The instructor's philosophy of teaching rests in a firm belief that students learn best when actively engaged in  learning activities that are relevant to their current and future professional placement.

A teacher's role has changed from oracle and lecturer to consultant, guide, and resource provider, and students from passive receptacles for hand-me-down knowledge to constructors of their own knowledge.   Teachers and students are all learners.  Teachers become expert questioners, rather than providers of answers.  Students should engage in complex problem-solving skills in learning communities rather than just memorizing the facts.  Teachers are designers of student experiences rather than just providers of content.  Teachers should assist students in seeing topics from multiple perspectives.  It is important that teachers provide only the initial structure to student work, thereby encouraging increasing self-direction where students refine their own questions and search for their own answers.  Teachers present multiple perspectives on topics, emphasizing the salient points, allowing students opportunities to review, analyze, and synthesize research in order to develop their own philosophical beliefs regarding the use of technology in education.  Thus, the courses require students to complete a research project in which they review and synthesize current research on a selected topic.

To foster greater learner interaction, students work as members of a group in a collaborative learning environment.  From total control of the teaching environment to sharing it with students as fellow learners, teachers provide more emphasis on students as autonomous, independent, self-motivated managers of their own time and learning processes, and more emphasis on sensitivity to individual student learning styles.

The concept of a collaborative learning community, integrating various technology-based active activities, is used to enhance learning.  Student publishing creates motivation and enhances the quality of learning.  Critical collaborative evaluation (a new concept in learning) requires learners to reshape their ideas and acquire new information through learning communities that they might not discover on their own. 

Students have the opportunity to provide suggestions to me for improvement in all of my classes.  This feedback not only involves the traditional University course evaluations, but also evaluation instruments that I have developed to gain further insight into the class activities students have found useful (or lacking).   Additional feedbacks are from observations of colleagues.  All of the information I have received thus far indicates that students enjoy my classes and feel that the class activities and requirements help prepare them to effectively use technology in their professional settings.  I shall continue to collect and acquire feedback to improve and update my teaching skills in an effort to improve my instructional strategies and teaching techniques.

Chih-Hsiung Tu, Ph.D.