Experience Summary
4.1 Current
2010-to date: Full Time Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics and Statistics, Faculty of Social Studies and Humanities, University of Mauritius (UoM). Reduit, Mauritius.
4.2 Previous Employment
2004- 2009: Full Time Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics and Finance,. School of Business Management and Finance at the University of Technology, Mauritius (UTM), La Tour Koeniq, Mauritius.
2007-2009: Part-Time Lecturer at University of Mauritius, servicing at both undergraduate level and postgraduate level.
2001 – 2004: Education Officer in Economics (‘O’ and ‘A’ level) at the Droopnath Ramphul State Seconday School.
Teaching Style
The two building blocks of my teaching philosophy are the environment in which learning takes place, the material/tools used. A convivial, positive and motivating environment is crucial for effective teaching and learning. It is equally important to make students enjoy and have fun during the learning process and as such from time to time I do bring in humour into lectures as well as allow students to earn participation credit via various activities and thus express their excitement about a particular topic. Another essential factor in creating a motivating environment is to give a voice to students in class so that they can benefit from peer-learning and also be trained to present their opinions while respecting that of others. Nevertheless I also give due value to the fact that students should adhere to deadlines and produce quality work based on expectations about required performance, which are clearly communicated to them. Now and then I move them out of their comfort zone by displaying realistic problems with undefined boundaries and solutions and that demand both cooperation as well as competition. At the same time I make it a point to being available to the students even outside office hours, give them prompt feedback, obtain feedback from them and to treat them fairly and equally. For part time courses, on which mature and working students are enrolled, it becomes a must for me to know my students even better to be able to tailor a curriculum that fits their needs and to build link between what they already know and the new understandings they are hunting for.
Coming to material and tools used, I try to use manuscript that I have published and this helps in spilling over into the concerned class, the excitement that I felt while undertaking the specific research. Most of my handouts include real world examples and cases. To ensure quality teaching I constantly attempt to re-evaluate the courses and also collaborate with other faculty members and get feedback from them. With regard to the teaching tools, I extensively make use of PowerPoint software and all elements of multimedia (for example documents, videos, web sites) to enhance the student learning process as well as to vary the mode of presentation.