I am interested in teaching courses at all levels in the field of Information Systems (IS) and Decision Science.  Given my teaching experience and my research interests, I believe I will make the greatest contribution in teaching courses related to business statistics, management information systems, e-commerce, database management, system analysis and design, and networking.  The following provides a summary of my teaching philosophy, teaching skill development and teaching effectiveness.

            Two factors are the most important in being an effective educator.  First, an educator should be more than sufficiently knowledgeable about the subject matter and second, be enthusiastic and provide an effective environment for sharing that knowledge with students. Consequently, students will develop trust and respect towards their educator, as well as a pro-active attitude in their learning.  It’s an educator’s role to create a classroom atmosphere that encourages learning and provides students opportunities to learn.  To this end, I’ve utilized different activities which correspond to different learning styles, such as: lecture, demonstrations of information systems, real-world cases, individual, dyadic and group exercises, group, projects, and joint problem-solving exercises.  The latter is crucial to Systems Analysis and Design classes and students, because to understand the concepts and the use of different tools, requires a hands-on approach in a team-work environment.

            In today’s dynamic and competitive business world where information technologies play an increasingly important role and where content evolves almost daily, it is important for students to acquire life-long learning skills.  Students need the tools to be able to adapt and to learn on their own.  Thus, an effective educator in the Information Systems (IS) field should be able to bring students a rich classroom experience full of lively discussions about the latest information technology trends and their real industry applications.  Most importantly, all students must be able to seek out and find on their own relevant information in the future.  To achieve this, I make effective research skills a course priority.

            Furthermore, since theoretical principles must be integrated with practical knowledge to develop critical thinking, working with real projects is a necessity. These real-world experiences give students an opportunity to ground themselves in professional settings, spur critical reflection on the nature of professional work, help  to understand users' information needs and concerns, and to extend their knowledge and expertise beyond the textbook, lectures and class activities.  In my introduction to IS class, students build prototypes of web-based information systems with real-world applications and clients.  In my e-commerce class, students developed business plans and then implemented them into an e-store prototype.

            Last, but not least, I view my class as a link in the value chain of courses offered by the department.  From this stand point, I believe that teaching is a team effort—a coordination among instructors, TAs, professors in the department and the students. For example, if I am assigned to teach networking, I must discuss with my colleagues who have taught database, programming and introductory classes to avoid boring redundancies and to ensure a high level of effectiveness in all teaching efforts.

            During my years at the University of Hawaii, I actively sought to improve my teaching skills through participating in a teaching workshop organized by the Center for Teaching Excellence, by sitting in on colleagues’ classes, and by evaluation of my instructional techniques and feedback from my students.  I found that a mid-term evaluation was an invaluable tool for improving my teaching as well as class atmosphere.  Overall, my effective teaching and presentation skills were rated highly by my students.

            As an instructor with the Information Technology Management department at University of Hawaii, I taught an undergraduate Management Information System (MIS) course twice.  I was also involved in teaching e-commerce classes (both undergraduate and MBA) and system analysis for librarians (graduate level) as a teaching assistant.  I encouraged student participation in class discussions and in the sharing of their backgrounds and thoughts.  I gave a participation score based on both the quality of discussion and class attendance which was agreed upon by students as fair.  To relate what is being taught in class to real-world examples, the first team project required students to research current IT topics and present their findings and personal views to the class.  Examples of my students’ presentation topics in MIS class include: “HTML and XML”, “enterprise resource planning”, “online privacy and identity theft”, and “demonstration of Database Management Systems”. In addition to the content knowledge of the course, I expected students to analyze problems and provide solutions.  For example, the second team project in my MIS class involved students in the building of an information system prototype.  I found that a final exam that utilized both multiple choice as well as essay questions provided students a good opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge.  Upon completion of the MIS course, students rated both my teaching and the course highly (as presented in the graph below).  I find the experience of teaching very rewarding and am pleased to see improvement in both my students and myself.