Dr. Saeed Rahman received his Master’s degree in International Management & Marketing from Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom. During that time, he developed a passion for the environment, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility. He received his MBA in Strategy & Entrepreneurship, from University of Windsor and his PhD from University of Victoria. He started his career as a sales manager and has over 10 years in the industry. He also had a career in consultation for about six years and has been in the academic field for the past seven years. This semester Rahman is teaching BUS 100: Introduction to Business.
When did you develop an interest in teaching?
I always had in mind that I need to pursue academia because everybody has a calling, and I thought maybe academia is my calling. I love teaching; I love sharing knowledge, doing research, and I always had that in mind when it came to building my career. So, after my MBA, I got accepted into University of Victoria, and I was super lucky to be able to work with my supervisor, Monika Winn. She’s considered one of the pioneering scholars in the area of sustainability. So, I did my PhD with her and I looked into how business and nature interact, and based on this interaction, their interdependence and what knowledge you can gain from this.
How has the transition to online school affected your classes?
To my surprise, personally, as an instructor, I think I did a very good job. I’m a very interactive person. I love to interact with my students a lot. To my advantage, I always use my industry experience and my academic research and scholarly experience. I always try to bridge between these two domains because oftentimes the students struggle to make sense of how to apply the learning to the real world. What I did when I transitioned to online school is I included a lot of activities because I don’t get to see my students. I couldn’t have in-person interactions with them, so I had to be creative. I had to think outside the box in terms of still having the interaction piece ingrained in my classes. I introduced a lot of asynchronous activities, both individual and group. On Blackboard, there is a tool called “weekly discussion forum.” And I thought I did a pretty good job. I’m saying that because I got pretty good feedback from students saying that they enjoy those activities. So, to me the transition to an online school was a little bit of a challenge in the beginning, but I think I did a pretty good job with that.
Are there any steps in particular that you take in order to make sure that the online class remains just as effective as in-person teaching?
I think one thing that students appreciate, and this is from so many years of my teaching experience, is when you can bring in real world examples. So, I bring in examples of successful entrepreneurs like Jack Ma, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, or other successful business people, and then we have discussions in class about their characteristics. I have seen from experience that the students love it. Sometimes we even watch videos about these topics or review a short case or scenario from the real world. Also, I have a lot of individual and group activities and all my classes are synchronous. I make sure that we have a lot of discussion about these concepts. During the lecture, I make sure I ask the students a lot of questions. I have seen some students are very proactive in terms of addressing questions and sharing their ideas with the others. But for the introverted students, we have weekly discussion forums so that they can share their ideas in the forums.
Since there’s a global pandemic going around and things can become very tough for the students to manage, are there any steps you take to make this course easier for the students?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. One thing that I have been doing is offering the students a little bit more flexibility. We do have fixed due dates, but because the students depend on technology to submit their work, they might have some issues. So, I’m being very flexible in terms of due dates, and I made it very clear that to me the quality of the work matters more than submitting the work at a particular date. If they need one or two extra days, I don’t have any problems offering that. The other thing that I do is I offer the students a lot of comments and feedback on every submission. After they receive these comments, I give them a chance to revise their work. As an example, in the initial report a student might end up with a lower grade. I allow them to resubmit their work and an opportunity to improve their grade in all my classes. They get three days to address my comments and resubmit their reports within those three days. This really helps them to learn from their mistakes, and they get a chance to work on their grades. I offer flexibility and extra opportunities for the students, and it has been very helpful for the students from what I have seen.
Are there any tips you’d like to offer your students to be able to succeed in your online class this semester?
I think it’s very important that the students are very proactive. I mean, we all are going through this crazy time together. However, I assure my students that I’m going to be there with them as much as possible, but they also have to come to the class with an open mind, with a proactive mentality that they’re going to try their best to learn from me. Or I’d rather say, we learn from each other. Students who are proactive and love to interact, and who share their ideas with each other — I have seen that they do better in my course. Just be proactive, don’t be shy to ask for help, and have an open mind.
Image: Courtesy of Saeed Rahman
