Sweet Home Thailand

With so much promise entering this week, there has been nothing but disappointment that has followed. In the second executive-MBA class, attendance improved as the majority of the students had arrived by a few minutes after the scheduled class start time, so class began full-speed ahead about 10 minutes late. Not terrific, but an improvement. I certainly don’t think that I am unreasonable for wanting class to start on time particularly because I often require the entirety of the class to discuss course materials. During the lunch break, one student approached me and mentioned that the way I teach was “like in the movies”. Not knowing what he meant (there have been many movies illustrating “good” and “bad” teaching over the years), I asked him to elaborate. He went on further to describe how in the movies a bell rings in a school and all of the students sit down for the start of class and when the bell rings again, even if the class discussion isn’t finished, all of the students get up to leave. I suppose that was just an illustration of how that student, and likely others, perceived my teaching style to be rigid or structured simply because I wanted to start class on time. I guess this is just a cultural difference that I will have to adapt to during my time here. Another setback was that most of my students had experienced problems using the class Website (wiki) for posting their assignments (e.g., creating a student profile and posting an IT-related ethical article on the discussion forum) and accessing course materials. I had never experienced problems using the wiki, but I realized that this was a problem as a student illustrated the wiki ‘hanging’ while logging in on her laptop during class. My only suggestion at the time was to be patient and persistent to access the site. I have not had any further complaints issued by e-mail, which I take as a positive sign, but is no guarantee that students are no longer experiencing any problems as Asian cultures tend to shy away from confrontation to authority figures. The best example of that would be the final set-back that I had in class. The first week my students had said that my pace of teaching/speaking (my usual pace – at least the pace I use in the US) was good so I continued at that pace the second week. It wasn’t until during the lunch break that one student mentioned that I was in fact speaking too quickly as she was having troubles ‘translating’ what I was saying at times, but by the time she had figured out what I was saying, I was already on the next slide discussing something different. After she told me this, a few other students standing around agreed with her assessment. So why didn’t the students speak up sooner? Why didn’t anyone ask for clarification? Why didn’t anyone raise their hand? To give the students and option that was less “confrontational” than interrupting me in class, I suggested that students simply make the motion of raising their hand with their hand palm-down and then lower it – as if to say “slow it down”. Although I did consciously try to slow my discussion down after the lunch break, no student made that motion and I suspect that some students still had problems. The next item that came to my attention was how a few students again pressed me to ‘lighten’ the course load, stating that since it was only an 8 week class, professors (or ‘Ajarns’) rarely cover every chapter in the course text. My response to them and to the entire class was that I was making compromises and eliminating some of the content from each chapter to fit this abbreviated schedule, but that I felt there was content from each chapter I felt was important to know so I was not going to ’skip’ entire chapters. During the lunch break I found out that the executive MBA program is something that is completed in a year and a half as students take courses all year long (they have a trimester schedule here), consisting of 2-8 week classes each Saturday and Sunday for each semester. It’s no wonder these students keep pressing me to ‘lighten’ the course load. Something that the students told me during the lunch break that did trouble me was how they recounted taking a previous class where the instructor made an agreement that he would give them all A’s (e.g., A, A-) if they would take him out for Karaoke at the end of the semester. I don’t know if this story has any truth to it, but it certainly rubbed me the wrong way as it seemed that the students implied I might be also willing to negotiate a similar compromise.

As for the promise of meeting ‘key’ individuals to discuss potential partnerships with ABAC, it never happened, at least not yet. I spoke to the Ph.D. program coordinator yesterday (Wednesday) and he had yet to have been contacted by anyone about when to specifically organize the meeting. That gave me the feeling that if I don’t meet with the dean and find out who those other ‘key’ individuals are, the meeting might not take place for a while. It was almost like a laid-back type of attitude where “we will get to it when we get to it” seemed to be the way things were done. I don’t know if this is an accurate depiction of how things run here and it really is unfair to characterize the work style as such from only one incident, so I will have to update this as the semester continues. Unfortunately, my other interactions with faculty members have been very poor. There are no posted office hours, simply an “In/Out” sign posted on their office doors (those faculty members that have offices), and I don’t even know if faculty members are even required to have office hours. There certainly wasn’t any pressure on me to hold office hours, which would be difficult considering I have only been given a “temporary” office that I don’t have the key to and I only have access to from 9-5 Monday-Friday. That makes it hard to hold useful office hours when I teach a night class and a class on Saturday that fall outside of that time frame. As a compromise, I have told my students that I will be available both before and after class to answer any questions they have, else I am accessible by the course Website and by e-mail. I have gotten several questions by e-mail and after class so far, so I am assuming at this time that I am meeting the students needs for access to me. The last disappointment for me was trying to catch-up with the MBA program director to simply introduce myself and thank him for the work he did, namely helping to coordinate the letter from ABAC that I needed to get my Thai visa. I had stopped by his office on the 11th floor (lots of stairs to climb) several times last week to do just that, but as I just mentioned, he was never in his office and I had no idea (nor did anyone else) when he might be. I finally just sent him an e-mail asking to meet with him, which he replied a few days later that he would like to meet me at 11:00am today (Thursday) at his office. I showed up at 10:50am (I always show up early) and I waited until 11:30am when I just figured he forgot or had other important business to attend to. I have sent him an e-mail explaining that I might have ‘just missed him’ in his office, but I have yet to hear back from him about why he was not there. Like I said, lots of disappointment this week. (*Update: I did get a response back a few hours later apologizing that an ‘ad hoc’ meeting came up and asked that we reschedule)

On a somewhat different note, I did fill-in for my former colleague at UW-Milwaukee to teach an undergraduate English class at the university right next to ABAC (about a half-mile away across the street). This former colleague of mine (who is Thai) is actually one of my best friends and it just happened to be a coincidence that the school he taught at was so close to the one I was offered a teaching position at. The class itself ended up being pretty similar to the class I taught for high-school seniors in Phitsanulok. An introduction of myself and a lot of prodding of the audience to get a question-and-answer session going. After about a half hour of that, I had the students watch the IT videos that I am using in my classes this semester and had them comment on them. Needless to say, it was a long three-hour class as it was very difficult to get any meaningful discussion going. Another interesting development or a pure stroke of fate was that I ran into another colleague of mine from UW-Milwaukee, in fact, the only other Thai student in the Ph.D. program. It turns out that he is teaching marketing classes full-time (4 sections) at ABAC both at the graduate and undergraduate school and that both he and my other former Thai colleague didn’t know that they were both in Thailand and located so close to each other. If anything, having a couple of people close by that I know quite well was at least one positive to take away from the past week.