My approach to teaching is to develop and deliver instruction with a compelling value proposition to students. This means exposing them to knowledge, skills and abilities that are relevant and sought after in the world outside the classroom. There are three levers I use – employing the right content and technologies, challenging the minds of students towards new perspectives, and conducting class professionally. I try to make decisions in course design and delivery that employ these approaches.

Enterprise technologies constantly evolve and transform the way business is conducted. As professors in this area, we deal with the challenge and excitement of delivering both timeless and time-relevant class content. I complement core ideas (e.g. foundational concepts and vocabulary) with exposure to technology trends, and the latest news. For instance, I combine textbook and curriculum content with recent trade press and technical articles to show the real-world applications of concepts covered in class. I challenge students to connect what they are learning with what they observe in the real world, and things they hear about in the news. Two memorable examples of this form of instruction come to mind. In Fall 2016, I showed my class a recent video of the launch of Amazon Quicksight, a cloud based self-service BI tool, and watched them realize how the elaborate tiered structure of a BI system they had learned about prior (data source > ETL > data warehouses > data marts > middleware > analytical software tools) had been recreated in the AWS cloud. This led to a lively conversation on the impact of the cloud on competitive advantage and IT strategy. Such transformation is going on due to generative AI’s application in data governance and discovery. A second example from Spring 2018 was livestreaming the official announcement from MongoDB Inc when they shared the news that their popular NoSQL database would be adding SQL-like ACID guarantees.

I seek out every opportunity to stimulate students to think critically about the material and to learn to see things differently. In class, I incorporate counter-factual thinking by introducing alternative interpretations of data and results to stimulate discussion. This sort of thinking is hard to do, but extremely important to developing an analytical mindset. Also, as part of course exams, I include open-ended questions that do not have clear and easy answers. I make it a point to inform students that the real world does not always offer neat and clear decision-making scenarios, and that learning to ask the right questions is sometimes more important than finding answers. For instance, in my Database Systems & Physical Design class, I challenge students to apply the knowledge about different genres of databases (including different NoSQL databases) to recommend an appropriate architecture for different kinds of modern applications. Their responses have to include contemplations on the pros and cons of their chosen database architecture. Similarly, I intentionally discuss my active research in class, especially when there is a connection to the class content.

Finally, I run my classes as professionally as I would run a business meeting. I ensure everyone is on the same page by sending out weekly ‘actions required’ notices to ensure the entire class is on the same page and knows where to find any information they need. Further, in today’s ‘instant-messaging society’, millennial undergraduates tend to have high expectations of availability and responsiveness from faculty. Also, some students are naturally reluctant to speak out in class. As a doctoral student, one of the ways I responded to these realities was by using an online Q&A platform that allowed me to maintain a conversation with each student over the course of the semester. For instance, in my first two semesters as instructor of record teaching Business Analytics, I achieved an average response time of 126 minutes to discussion posts and questions asked online. I was proud of this, especially since I was still able to meet my research commitments. Since then, I have evolved my approach. In my current faculty role, where I use Slack.com to manage class communications, I created an autoresponder that allows students automatically retrieve important class notices by typing in word prompts. For instance, typing the word ‘due’ into slack returns the readings/assignments for the week, etc. Students respond positively to these approaches, while I avoid being overrun with private emails and can redirect saved time towards developing personal relationships with students.

I have benefited and learned a lot under the mentorship of remarkable teachers over my lifetime and harbor a deep appreciation of the significant role I am able to play in the lives of my students.