George Pavlidis on Motivating Students to become Teachers!

So the student became … the teacher!

Learning does not take place exclusively in the classroom. This is the backbone of advices given to young students, motivating them towards an active and responsible engagement in extracurricular activities. Undoubtedly, extracurricular activities (especially internships, see previous blog post) can provide great real-life learning opportunities, as well as invaluable working experience, two aspects of L&T that can be hardly reproduced in a classroom. 

The 50+ Technology project, however, overcame these obstacles, allowing students to gain teaching experience in a safe environment, inside the premises of the University of Sheffield International Faculty, City College.

The 50+ Technology project was set to provide older adults (i.e., older than 50 … I said older, not old! :-) ) the opportunity to learn the basics for operating a computer, and for using the Internet. Their personal tutors were our students. An additional experienced lecturer was required in order to provide brief semi-structured teaching interventions, and to coordinate the tutors. 

For the older, this learning experience was great, though students gained invaluable benefits as well. More precise, they had the chance to see the “river” from the other side; students became teachers! They had to learn to be patient and polite with their students, and suppress their frustration when the latter were persistently ignorant for the simplest concepts ("yes, for the 100th time, right click for the options to pop-up, left click for executing … yes, this is the mouse"). They had also to manage the bafflement when their students did not do their homework, although they (the teachers) did their best. On top of that, they had to handle their students’ emotional and behavioural outburst, although no obvious or valid justification existed for the latter.

I believe that the temporal assignment of a lecturing role to students gives them the opportunity to develop the aforementioned, as well as other, job-related skills. But in the same time, it transforms their experience and ability as learners. Quite often, there is a hassle between educators and students, attributing to each other a gap in, and lack of, understanding. After having the experience as teachers, students become more mindful, collaborative, and purposeful in learning. As such, I would recommend creating teaching opportunities for students, and employing it as a future L&T strategy in the International Faculty. Nonetheless, it has the potential to become the solid ground, upon which many internship slots can be created for students, in a time or place that only some resources can become available for that purpose.

George Pavlidis

PhD Candidate, Lecturer in Psychology Department