Teaching undergraduates can be fun yet challenging. The students can come from various backgrounds and various motivations as well. Some students have to work; some students may have a really high interest in the subject while the others may not. So as a teacher, we have to understand that every student is unique and try to approach them with different methods.
In general, undergraduate students expect teachers to be fun and interesting in class. It differs with graduate students who usually expect a more serious professor. Undergraduates prefer a lecture that have interactions in the class rather than just lecture the entire session. One of their favorite class activities is class discussion because they can express their thought about a particular subject. Here, teacher as a discussion facilitator should appreciate each opinion from students so it can encourage students to be more open and more likely to participate.
It is necessary to make students have interest in our class because sometimes the subject that we teach is not their major and they take our class just because it is the core subject. In order to do that, we should show them how the subject is related with their lives and how useful it is for their future. In addition to that, be passionate about the subject itself by giving their examples and applications that happen in the real world. A good teacher is also expected to be friendly but still earning respect from the students because the fact of undergraduates want their teacher not only to teach them but to know and talk with them.
Most of undergraduates are freshly graduated from high school which has a totally different environment with college in terms of the workload, the system and the nature of the university. Some of them also are the first generation students which mean that they are the first generation from their family that attend college. In some way it makes students cannot ask and relate their college life to their parent’s and sometimes the student finds a hard time to survive in college.
For many undergraduates, school is not their priority. They value the social life, jobs and networking more than their academic life simply because they think school is more or less like a requirement rather than need. They also tend to be involved in many organizations and internships. This is interesting because nowadays employers are looking for “well-rounded individuals” who did well in school and also involved in activities other than school.
Compare to undergraduates in US, I found that undergraduates in Indonesia are more dependent. Perhaps it is because undergraduates in Indonesia still have financial support from their parents, different with most US students who in college have to be independent. Sometimes it makes the students in Indonesia more irresponsible with their studies. Some of them tend to be lazy and do not care much about college because they do not have to struggle financially to attend college.
US undergraduates are also more open to express their thoughts and more confident in doing so. In Indonesia, students are usually shy to express their own opinions and scare if their opinion is different from the teacher’s or the majority in class. In this case, a teacher should encourage them not to fear to be wrong because we are all in the learning process; it is common to have some mistakes and different opinions.
Understanding about undergraduate students is one of the key important things to be success in teaching undergraduates. However, the process of becoming a good teacher does not end here. We have to continuously develop our other teaching skills because teaching is an art which the more we get involved, the better we become.
Ceteris Paribus 