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University teaching has changed a lot since my undergraduate days. Back in those days when computers were still a bit of a novelty, lecturers did not have animated PowerPoint slides, WebCT, nor emails to communicate with students at 11pm on a Saturday night. Some lecturers used the same set of dusty old notes year after year, while one or two regularly did not show up for class for no apparent reason (‘Oh. I forgot.’ Was the response we once got from a teacher!)
Nowadays, university students ask for a lot more, and rightly so. University education is no longer accessible only to the privileged few. Not only has the percentage of UGC funded tertiary places increased drastically in the past twenty years, today there are also more channels to get a degree (pre-AD and AD programmes, self-financed programmes). Many students and their families make great sacrifices in order to obtain a degree, and it is our duty to make sure those sacrifices are not made in vain.
University teachers twenty or thirty years ago taught a much more homogenous group of students – today this is no longer so. Teaching is a communication process and knowing your audience and building a relationship with them are keys to successful communication.
Despite efforts to implement reforms, Hong Kong's educational system is still haunted by the ghosts of the colonial and Confucian past. After years of largely passive, exam-oriented schooling, our students need to‘re-learn’how to learn. Our job is to help students along in this re-learning process, and to make them understand that excellence is not measured solely in terms of outcomes. Learning good work habits and learning to set high standards for oneself are the prerequisites to excellence. Like responsible parents, we teachers need to be patient, understanding, clear in drawing our boundaries, and most of all, forgiving, in order to do our job well.
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