Since high school, I became a keen observer of my teachers, comparing their different strategies and methods, and assessing which methods enhanced my learning. The distillation of those years of observation and analysis, combined with the lessons I am still learning from my teaching experience, yields the following principles I strive for in the classroom:
1) Students won’t care to learn until we learn to care: teachers should attempt to connect with students on a real, human, personal level. In my courses, I try to know students better and design my lectures valuing their diversity. I ask to upload a brief biography and a picture before the course starts. I also organize social events and activities to give them the possibility to interact with me and their classmates.
2) Students will learn if we organize the entire environment to help them learn. I believe that learning is an active process and students are the principal characters. My role as an educator is to set the stage for a positive learning environment where the students feel comfortable to ask questions and make mistakes. In my course I organize “challenges”, where students compete elaborating ideas to answer the proposed questions.
3) It takes an entire village to raise a child. In the classroom, I encourage students to think independently and listen to others’ opinions. I ask my students to work in small groups and then debate all together. I encourage my students to develop research proposals and collaborate with institutions and scholars. I invite practitioners and former students to present their work/research.
4) Education isn’t just one way. Teachers often focus on what they say and what they do. Instead, I try to focus on what students say and do in class. Students are an inspiration for me, and over the years they taught me several important lessons and made me a better human being.
I think my enthusiasm and passion are reflected in my teaching and I hope are passed on to my students. I focus on teaching students to gain important lifelong skills, such as critical thinking, teamwork, and creative problem-solving, which can apply to their daily life. I like to prepare beautiful slides with pictures, videos and quiz questions to catch students’ attention and make concepts easier to remember. Using my expertise in Experimental Economics, I engage students through use of classroom experiments to illustrate complex concepts. Finally, I revise constantly my course material by incorporating the most recent scientific results into my lectures, including my work.
I structure the rest of my teaching portfolio as follows: First, I include an overview of my teaching experience, my pedagogical training, and experience with teaching at the administrative level. Second, I give some reflections on my recent teaching experiences (in particular with online teaching), and describe how I address challenges and adjust my teaching and how I experiment with novel approaches to improve learning outcomes of the students. Finally, I provide an appendix with student evaluations and teaching material to support the described development in my teaching.
Here, some videos that inspired me as a teacher:
And some books that guided me:
Marco Piovesan 