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Job satisfaction from teaching: the ultimate source

There are quite a number of factors that can lead to frustration from teaching, e.g. students not keep to learn but ready to complain, subject second markers not coming forward with assessment marks, module leaders very late in confirming subject assignments, and, lastly, defective classroom equipment, among others. Trying to tackle these sources of frustration head-on is quite difficult, often impracticable. More constructively, I prefer to direct my attention to the intellectual learning from the course teaching so as to enhance my intellectual competence. This kind of gain from teaching is concrete and achievable; it constitutes my ultimate source of job satisfaction from teaching . Moreover, I believe that a good teacher should be a good learner himself and students learn tremendously from the role model of a good teacher-cum-learner. Striving to be a good teacher-cum-learner is an important part of the journey to scholar-practitioner maturity. Job satisfaction from teaching is exp
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Using Youtube videos for learning and teaching: a note

In my teaching practice for undergraduate and post graduate students in business and housing studies, I like to produce a teaching plan with lots of links on e-learning resources, e.g., slideshares, Youtube videos and e-articles. Here, I want to talk about Youtube videos for teaching and learning purposes. On teaching , especially online teaching, I like to play around 3-6 Youtube videos in the lecture to my class, and then teach the topics and concepts with reference to the Youtube videos. This constitute a multimedia-based way to teach lessons. Some students like this approach while others do not. Personally, I learn a lot via an exploratory way on Youtube video study, I am quite confident that a carefully selected set of Youtube videos are very useful for teaching (and students' learning). Moreover, students can study the Youtube videos after the class to consolidate their lecture learning. This leads to the second topic here: on learning. Regarding students' learning , Yout
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Why agility is needed in literature review? A note on agility.

A few years ago, I realized that there is a need to come up with an agile approach on literature review for my part-time MBA students doing dissertation projects. The reasons are clear: dissertation projects that more often than not involve case study research in a messy and evolving business context as well as under significant time and resource constraints on the students' part. Thus, an research investigation, to be worth researching on, requires an agile approach.  My knowledge on the agile philosophy and methodologies comes from my teaching experience on the rapid application development in the Information Technology field and the agile supply chain in the supply chain management field. To me, to be agile means to be nimble, flexible and responsive. Agile practice in a project setting endorses utilizing evolutionary cycles of development and testing throughout the project life cycle. Other agile techniques that come to mind are: evolutionary prototyping, stakeholder particip
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Academic theories as the major objects to study in literature review

On conducting literature review, many of my business students have difficulty to understand, evaluate and choose suitable theories to be employed in their dissertation projects. One reason is that, their dissertation project supervisors, not being their private tutors, will not teach their supervisees academic theories as reported in the academic literature relevant to the students' project works. It is not the purpose of this note to discuss how students could learn the academic theories by themselves. Rather, I want to point out why academic theories are the main objects to study in literature review for students' dissertation project works. Basically, a theory is a system of ideas intended to explain something based on certain principles. From this definition, it can then be said that an academic theory is a system of academic ideas intended to explain something based on certain principles as discussed by the pertinent academic community. Moreover, such an academic theory,
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The notion of theoretical framework in the agile literature review approach (ALRA)

In the subject of dissertation project, the notion of theoretical framework is an important topic. In general, it is understood as a structure that holds a set of chosen theories for a dissertation project. As such, it goes a long way towards contributing to the clarification of the study scope of a dissertation project.  In the agile literature review approach (ALRA), being an agile approach to guide business students doing dissertation projects and continuous intellectual competence development, the theoretical framework notion can be defined as follows: A management-concerns-driven layered intellectual structure that offers a holistic and agile research tactic with a set of chosen academic ideas and mapped-on research methods for a business student doing a case study dissertation project, under much time pressure and well-defined academic work requirements. Regarding this definition, the ALRA notion of theoretical framework is largely in line with the mainstream thinking on this n
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Using the agile literature review approach for scholar-practitioner development

About three years' ago, I started the academic project to develop the agile literature review approach (ALRA) to guide my MBA students to do their final year dissertation projects. By now, the ALRA has been employed by me to guide quite a number of part-time MBA students in Hong Kong to complete their dissertation projects. For those of you new to ALRA, I recommend the following two readings: 1. What is this thing called management-concerns diagramming? 2. An examination of the theoretical framework usage. The ALRA is designed to be used in two ways: 1. To guide MBA students to do final-year dissertation projects, notably ones with case study research. 2. To guide MBA graduates to utilize academic literature in the field of management for dealing with real-world managerial problems that they encounter from time to time. A key long-term benefit of practicing ALRA is to build up scholar-practitioner competence for its users. I thus recommend ALRA to readers interested in intellectual
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課室裏一隻受歡迎嘅猴子

  返咗成日工, 晚上重要教商科, 本應係好攰嘅. 但係一想到大部分嘅 學生 都係剛剛放工嘅年青秘書, 心情呢自然變得好緊張.  呢間任職嘅商科學校, 位置係喺太子道. 課室唔係好大, 但就讀的學生都幾多. 所以喺課室啲學生坐得比較迫. 每次教書總覺課室氣氛係比較輕鬆. 啲學生都好留心聽書. 所以啲緊張嘅心情好快就會冇咗.  今晚一入課室, 啲學生已經到咗七七八八. 由於 張學生枱同埋凳係一塊嘅, 睇得出坐喺度嘅同學活動空間好少. 但當時係學生檯面上面仲係放咗好多筆記同埋食物. 同時好多同學正在進食食零食同埋晚餐. 好多位學生一見到我, 馬上遞出小食想請我食.主要都係餅乾同埋花生. 我嘅心情馬上變得好激動. 當我正準備用手接收食物嗰陣, 好幾位同學臺上啲筆記紙唔覺意散落地下. 附近啲同學, 睇見咁都笑咗出嚟. 情況 係 又滑梯又狼狽. 我本能反應, 馬上踎低想執返啲筆記紙. 突然發覺, 好多坐喺度嘅女學生係著住短裙. 而我踎低 睇到嘅 視線範圍. 非常之有冒犯性. 同一時間,啲女學生,都 開始 察覺到呢點. 我暗自大叫一聲”大鑊”. 於是第一時間, 退回講壇, 擺好姿勢.準備教書. 當冇事發生. 之後諗番,覺得自己好似喺課室( 動物園 ) 裏 面 一隻受歡迎 但係又好為食 嘅 馬騮 . 遇到一群有愛心嘅 美少女 遊客 .
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