Trust, openness and building community is the secret sauce to creating engaging learning experiences for students and fostering lifelong learning, says one of Australia’s top higher education teachers and YouTube star, Dr Amanda White.
Dr Amanda White says openness and trust is the key to creating exceptional student learning experiences.
UTS Business academic Dr Amanda White has shared the secret behind her passion for teaching and student experience, in a keynote presentation at the annual UTS Vice-Chancellor’s Learning and Teaching Award ceremony.
Amanda, who was recently recognised with one of Australia’s top higher education awards for teaching excellence, says that her initial decision to follow a career in teaching came from a desire to make a greater impact.
After spending the early years of her career as a partner in a large accounting firm, she says that the events surrounding September 11, 2001, were a catalyst for her to rethink her corporate career trajectory.
“At that point, I thought ‘What am I doing? I want to do more, I want to have real impact’. I wanted to make social impact.”
In the two decades since, Amanda has educated thousands of students in accounting practices, and become well-known the world over on her popular YouTube channel Amanda Loves to Audit, where she dishes up bite-sized lessons on why ‘Audit programs are like fried rice’ and topical advice on study and exams.
Building trust with students
For Amanda, building trust is an essential part of creating a high-quality teaching and learning experience.
“Learning is not only a cognitive process, but an emotional one as well. Trust is required for students to invest emotionally in learning, and when they invest emotionally, they are so powerful in terms of their learning.
“But today, trust is not automatically given to us as educators. When I was a student, we just trusted the professor, we trusted the co-ordinator – so how do we earn it?”
She says that being open with students is an essential part of her teaching approach in her role as Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head (Education) in the UTS Business School’s Accounting Discipline Group.
“I’m open with my students about who I am as a person – that I’m a daughter of migrants, about my story.
“I’m bringing my whole self to class. My students know about ‘Audit Senior’ and ‘Audit Junior’ – my two children – and how that fits into my life."
More than teaching: Student wellbeing key to student success
A passion for student wellbeing is also at the heart of her teaching role.
“I’ve always been a big proponent of pastoral care. Wellbeing is at the heart of what I do, it’s about building that trust, and showing that you care about students – asking, ‘How was that job interview?’ or ‘Tell me about your work’ and trying to relate that," she says.
“I want to know my students, I want them to be able to come to me for advice, I want to be part of their learning journey.”
She says being open to acknowledging failure, as well as creating feedback loops with students help to continually improve learning experiences is key – which has been so successful that she is incorporating student co-creation in Introductory Accounting subjects in the popular Bachelor of Business program from 2022.
“I build trust by experimenting with my students. I’m always asking them for feedback – sometimes I think they’re sick of it. ‘What did you think of this week’s activity? Did it help you? Could it be improved?’ So we’re always experimenting with our students.”
"I acknowledge that I make lots of mistakes, I tell that to my students – talking about failure is talking about learning."
Building connections beyond the classroom
Amanda also credits staying connected with students after graduation and building a sense of community as rewarding for both herself, and her students.
“Community is really really important,” she says
“This is my 20th year at UTS, I’ve been part of the institution for such a long time, and my secret sauce to staying optimistic and staying passionate when it comes to education – amidst all the doom and gloom that we often face in higher education – is to stay connected with your students.
"Staying connected with students after graduation is such a wonderful thing.”
“If I need to connect students – someone’s looking for a job opportunity, someone’s looking for some advice on forensic accounting, or what a career assessment centre is like, I can almost always find them an alumni to connect with, and that community flows through, students come to my subject, knowing what to expect, knowing that they’re going to be looked after, that if they need help, they’ve got it,”
As a teacher, she credits inspiration from fellow academics and the support of UTS's community of practice - through initiatives like the university's LX.Lab and Institute for Interactive Media & Learning (IML) designed to delivery next-generation learning experiences.
"Teaching is a reflection of our soul, and we need to be willing to hold ourselves up to the mirror, and it’s not always going to be pretty – sometimes you try something and it’s just not going to work, and you have to acknowledge that.
"Listen to those voices that lift you up. Being a teacher is a great privilege, and a great honour – let’s treat it like that."
Watch Amanda's keynote in full here:
