Teaching Philosophy
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Syed Al-Helal Uddin
Teaching Philosophy and Interest Syed Al-Helal Uddin
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Teaching Philosophy
My passion for teaching was ignited by the many great professors with whom I have been privileged to study throughout the course of my undergraduate and graduate studies, and from my prior experience as a researcher. My teaching philosophy evolved in combination through my experience as an instructor and from my perspective as a student. As a teacher of economics, I focus on three different aspects: intuitive understanding and stimulating student’s desire for learning, assessments that stimulate independent thinking, and an interactive learning environment that nurtures questioning and collaboration. I have been privileged to teach two courses, Intermediate Macroeconomics and Intermediate Microeconomics, as an instructor in the economics department at Florida International University (FIU). In addition to teaching as an instructor, I also filled in for my professor on several occasions for Principle of Microeconomics and Introduction to Environmental Economics. Apart from teaching courses, I also served as a teaching assistant for several courses where I had to hold office hours, and helped individual student understanding their problems. I applied those techniques which I learned from my mentors in addition to what I feel from a student’s point of view. For example, I believe the starting point for being a good teacher is to prepare a good syllabus. I prepare my syllabus for a course stating the objectives of the course and make a step-by-step outline to achieve the stated objectives. I always try to prepare my lecture as simple as possible by connecting real world problems that students face in their daily life. I start with a bigger concept for each chapter and make connections with the course objectives. For example, the objective of my Intermediate Microeconomics course is to teach individual’s behavior and decision making in economic activity and to discuss how the market operates for a given group of individuals. On the other hand, when I teach Intermediate Macroeconomics, I start with a theme that the sum of individuals’ economic behavior. So, I connect the individual’s decision towards different macroeconomic variables (like, unemployment, inflation) for a given economic circumstance. Moreover, I also connect concepts from new chapters with the previous chapters mentioning the difference between them. Furthermore, as part of the intuitive lessons, I connect those lessons with decisions students are taking in their daily life. For example, when going through consumer behavior in intermediate microeconomics, I remind them about their choice between burger or pizza or something else during lunch given the money they have. When I teach intermediate macroeconomics I make them form groups, which representing a country and members of each group are the citizen of the respective country. Then I describe the circular flow diagram for a representative closed economy by connecting a group and open economy case by connecting within group activities. 1
Teaching Philosophy
syedalhelaluddin.weebly.com
Syed Al-Helal Uddin
I find it important to provide students with a breadth of practice materials to build their intuition piece by piece by adding complexity to familiar problems. For example, when I was a TA for the course ”The Economics of Diversity”, my role was to design the discussion topics and to evaluate their weekly writing and provide feedback. I found most of the students struggled on how to pick a discussion topic, then how to start writing their own opinion. I told them to pick a paper from the assigned list, then to make a summary following a review of that paper. They followed my advice and found topics that excited them and lead to interesting papers. Interactive learning environment nurtures questioning and collaboration from both instructor’s and students’ side. From my experiences as a student, I observed that when a student gets positive feedback about mistakes they are making in class or in exams, they try their best to overcome it. I also believe that mistakes are an inevitable part of learning, so I made corrections with some guidelines to avoid those mistakes in the future. For example, in regards to solving homework problems in class, I randomly pick a volunteer from any group to solve the problem and assume the role of a professor for that time being. This way, I make sure that even the shiest and reserved student is encouraged to interact with the larger class and more importantly, develop his/her presentation skills. I conduct a poll just after the first midterm where I ask the students to give a rating to the lecture and syllabus and ask about their expectations. For example, when I was teaching Intermediate Macroeconomics I found very few students show up in office hours, I asked them about it and they replied as most of them are coming after their work, so it would be better for them if I adjust the office hours. I immediately discussed it with department and responded as per their need. At the end of the semester, I usually give my students the opportunity to do an extra credit assignment as a write-up on what they expected from the course and what actually they learned. I got some exceptional notion to the young mind’s thinking about economics. Although my research focuses on open economy macroeconomics, I am comfortable in teaching introductory and advanced Microeconomics, Environmental Economics, Development Economics, Statistics and Econometrics. However, I am flexible in teaching other courses based on departmental requirements and will assume my duties with the utmost enthusiasm and commitment. I look forward to the next step in my professional development to become a full time faculty at a well-reputed academic institution. I hope I can have the same positive influence on my students that my professors and advisors have had on me.
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Teaching Philosophy
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syedalhelaluddin.weebly.com
Syed Al-Helal Uddin
Teaching Interests
I would be happy to meet any of Weber State Universitys teaching need, though I would be the most comfortable with any of the following:
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Macroeconomics:
Principle of Macroeconomics, Intermediate Macroeconomics, Graduate Macroeconomics Theory.
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Quantitative Courses:
Measurement and Analysis for Economics and Business, Introduction to Econometrics, Applied Econometrics, Graduate Econometrics.
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Field Courses:
International Economics, International Trade, International Finance, Empirical International Trade and Open Economy Macroeconomics at the graduate and undergraduate level.
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