Read an interview with Pavel Pracný from the Institute of Geological Sciences at Masaryk University, a lecturer who has been awarded the Vice-Rector's Award for Quality Teaching, about his view of what good teaching actually is and how to create and implement it for students.
This year, the MU Vice-Rector's Award for Education and Quality was announced and presented for the first time for high-quality teaching. The aim of the award is to recognize teachers for their comprehensive approach to the issue of teaching quality and their systematic efforts to improve it. The award ceremony took place at the end of the last summer semester during the Excursion to Good Teaching event.
In this excerpt from the interview, we offer practical tips on how to create a safe environment for students, how to motivate them to prepare at home, how to keep their attention, and how to obtain targeted feedback.
You talk about how important a safe and respectful environment is to you. Can you explain what you mean by that and how you try to create it?
I came to this conclusion partly because I have children of my own and we deal with various situations and challenges together. In teaching, I consider a safe environment to be one where students know what to expect. I try to minimize uncertainty. That's why I try to give as much information as possible at the beginning. I always tell them that even if there is a lot of information, they can find it later in the materials. I also give them printed syllabi. I simply try to make sure they know what to expect and how demanding it will be. There is nothing worse than attending classes all semester and then coming to an exam where something is different from what I expected from the classes. I've experienced this myself—the teacher is fun, but in the end, I find that he hasn't taught me anything because he tests things other than what he taught, or I thought they were just marginal things. That's why I believe that safety starts with information.
You can read the entire interview here.
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