning and memory and that
was one of the lines of research and I
have to say I loved that research I used
to work in the lab like 20 hours a day
because not because my supervisor wanted
me to be there but because I loved that
research so much and it was one of those
things that I really loved the aspect of
the theory behind how the brain changes
how neurotransmitters change how
different types of kinases change and
how the brain learned to adapt as it
learned as as well as how memory started
to form but it was one of those things
that as I got on and I started thinking
a little bit about my research I
actually wanted to apply it I wanted to
actually know it’s all this theory about
learning and memory and all these
molecules that were finding in the lab
and that we’re publishing in these
really high profile journals is this
actually meaningful in anything in any
significant way and one of the things
that I got really lucky with and as was
mentioned a little bit earlier I was on
the Lum nie here at the University of
Toronto and one of the things that I got
really lucky with or was very fortunate
with was that I got to come back here to
be able to teach and I was offered this
opportunity to actually come back and
teach in the very same courses that I
have taken as an undergrad just to put
things in perspective for you my
undergrad was a little bit different in
terms of the types of things that
students have now my my undergrad
at the time really had nothing more than
someone standing at the very front of
the room talking and we would take down
notes and we would take down as many
notes as we possibly could
students now have very very different
types of assets available to them but
that was the way that I learned and I
and again I was really excited by the
fact that I got to come back here to U
of T to be able to teach in the very
same courses that unfortunately as an
undergraduate student I didn’t do very
well in and I have to admit that I
actually didn’t enjoy my undergraduate
experience a lot in university it was
one of those things where I felt that I
just went through the motions of
learning I didn’t really have a good
opportunity to learn it was one of those
things that I promised that when I came
back I would make all those things that
didn’t work well for me work well for
the students that I was going to be
involved with and this got me to read a
lot I I knew that I would I wasn’t going
to be able to rely on my good looks as
much as my wife said that I might be
able to get away with things that way I
knew that I actually had to put a lot of
work in a lot of effort into translating
what I did well in research and to try
to do all those things that I had
promised myself that I would do in terms
of being able to teach and one of the
things that I started to do was to read
everything I possibly could about
teaching because I had no experience in
teaching about different aspects of how
to interact with students and all of
these things were different aspects that
I was trying to learn as much as I
possibly could over a very short period
of time before I started teaching my
very first class and one of the was
really weird moments when I started
reading a journal called The Economist
was a talk that or sorry an article that
was put out there that suggested that
there was a a CEO of a company who
wanted to revolutionize laundry
detergent i sat there thinking if this
guy wants to change the way in which
laundry detergent is being sold and he
wants to make the best laundry detergent
of all time why can’t I do the exact
same thing with teaching and learning
why can’t I think right from the get-go
of trying to revolutionize the way that
teaching and learning works here at the
University of Toronto how can I
improve the experience that
undergraduate students have here at the
University and that was sort of the
philosophy that I had that I was going
to come in and I was going to use the
same principles of working long hours
and trying to get the best possible
lectures that I could and that’s what I
worked on for two years I spent all this
time in an effort and effort 20 hours a
day in some cases trying to develop the
best lecture slides that I could trying
to figure out how to engage students the
best that I could
trying to figure out through student
evaluations how I was doing how I could
get better and all of these things were
related to chasing after this ideal of
this laundry detergent and making the a
new type of lecture and I think that
overall in the long run when I look back
at that particular phase of my teaching
career is one of those things where I
was really chasing after numbers and it
was really one of those things where I
was trying to be the best at something
for all the wrong reasons and I was
trying to be the best not for the sake
of the students but really for the sake
of the numbers that were coming back
related to how effective I was as as a
teacher and it was one of those things
that when I got those numbers if I was a
laundry detergent you could actually see
this really large bubble that was kind
of forming and was floating up and I was
getting more and more full of myself in
terms of what I was doing
developing just lectures and not really
thinking too much beyond the lecturing
and one of those some watershed moments
happen when I ran into one of my
students and I had this one student this
one year and she was a brilliant student
so she’s gone on to do some amazing
things and this one student I remember
she came to office hours
she was spectacular she had like almost
a hundred percent average going into the
final exam on the very final exam one of
the things that happened was that she
had a panic attack and she had never had
one before I could see her tear drops
welling up because I was sitting right
in front of her watching her take this
exam and I could see that she was going
to cry and she did cry she had a
breakdown and this best student my
favorite student of that year where I
expected nothing to go wrong where she
knew and I knew that
she was going to end up with the best
mark in the course because she had done
incredibly well was breaking down before
my very eyes this is not what I had
wanted to do as a teacher at all this is
not something that I expected from my
student and I asked her after like what
was going on through her mind and she
simply stressed out and she was
panicking on the spot and she was having
this breakdown that she’s never had
since then but my test had really evoked
this type of stress in her I also had an
opportunity to speak
not long after with a different student
and again because of the way in which I
was trying to be the best possible
detergent where I was trying to make the
best possible product rather than
worrying about other things I ran into a
student and I was expecting all sorts of
praise back from the students the
student to tell me things like wow you
prepare this really well for this
examine that you were a really effective
teacher and all these platitudes that I
was expecting back the first thing that
the student asked me was you you
actually don’t know who I am do you
I thought a lot about that and I said
well I know you’re in my class but you
don’t know my name and I said no I have
to apologise I don’t know your name at
all and I was thinking back to my own
experience as an undergrad at that
precise moment and as she walked away
the student happened to turn back and
say you know dr. Zhu I know you’re a
really good lecturer and I know that you
try really hard but I think that
sometimes it must be really nice for you
to live your life with with these
blinders on that sometimes students have
a lot of other things going on and it’s
not just the lectures that you should be
worried about it’s the other aspects of
what the student experience is that got
me to thinking awful lot and I know that
right now in terms of the university
experience mental health is a really big
concern mental health is not just a
concern here at this university it’s a
it’s a concern overall and it’s
something that we hear a lot about in
the news media we hear a lot about it in
different meetings that we go to and the
reality is most of the time when we’re
thinking about mental health issues we
actually leave it to other people we
don’t really think about is our class is
my course is my teaching style is the
type of tests that I do is that actually
stressing out the student and actually
distributing to their mental health
disorder and I think that these are the
types of wake-up calls that he started
to have the other thing that also
happened around the same time was this
experience that I had with my wife it’s
not that type of experience by the way
but it was it was also like a really
mind-altering experience in a very
different way one of the things that I
did because my wife is a professional
cook I don’t usually do a lot of the
cooking but I decided that for that one
particular day I would actually go out
yet the recipes start to get all of the
different ingredients and I started to
actually put them all together and then
I followed the recipe to a tee and I
invited my wife to sample what I had
just cooked for her and one of the
things that then she told me was you
know actually I’m kind of surprised that
you cooked number one and number two I’m
actually you know that I actually don’t
like this type of food right because I
had gone out and I created something
that I liked not something that my wife
light and I hadn’t really thought about
that I was just concentrating really on
just getting the best possible recipe
together and cooking the best possible
thing that I could and I was not really
concerned as much with what my wife
might enjoy so all of these different
types of things were kind of coalescing
in my mind so it’s not just about making
good looking slides it’s not just about
trying to be an effective teacher it’s
not just about trying to make sure that
my lectures are delivered on time and
that all these professional things are
being checked off on a list so I had all
these different things that I was kind
of mulling over so I had things related
to how do I get students to actually
feel like they’re connected with me
because that one student who said that I
didn’t know her name actually really
bothered me it still bothers me to this
day that that student I still don’t know
her name and it really still bothers me
and I have to say that since that time
and I’ve given a lot of thought to this
you know am I really doing this for the
students that’s why while I was really
hired to come here to come back and
teach is to use my knowledge of learning
and memory and all of the different
aspects of neurophysiology and
neurologic that I’ve gained over the
past few years not just to deliver a
really solid product but to really
enhance learning and and am I doing that
am I actually getting to reduce stress
because stress as you can see on this
particular graph on the right Ashley has
a very profound impact on learning and
memory and I know that as a
neurobiologist the more stress that you
have the worse that your memory
performance is going to be and when
you’re coming into a test and it’s a
stressful situation just like with my
student you may actually find that that
stress level is going to be something
that causes you to have a panic attack
or a panic disorder and in fact what
we’re really teaching you is that is the
graph here on the Left which is showing
you that in in stressful situations all
you remember is the fearful response
that’s associated with it we’re actually
teaching you about post-traumatic stress
disorder in in a lot of ways in the ways
that we’re teaching the other thing that
I knew from my own time here as well as
in dealing with stress is that stress
often leads to isolation and if you’re
already isolated which is again one of
those things that happens in the
university I love these types of
pictures by the way the pictures that
the university uses to get students to
come here it really looks fantastic that
you know they’re they’re happy people
collaborating and working around a
particular computer on a particular
project but the reality is when you’re
here at the University you don’t get
these types of happy experiences most of
the time
and again when you’re dealing with
stress and you’re isolated and you’re
not having all of these supports that
you see here in this picture and you’re
in this really large room similar to the
type of room that you’re in you’re now
and you have this guy who’s giving this
really amazing talk because he’s put
together some really amazing slides and
animations everyone in the audience is
thinking about all sorts of different
things you’re thinking about why this
guy is talking the way that he is or
you’re thinking about what you’re going
to have for lunch and you’re even if
you’re in this room with a whole bunch
of other people actually you’re going to
be pretty isolated because your
individual your your put into these
individual components where you’re not
really interacting with each other
you’re trying to pay attention to what’s
going on in the actual lecture and all
of these things bothered me it bothered
me to a great extent so how do I
actually deal with mental health issues
how do I actually reduce stress because
the longer you experience stress for and
the more you feel that you’re isolated
which is a form of stress in itself the
more likely that you are going to have a
mental health disorder which leads back
to more stress the more that is quite
the impact on your learning and memory
while you’re here at the University and
it wasn’t until I went to a meeting
where one of the administrators actually
said you know don’t bother sending out
emails to your students because students
nowadays actually don’t bother with
email they’re actually more likely if
you try to engage them either on a
website or through social media etc and
that’s how they’re gaining their
information I had no idea what they were
talking about to be honest I had no idea
what social media actually represented
but I thought that it would be a really
good idea if students were already
learning online interacting with each
other developing social networks online
that it was have to be something that I
would have to go and take a look at and
it was one of those i opening moments
again where i had a student who came in
and asked me if she could add me as a
friend on facebook actually had no idea
what facebook was number one and number
two i didn’t really know if i want it to
be this student’s friend
in the in the long run though in the
long run I decided that I would ask her
and she did help me to set up a Facebook
account I was her very first friend I
was I was she was my only friend for
about a year and as we went along one of
the things that I spared was I could
actually interact with students they
could understand what I was going to say
to them in class where I can engage them
outside of the class I could make
different opportunities available to
them even before class started to
arrange different types of work or
research experiences sets etc and all of
these different types of experiences
kind of led students to feel a little
bit less isolated there’s also one of
those things where I looked at how I
could use different forms of social
media to actually use it as an effective
tool for learning and one of those
things that I started to do was to
actually stream some of my lectures
directly over Facebook or other forms of
social media I didn’t really care where
students were actually learning to me it
was more important that students were
learning I didn’t really care if it was
a really low low budget type of
chalkboard talk that I was giving as
long as students had equal access to it
as long as there was good conversation
about different aspects of the course as
long as students were communicating with
each other no longer feeling isolated
this was the type of learning experience
that I had wanted when I was an
undergrad that I wanted to use these new
developing tools to actually engage
these students in and for the most part
I think that these are the types of
things that I would really want to have
had when I was when I was an
undergraduate student here I also try as
much as possible because I know students
now have very very different needs than
back in 2011 I asked students on a
routine basis at the very beginning of
the school year what are the biggest
challenges for you there that you have
coming into my class how can I get you
to come and see me if you need to come
and see me how do you interact with me
and how can I communicate more
effectively with you and I think that
one of the things that students said
that it’s it’s often very very DIF
to actually get everything down in
lectures so that’s a form of stress and
it’s also really stressful for students
to not feel like they’ve missed the
lecture and they don’t know someone in
class to be able to have access to that
lecture and I think that one of the
things that we can do as educators is to
really think a little bit about how
we’re actually not worrying so much
about what we want to deliver in terms
of content but how to make the student
experience in terms of learning the key
and central point to what we’re trying
to do here at the University and I think
the last thing that I’d like to mention
as well we know that students also have
a number of different and diverse
learning styles and we have to be very
very flexible in our approach to this
not just providing them with different
types of assets but also being being
able to give them differentiated
learning and I have a fairly large class
but in that large class some students
will be really good at different types
of tests some students will be really
good at different types of assignments
and it’s up to us to make sure that we
provide them with enough flexibility
that they feel like they’ve actually
been able to demonstrate that what
they’ve learned is something that
they’re being evaluated on effectively
and it’s challenging and I’m going to
leave you with my own challenge to you
as well so in my life I’ve undergone a
lot of different changes and I think
that one of the things that I’ve
realized is that if you’re going to try
to make changes that these types of
things don’t occur overnight and a lot
of times we need a lot of insight we
need help we need feedback from the
people that we’re trying to work with or
work for and I think that those types of
communications are ones that we’re not
really that great at and I’m hoping that
whatever you feel that you’re in
wherever field where you want to be like
the best possible detergent maker of all
time that you’re going to go out and
maybe rethink the way in which you’re
doing things is it really to make the
best laundry detergent or is it really
to make someone feel better about the
clothes that they’re wearing and I’ll
kind of leave you with that thank you
very much
[Applause]
[Music]
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