Recently, I had the opportunity to present a technical topic as part of my Information Technology Capstone Program at NJIT. I decided to present on what I happened to be learning at the moment, which happened to be Cyber Threat Intelligence. Though I am just a relatively new student in the field, I didn’t let that deter me from speaking confidently on the topic. I hope to discuss some of what I learned from this experience and why I would encourage anything (no matter the skill level) to let go of that imposter syndrome to teach others! It is a valuable experience not just for the students listening into your presentation, but also serves as a learning experience for yourself. It personally enabled me to truly understand my topic and reinforce some concepts that I may not have been familiar with. Without further ado, here are the 5 lessons I learned from teaching as a student:
- You don’t need to be an expert
The most important lesson that I learned from teaching others is that you don’t need to be an expert to share a topic to others. Instead, you just have to be more knowledgable on that specific topic to teach others something valuable. In fact, you may be better at teaching than an expert in a subject because you are at a closer level to your student. In other words, you can communicate effectively because you had to learn the topic from a beginner’s standpoint as well.
- Teach how you would want to be taught
I am someone who learns through hands-on learning exercises and problem solving in the real-world. That said, throughout my presentation I incorporated hands-on learning exercises that encouraged the students to think through the topics I exposed them to before to believe they fully grasped the topic. This was also important to include as it gave a real-world context to the high-level concepts that I was teaching.
I also walked them through how I would go about solving the exercise at hand.
- Don’t be afraid to show your enthusiasm
Speaking from personal experience, I am more motivated to learn about a specific topic when the teacher is clearly excited about the topic. Lucky for me I was already deeply interested in Cyber Threat Intelligence as it was my newest obsession. I used to shy away from sharing what I was interested in in fear that it would make me appear like a “try-hard”, but I learned to be unapologetically myself (corny, I know).
- Make real-world connections
Relating back to my second point, it is key to make real-world connections so your student’s can draw connections between the real-world and the somewhat obscure topics presented. Cyber Threat Intelligence is a field where there is so much being done in the field so it was not hard to do this. For other topics, I think it’s beneficial to find some way to connect something to your students will understand.
- Invite others to connect
At the end of my presentation, I shared my contact information to all who attended (i.e. my LinkedIn profile). Teaching is not a one way street. Instead, I think both parties can establish a relationship that is mutually beneficial. As humans, we are also hard-wired for connecting with others so I think sharing your contact information and letting others know that your open to sharing ideas goes a long way.