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My philosophy on teaching is that the teacher is not merely a lecturer but rather a facilitator of information exchange and learning among my students.  I do not believe that my students should be spoon fed information but should rather learn to find information on their own.  I have taught several classes in the field of information systems and so far my feedback from students has been quite positive through the use of my teaching methods.  I do not like to lecture for the entire class time but would rather lecture for the first half or so of the class and then assign students to work on projects and homework in class; I have found that this actually forces the student to work on the homework assignment as well as I can help those that are struggling.  I have found that by teaching classes at night, most of my students have jobs during the day so my method works very well in allowing them to learn during class time rather than assigning homework.  I believe that my students are the future and so should be given the tools in order to succeed but also know how to apply those tools to solve real life situations.  Rather than simply failing my students, if they were proven not to understand a concept or topic that had been covered in the course, I offered extra credit to demonstrate to me that they can understand the topic as well as providing extra help.  I do not see tests as something to fail and then have the student move on but rather as an identification and feedback tool to me to change the way that topic was presented as my students did not understand the way in which it was presented; I make myself available to my students in order to answer any questions they may have even if the question is outside of my normal office hours.

My areas of interest for teaching are quite varied and include:

Text mining and information retrieval:  tools and methods

Research methodologies:  statistical analysis, qualitative and quantitative research methods

Human computer interaction:  user interface design, user behavior

Virtual organizations and teams: cultural differences, time differences, enabling people with different skillsets to work well together, technology support

E-Commerce:  web page design, legal issues of an E-Commerce environment, support systems, customer support

Management Information Systems:  using information technology to support business, business policy and information technology design, using software to enhance profitability and better serve its customers

Emergency Response Information Systems:  using information technology to better manage a crisis, communication among different agencies

I believe that as an instructor, I should not only provide students with the tools and methods that can be used but with integrating those methods into a true business case to demonstrate how that method can be used in the future to solve a business problem.  I continually demonstrate how different methods can be used throughout their life and employment versus a strictly academic professor where many students fail to see the connection between real life and what they are being taught.  Many recent developments do not show up in textbooks so I recommend to my students to read outside trade magazines and newspapers versus a purely academic textbook.  In this way, every student can see how the information that we are discussing during that class can be used in the real world.

I have made several observations with regards to both being a student and a teacher.  Most teachers are more interested in carrying out research than they are with teaching students; I do not see it this way.  I believe that the students will require more attention than many professors are willing to give.  Students need to be motivated and encouraged to carry out their work otherwise many will just complete the bare minimum to get by in the real world.  I have found that developing courses does require a lot of work on the part of the professor, but as I have not taught the same course in a subsequent semester, I would like to see how that course was further developed and changed after I handed all of my course materials off to the next instructor.  I hope I can use the information that I gathered while carrying out my research to develop new courses that would be both interesting and informative to my students.  As I only taught one course, I could not use the feedback from my students after the course semester was completed to further enhance the material and required work for the course in a second semester.  I would really like to "own" a set of courses that will be my own that I will have full control over in subsequent semesters. When taking over a course from another instructor, I do not want to simply copy the work that has already been done but rather add a new dimension or aspect to the course to make it even more useful than previously; essentially, I use the basic guidelines that were provided to me for the course but then develop my own topics that I would like to cover and present them in my own way.  My teaching philosophy is one of being a facilitator of the learning process instead of just providing information to my students; if my students fail to learn then I have failed in my job as a teacher.


Todd Will
Information Systems Department
New Jersey Institute of Technology
University Heights, Newark, NJ 07102

Phone:     (973) 876-1148
Fax:          (973) 596-2906
Email:       txw5999@njit.edu
Website:  http://web.njit.edu/~txw5999
Skype:      Toddapod
Homepage Research Statement Teaching Statement Projects Classes My C.V. Photos IS Department NJIT's Homepage