Teaching Portfolio
2010
Math II (M.Phil. Core, Tinbergen Institute), for Prof. Jan Brinkhuis.
2012 & 2013
International Economics (Undergraduate, Erasmus School of Economics), for Dr. Julian Namini.
Macroeconomics (Undergraduate, Erasmus School of Economics), for Dr. Laura Hering.
Teaching Statement
1. Teaching experience
As an unusual person who has two Ph.D. experiences of total 10 years, I have had a lot of teaching experience. As a graduate teaching assistant at Tinbergen Institute and Erasmus University, I was instructor for sections of undergraduate and graduate courses, including Math II for M.Phil. students of Tinbergen Institute, Macroeconomics for the first year undergraduate students and International Economics for the second year undergraduate students. The main work I did included preparing and giving lectures, creating and grading weekly homework assignments, quizzes, and holding two office hours for each week.
2. Teaching Philosophy
Now, everybody would say that a good pedagogy should be student-centered and should foster student’s critical consciousness. I definitely agree with this argument, so I try my best to attune the way of my teaching to the differences in student abilities, learning styles, or levels. My experience tells me that the attitude of a teacher to teaching my influence students’ passion for learning greatly. In order to make them aware of my enthusiasm in teaching, I usually spent several hours looking at their photos and to try to remember the name of each student so that I could call their names when I saw their face in the first class meeting. During the class, I always pay attention to the reaction of the students. If they have too many questions at some point, or if they look at me bewilderedly, then I know that they do not understand the material well, and then I would slow down and repeat my words so that the students can understand everything well. I also think that the unlimited communication and discussion between the lecturer and students is necessary, so I always left enough time for students to talk to me after class. This is a good chance for me to get feedback from them, since their comments are the most useful information that can help me to improve my teaching. I still remember after the first class session that I taught in my life, a student told me that I looked too serious. I knew that this is because I was very nervous but I would have never known that I purveyed my feeling to them, if the student did not talk to me. From that time, I would always include some jokes in the class to liven things up.
In my experience, to arouse students’ interests in the class is the best way for them to learn the course material well. The courses I taught, such as international economics and macroeconomics, were usually closely related to the contemporary social reality, so in my class I liked to use cases from the real world to annotate the knowledge in the textbook. I find this is a very useful way to grasp the attention of the students. Each time when they saw that what they learn can be used to explain the real world, they were very excited. Therefore, besides the textbook, I also include some material from the related newspapers and journals, e.g. the wall street journal, Economist, and the financial times. This is a good way to stimulate students' enthusiasm for learning, especially for the first year undergraduate students, because as a beginner, they need to make sure that what they learn is true knowledge and not pseudo-science before they input their energy.
To assess the effect of student’s learning is an important part of teaching. Of course, the most usual way being used is a final exam plus several quizzes or assignments. This is also the way I prefer to do it. However, I would not use the exam or quiz to test the memorization. I would rather to test how students use the knowledge they learn from my class to solve problems. I believe the adage of Einstein that imagine is more important than knowledge.
3. Teaching Interests
Gregory Mankiw quipped in his best-selling textbook Principle of Economics that teaching economics is so much fun that it is surprising that economics professors get paid anything at all! As a person who once taught both biology and economics, I definitely agree with him. I really enjoy teaching economics. The courses I prefer to teach is of course those related to my fields, such as macroeconomics, international economics, or asset pricing. I am willing to teach both undergraduate and graduate students. Since the critical thinking is very important to graduate student, I am also willing to open a special course name literature reading and research methods. In this course, I will recommend several excellent research papers in different fields of economics to students and discuss these papers with them. The purpose is to induce students to think whether there is a standard paradigm for research? How the successful researchers found the topics and developed their research methods? Have they done the best yet? Is there any defect in their research? I think that this is a good way to culture the critical thinking and help graduate students to find their ways while conducting research.
If it is needed, I can teach any other course related to economics, such as the principle of economics, microeconomics or econometrics at the introductory or intermediate level. I can also teach an introductory programming course to help students to use programming languages, such as Matlab and R.
2010
Math II (M.Phil. Core, Tinbergen Institute), for Prof. Jan Brinkhuis.
2012 & 2013
International Economics (Undergraduate, Erasmus School of Economics), for Dr. Julian Namini.
Macroeconomics (Undergraduate, Erasmus School of Economics), for Dr. Laura Hering.
Teaching Statement
1. Teaching experience
As an unusual person who has two Ph.D. experiences of total 10 years, I have had a lot of teaching experience. As a graduate teaching assistant at Tinbergen Institute and Erasmus University, I was instructor for sections of undergraduate and graduate courses, including Math II for M.Phil. students of Tinbergen Institute, Macroeconomics for the first year undergraduate students and International Economics for the second year undergraduate students. The main work I did included preparing and giving lectures, creating and grading weekly homework assignments, quizzes, and holding two office hours for each week.
2. Teaching Philosophy
Now, everybody would say that a good pedagogy should be student-centered and should foster student’s critical consciousness. I definitely agree with this argument, so I try my best to attune the way of my teaching to the differences in student abilities, learning styles, or levels. My experience tells me that the attitude of a teacher to teaching my influence students’ passion for learning greatly. In order to make them aware of my enthusiasm in teaching, I usually spent several hours looking at their photos and to try to remember the name of each student so that I could call their names when I saw their face in the first class meeting. During the class, I always pay attention to the reaction of the students. If they have too many questions at some point, or if they look at me bewilderedly, then I know that they do not understand the material well, and then I would slow down and repeat my words so that the students can understand everything well. I also think that the unlimited communication and discussion between the lecturer and students is necessary, so I always left enough time for students to talk to me after class. This is a good chance for me to get feedback from them, since their comments are the most useful information that can help me to improve my teaching. I still remember after the first class session that I taught in my life, a student told me that I looked too serious. I knew that this is because I was very nervous but I would have never known that I purveyed my feeling to them, if the student did not talk to me. From that time, I would always include some jokes in the class to liven things up.
In my experience, to arouse students’ interests in the class is the best way for them to learn the course material well. The courses I taught, such as international economics and macroeconomics, were usually closely related to the contemporary social reality, so in my class I liked to use cases from the real world to annotate the knowledge in the textbook. I find this is a very useful way to grasp the attention of the students. Each time when they saw that what they learn can be used to explain the real world, they were very excited. Therefore, besides the textbook, I also include some material from the related newspapers and journals, e.g. the wall street journal, Economist, and the financial times. This is a good way to stimulate students' enthusiasm for learning, especially for the first year undergraduate students, because as a beginner, they need to make sure that what they learn is true knowledge and not pseudo-science before they input their energy.
To assess the effect of student’s learning is an important part of teaching. Of course, the most usual way being used is a final exam plus several quizzes or assignments. This is also the way I prefer to do it. However, I would not use the exam or quiz to test the memorization. I would rather to test how students use the knowledge they learn from my class to solve problems. I believe the adage of Einstein that imagine is more important than knowledge.
3. Teaching Interests
Gregory Mankiw quipped in his best-selling textbook Principle of Economics that teaching economics is so much fun that it is surprising that economics professors get paid anything at all! As a person who once taught both biology and economics, I definitely agree with him. I really enjoy teaching economics. The courses I prefer to teach is of course those related to my fields, such as macroeconomics, international economics, or asset pricing. I am willing to teach both undergraduate and graduate students. Since the critical thinking is very important to graduate student, I am also willing to open a special course name literature reading and research methods. In this course, I will recommend several excellent research papers in different fields of economics to students and discuss these papers with them. The purpose is to induce students to think whether there is a standard paradigm for research? How the successful researchers found the topics and developed their research methods? Have they done the best yet? Is there any defect in their research? I think that this is a good way to culture the critical thinking and help graduate students to find their ways while conducting research.
If it is needed, I can teach any other course related to economics, such as the principle of economics, microeconomics or econometrics at the introductory or intermediate level. I can also teach an introductory programming course to help students to use programming languages, such as Matlab and R.