Keith Whitmore receives Teaching Excellence Award

Congratulations to Keith Whitmore, recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award for Open Learning Faculty Members presented April 18, 2011.  Keith’s secret to success is outlined in his own words in the letter below.

"My philosophy for helping students is to remember that is why we exist.  Having this perspective helps me to keep all else in focus.  

There are several ways that I try to do this and one of them is to have an empathetic perspective.  I try to recall my own days as a student and remember what I wanted and why.  I continue to enroll in courses not only so that I can continue to learn but also to help to reinforce for me the perspective of a student.  I also benefit from having three children who have been shaped by and reacted to many different styles of teaching.

I recognize that there are many different students and many styles of learning and that no one approach works for all.   Toward that end I try to remain flexible and able to accommodate these differences.

Some of the specific techniques that I use in distance education are to make sure that students are aware of my presence and that they can come to me for assistance.   While this is primarily via email I also make sure that they know that phone contact is an option as there are times when it is a challenge to pose questions and explain difficulties in writing.    Another area that I pride myself in is to respond to students in a timely fashion.  I monitor messages several times a day and measure my normal response time in hours certainly trying to respond within a day.   Many of the courses that I teach are Accounting and there is a saying in Accounting that for information to be relevant it must be timely.  I believe the same is true in teaching and accordingly make every effort to respond to students questions and to return their marked assignments in a timely fashion. 
 
Other techniques I use are to try to look at the course content and material from a student perspective.  Where the content requires clarification I will adjust the material and/or provide supplemental material or hints.  I provide these at the start of the course and throughout.

Where appropriate for the course, I try to promote a community of learning by sharing of information through “icebreakers” and by having the students post information and commentary to the Discussions.   While this is not necessary for many of the more purely knowledge based courses it is valuable in terms of teaching the students the importance of and how to interact.

Through it all I feel very fortunate to teach distance education at Thompson Rivers University.  I enjoy the interaction and find that I benefit from it every day and hope that I can add to a positive experience for the student."

Previous winners of the Service Award for Open Learning Faculty Members include:

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