Teacher: Dr Murray Taylor is a senior lecturer in the Department of Management, and Course Director of the Bachelor of Business and Bachelor of Business Administration.
Groundwork: Murray holds a Bachelor Degree, MA and PhD in Business from Macquarie University.
Gold stars: In 2018, Murray received the Vice Chancellor's Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning and in 2020 he received the Australian Award for University Teaching (AAUT) – Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning.
How Murray’s students describe him: He is inclusive, encourages discourse, and breaks down barriers between student and educator.
What Murray says:
My approach to teaching is what's known as a social constructivist approach. I am not a believer in ‘chalk and talk’, where the teacher dominates the conversation. I believe we should be guides or facilitators of knowledge. The social constructivist approach focuses on peer-based learning. Students should be creating meaning through their own experiences and linking that to the material, and we should be encouraging that. If they have a difficult theory or concept they are struggling with, the goal is to relate it to their lives so it makes more sense. I try to include students in the learning process and my classroom tends to be vocal and rowdy.
In the Bachelor of Business we have dedicated communication and leadership units, because that’s the feedback we have had from industry in terms of what they look for in graduates. Many of our students go on to be business leaders, and many are entrepreneurs who set up their own businesses. Some of our students start businesses while they are still studying. I had a student who came up to me after a lecture and said he had an idea for a business based on what we were discussing. A couple of weeks later, he started that business, and halfway through the following semester, he decided to sell it and made more than $1.5 million. I still catch up with him and he has been a constant entrepreneur since then, and now has a new venture.
What I love most about teaching is when a student says my classes changed their perspective or made them choose a particular career path. Or if they say they loved a certain unit because it made them think about a new concept in a different way. But the real satisfaction I get is when a student comes up to me a few years after graduating and tells me about their new job, or some advice I have given that has always stuck with them. It makes me feel like I made a real impact on their lives and I hope it is for the better.
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One piece of advice I always give students is to take the time to network. In terms of experience, there is not much difference between Fortune 500 CEOs and the people directly beneath them. The one thing they do differently is they go out on Friday night and socialise with their colleagues. It is so important, not necessarily because being good at chatting and enjoying other people's company is the way to success, but rather people get to know them and understand what they do. It is a tale as old as time but networking is so important. I tell all my students to start meeting and chatting, because these are the people who are going to help you in your career.
I think one of the biggest issues students face is just the huge workload. In a recent survey we did for the Bachelor of Business, we found a large percentage of students are working full-time or equivalent hours while studying full-time. You keep hearing about how this generation is lazy but that is not the case; really they're just time poor. That is something I'm very aware of and I think we should make some allowances for that. One of the things I do in my unit, for example, is provide students with all the material upfront to learn at their own pace. They can also do their assessments early, send them to me and get some feedback before they submit the final assessment.
The perfect student is ... a keen student. Someone who is willing to be active, ask questions and admit when they don't know something. Students with a thirst for knowledge are very fun to teach. If you have someone who's a little extroverted and keen, they can be like the captain of the classroom. They guide everyone else and make them realise it's okay to ask questions. And I love that. I think it enriches a classroom so much because it brings everyone else on board.
Find out more about the Bachelor of Business.
