Students

Teaching undergrads: Never just the bare minimum

Clinical Assistant Professor Altaf Ahmad is anybody’s definition of a team leader. He has shouldered leadership positions within the department and has been instrumental in the redesign of several courses as well as the creation of the new B.S. in business data analytics. But ask his students, and they will tell you that he shines in the classroom. For all this he was awarded the Huizingh Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher Award this spring.

2014-06-17

Clinical assistant professor Altaf Ahmad is anybody’s definition of a team leader. He has shouldered leadership positions within the department and has been instrumental in the redesign of several courses as well as the creation of the new B.S. in business data analytics. But ask his students, and they will tell you that he really shines in the classroom. For all of this he was awarded the Huizingh Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher Award this spring.

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KnowWPCarey: Clinical assistant professor Altaf Ahmad is anybody’s definition of a team leader. He has shouldered leadership positions within the department and has been instrumental in the redesign of several courses as well as the creation of the new B.S. in business data analytics. But ask his students, and they will tell you that he really shines in the classroom. For all of this he was awarded the Huizingh Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher Award this spring. Ahmad observes that when he was a student, PowerPoint was the new thing in teaching. But if you visit him in the classroom, don’t expect to see a slide deck.

Altaf Ahmad: I have found myself going back from PowerPoint to markers and I actually use tons and tons of whiteboard markers. That’s a step back to old school, just a classic type of teaching where I’m just doing a lot of work on the board. And when students write that down, it acts as essentially sort of a mechanism for them to retain information.

KnowWPCarey: Markers are a more dynamic way of explaining information than static slides, which is in keeping with Ahmad’s approach to teaching. He’s adopted elements of the so-called “flipped classroom” to teach students programming.

Ahmad: The idea of the flipped classroom is that you do your homework in class so that you don’t struggle outside of class, and there’s somebody in class who is there to help you with the homework.

KnowWPCarey: Ahmad clarifies that students are assigned homework, but about half of his classes are flipped. Sometimes students know in advance what they’ll be working on, and will have studied the concepts.

Ahmad: And then you come and you spend maybe 40-45 minutes in class working on an in-class exercise and then students are able to talk, students are able to essentially work together and students are able to flag me down for help. And that essentially enhances their learning — now they’re prepared to go do the homework on their own outside.

KnowWPCarey: Lectures are typically short, and usually Ahmad demonstrates a problem. Then students tackle their in-class exercises.

Ahmad: So it’s very non-traditional insofar as most lectures and classes are concerned. My classes are very, very hands-on.

KnowWPCarey: That flexible classroom is important because of the kind of students Ahmad teaches. These are business classes, but they are both technical and required, so he finds that his students arrive with a wide range of backgrounds. It’s a challenge.

Ahmad: It is a required class everybody has to do it. But how do you keep everybody engaged and how do you keep everybody involved as well as up-to-speed?

KnowWPCarey: If he chooses to cover the material that’s not very challenging so that no one falls behind, then the more advanced and technically-inclined students are bored. On the other hand, a class that’s designed for the advanced students would be very challenging for the others.

Ahmad: The way I have chosen to handle it is by making sure that I cater to everybody. I have set a bar where my material will be located in terms of being challenging vs. not challenging. And then for students who need that extra help, I am able to provide that extra help in-class because I have obviously modeled my class. But, in every single assignment and every single challenge there is a whole host of advanced exercises.

KnowWPCarey: Inevitably he gets the question — ‘If I do all of this extra work do I get extra credit?’ Ahmad answers that the reward is knowledge — not points.

Ahmad: That often leads to incredulity. And what actually amuses me is that after that, a lot of them go and do it. Students want to be challenged, and while yes their initial instinct might be to do just the minimal level of required work, if the work is fairly engaging, then they do want to do it. And often it is not just for the sake of the grade or for the sake of some extra points; it is for the sake of learning.

KnowWPCarey: Throughout the course, Ahmad will encourage students to do something extra — beyond what’s strictly required.

Ahmad: I tell them that if you do the minimum required, life will throw the minimum back at you. What you need to do is differentiate yourself and go above and beyond the minimum required. You will grow out of it and then life will throw stuff at you, which is not the bare minimum.

KnowWPCarey: That extra effort extends to the professor. Ahmad admits that every year he tries to make some part of CIS 345 — the Business Information Systems Development class — a bit more challenging. Not an easy task given that he’s already adjusting for the gamut of capabilities.

Ahmad: That is typically a challenge I reserve for myself over the summer: to find some new, additional things that can be incorporated into the class, into the project, which are not necessarily even in the book. But I will always have a degree of flexibility within the class schedule, to actually incorporate more elements into it.

KnowWPCarey: And the students appreciate it.

Ahmad: And they actually come back and tell me that ‘that was different.’ This time, for example, I asked them to do a project where I gave them some programming code which was already half done. This simulated the environment where you go into a workplace and they ask you to come onto a project and then you’re working on somebody else’s project. So you have to get used to whatever was done already.

KnowWPCarey: This is a new experience for students who are usually creating something from scratch.

Ahmad: So, I got feedback this semester that ‘this was new and this was fun because it required us to put a little extra in.’ There have to be some elements which actually involve that industry feel.

KnowWPCarey: Ahmad is a favorite of students, and part of that reason might be that he continues to be a student himself.

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