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My name's Dr Robin Clark, I'm Head of Learning and Teaching Development in the
School of Engineering and Applied Science, here at Aston University.
My background? I'm a mechanical engineer by training,
although I did spend over ten years in industry before I came
to Aston and during that time, I moved a little bit away from engineering,
more into a management area and ended up in senior management.
Then I came to Aston in 2003 and and I've been here for the last ten years or so.
Well,I think being a teacher is a real privilege because you have the
opportunity to work with some really bright people from all different parts of the world
and consequently I find that - in the classroom - I'm probably learning as
much from them as they're learning from me.
So it's something that I can then take on through the rest of my teaching and share with other students.
When I look back at when I first came to the university, my initial plan was to
become a good teacher, but at the same time, to really pursue my interests in
engineering and management, which was my background.
But as I started to find out more about teaching, and started to understand what being a really good teacher meant,
I actually found that that sort of overtook what I was doing
and I started to gain a real interest in the scholarship behind good teaching
and have subsequently gone on, not only to develop my practice, but to develop
a research and scholarship background to everything that I do.
I guess my basic philosophy is that every time a student walks through the door
of my classroom, I want them to come in not knowing what to expect.
So if you came into one of my classroom, you'll find that each week is very, very different.
Sure there will be some periods where we'll be using a lecture-type format
to explore some particular information and some knowledge.
But beyond that, I like to try and use as many activities as I can to get
the students engaged in what we're doing in class. That might be in some form of group exercise,
it might be in role play, it might be in some other way that we can all come together and explore things in
in perhaps smaller groups but then create an environment where there's activity throughout all we do.
I don't really see myself as
an expert per se; it's not me, standing at the front, sharing the information with the students.
What I really, really want to try and achieve in the classroom
is being a facilitator to help them with their learning.
To get them to actually see that learning is a really worthwhile and exciting experience
that they will then want to take beyond the classroom, so they will want to become
much more independent in their learning, they'll want to come back at me with questions.
So it's about really creating a dialogue between the two of us.
Every week seems to throw up different things, so
to be able to really say "that was a highlight" is very difficult
because I find each week is a highlight, in some respects.
But I guess, if I had to put my finger on it, the times that really
resonate most is when you get an email from a student who's graduated, or you
bump into a student, or they come and see you, because they've come back to the university
and they then can sit down with you - or in the email - express the fact that a particular
learning experience has been valuable to them in their subsequent employment.
And when you start to get those messages coming through, then you really realize that the
efforts and the way in which you've tried to create that learning environment in the classroom
has been really, really valuable and really had an impact on them ... and hopefully the wider society.
I think Aston encourages learning and teaching in a whole range of different ways.
We're very, very focused on the careers that the students are ultimately going to pursue when they leave, so
we try so hard to try and ensure that more practical side
is embedded deep within the more academic lessons and classes that we have
and I think that blend works really, really well together. The diverse mix of staff,
some with industrial backgrounds, some from academic backgrounds, means that
when the students are going through the course of a programme, the experiences they have are very varied
and consequently they are then in a position to be able to identify what are the really important features
for when they go on into that job at the end of the day.