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Educational Development
Trent Tucker talks about how 'less is more' when it comes to lecturing
Jul 27/10
Walking into Trent Tucker's classroom, students are welcomed by the smooth, hypnotic rhythm of reggae music.
"It
sets the mood, and it's not just for them, it helps me focus," says
Trent Tucker, a lecturer in the Operations and Decision Sciences area
at Laurier's School of Business & Economics. "When I do a set of
notes, I have the obligatory quote at the top and I often use song
lyrics. And when the students come in to the classroom, the song with
those lyrics will be playing to set the theme, and so everything is
tied together.
"Some students figure out there's a running
thread," he added with a chuckle, "and the ones who do, say, something
like, 'Ah, Trent -- you're a sly guy. There's something going on here.'"
Something
going on, indeed, as Tucker recognizes there is sometimes a fine line
between educator and student: "On the very first class, I let them know
that I'm a student as well and there's not a lot of difference between
us," says Tucker, who is currently working towards his PhD in
Management Science at the University of Waterloo.
"I tell my
students, this is me -- this is what you get," he adds. "I try to build
a bit of street-cred(ability) by telling them that I wasn't always an
academic, but worked in industry for a number of years -- these are the
companies I worked for, and these are the job titles I've had." Tucker
explains to them, while earning a BSc in Mathematics from the
University of Alberta, he began a career at Imperial Oil (IOL) in the
distribution part of the business. "My four year undergrad took six
years because I lived in residence the whole time," says Tucker, who
was also heavily involved in the student government.
After
leaving IOL, Tucker worked in the supply chain area at Methanex in
Vancouver, after completing his MBA at the Rotman School of Management
at the University of Toronto. Later, he became a senior consultant with
HATCH, consulting to the natural gas industry, he explains to his
students. "And I tell them this because if they were to get a co-op
offer, that they can come to me and talk about it because I've been out
in the workforce -- and I get it," adds Tucker, who most recently was
the Software Development Manager at Schneider Foods before leaving
industry to focus on academia, and joining the faculty at Laurier's
School of Business & Economics in 2003.
Through his
experiences teaching at Laurier, Tucker says it took some time to learn
and apply what he calls his "less is more" approach to lecturing. "The
first time I ever taught a statistics course I remember thinking, 'This
will be easy,' because the guy who wrote the text book gave me a copy,
and I also got a CD ROM with all the publisher's slides, so I thought,
'This is great, I can stand and deliver," Tucker recalls.
"But
when I got into it, I realized there's no way I can take 60 slides and
cover the material in 80 minutes -- it's just not possible. Then I
asked myself, 'What are the really salient, important bits? And what
can I scrap?' Every year, I try to scrap as much as I can to get to the
core essence of the material.
"And because I've done that, I now
have more control over my pace," he adds. "And rather than looking at
my watch and thinking, 'Oh no, I only have 20 minutes left to try and
cram everything in,' and rushing through material that the students
aren't getting anything out of, I now usually end about 10 minutes
early. The students really appreciate that because if there's questions
or something we need to go into a little bit more deep, then I've got
that buffer built into the class time."
And like the reggae
music -- with its floating, trance quality -- that he plays before
class, Tucker strives for a comfortable, friendly pace through his
lectures while acknowledging students' interest in the material is
often content dependant. "I tell them, 'Look, we're all in this
together, and some of the stuff we'll be covering is dry as hell, so I
hope you have a water bottle with you,'" Tucker admits. "And they
always chuckle at that.
"I believe that given a choice between
taking certain courses, or not, they probably wouldn't," concludes
Tucker with a laugh. "But then again I have some students come back and
say, 'You know, I think it's great that you showed us how you can tie
this material back to some real world concepts."
Or, as Tucker has shown, through the rhythmic beats and lyrics of a reggae song.
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