Professor Divya Maharajh:
“Was there any challenge for you when you started teaching?”
“Research Methods is not the most ‘sexy’ course to teach. It’s not like advertising or digital culture … I think students already have this notion that they are taking a course that is required. They have to take it, it’s about research methods—which people don’t really have an interest in—so there was a challenge in terms of how do I make this content come alive in this classroom? How do I make it really accessible to students and something that they can be interested and engaged in? So I think the big challenge was the actual content.”
“How do you want your students to see you?”
“I think I really try to let my students see me as a kind of normal person, not some detached, authority figure in the room but somebody that they feel comfortable coming up to … So I think my approach in the room is to always be very laid back and to make sure they know little things about me. [I] tell them my crazy jokes and anecdotes, just to kind of break the tension in the room … Because it’s content like research methods, you need to sort of infuse it with those moments of informal jokes just to keep people engaged.”
