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Students learn most effectively when they are intellectually engaged and emotionally invested in the material. For students to be properly engaged with a course, I feel that it is vital that they feel safe. Students should be challenged, and that means that they may not always feel comfortable, but beneath that discomfort they need to feel that they are still respected both personally and intellectually. This means fostering a classroom environment where individuals from different backgrounds can feel welcome and taking the time to honor the potentially diverse needs that students may have. When people feel safe and secure, they are better able to focus their attention on learning. This applies not just to interactions with students, but also to the way that class is conducted. I believe it is important to always hold space for students to ask questions and for them to provide feedback on the class, so that they have opportunities to shape their own learning.
For large undergraduate classes, it can be challenging to provide a lot of flexibility. The larger class size raises the burden of grading, and students are likely to have differing levels of interest in the material. That potential lack of interest, however, is even more reason to implement methods beyond simple lecturing. When planning a syllabus for a large class, I always try to have at least one project with a flexible topic. This gives students a chance to find their own interests within the course material, potentially do something hands on, and demonstrate their mastery of the subject. A class presentation, for example, also provides students with a chance to practice important skills such as public speaking and group collaboration. While it can be difficult to give undergrads hands on experience in audiology if their courses do not have a lab component, including simple auditory tests like categorical perception or pitch discrimination as class activities can be a great way to give students hands on experience.
Smaller graduate seminars allow for deeper connections, not only between students and material, but also among peers and with the instructor—fostering a collaborative, inquiry-driven classroom culture. I always start a semester with a conversation about our goals for the course, making a point to take student input on that. For AuD students, core competencies must be established throughout the class. Beyond those requirements, though, I want students to understand that we are free to pursue the questions whose answers are going to be most beneficial to them as learners and as future clinicians, and to focus on learning rather than on grades. Simple implementations of this include discussion of homework assignments in class, prompting and providing ample time for questions, and being flexible with the syllabus. For example, when I gave two guest lectures on the discrete Fourier transform for Dr. Shawn Goodman’s Systems and Signals course, I planned with Dr. Goodman ahead of time to make sure there was enough time in the course set aside for this topic, knowing that students would have questions about the math involved. The lectures were intentionally broken into sections with natural stopping points to provide moments for students to ask questions without the anxiety of potentially breaking the flow of the lecture, as well as to ensure that they felt comfortable with the preceding material before moving onto the next section. In this manner, even an otherwise conventional lecture can be made to facilitate the kind of open class environment where students feel safe to engage that I believe is so essential to learning. I also prefer to obtain and leverage student feedback beyond classroom interactions. As a teaching assistant for Dr. Ishan Bhatt’s Auditory Evoked Potentials course, I was responsible for coordinating and running the hands-on lab portion of the course. To improve students’ experiences with these labs, I created and distributed a mid-semester feedback survey for students to complete, with an emphasis on determining their confidence level with the core skills taught in the labs and what changes could be made to further increase that confidence. Using responses from this survey, I was able to implement changes to the lab assignments and my own instruction during labs before the end of the semester.
Ultimately, my goal as an educator is to create learning environments where students feel safe to ask questions, confident in their ability to contribute, and empowered to explore the material with curiosity. Whether in large undergraduate lectures or small graduate seminars, I strive to center student engagement, responsiveness, and respect. Through careful design, ongoing reflection, and open dialogue, I aim to support the academic and personal growth of every learner in my classroom.</p>