This story is the fifth in a series of six Values in Action profiles that highlight the Texas A&M core values.

Story by Elisabeth Kent
Video by Jamie Arrexi and Nicole Smith

Mr. Joseph E. Williams is a well-known face at Texas A&M University at Qatar. He has taught as a Lecturer in the Liberal Arts Program for five-and-a-half years, during which many Aggies have passed through his courses on technical writing, freshman composition and language of film. Williams has demonstrated the Texas A&M core value of respect inside and outside the classroom through his passion for teaching, learning, the Middle Eastern region and its people.

Williams says his love for the Middle East began as a graduate exchange student in Istanbul, long before he came to teach at Texas A&M at Qatar. “I lived in Istanbul for a year, and it was one of the best years of my life,” he says. “I learned the language. I made friends. I traveled. When I considered coming to Qatar later, I particularly loved Sheikha Moza’s vision and what she intended to do with Education City. I came, and I guess the rest is history because I have been here ever since.”

Williams is passionate about teaching and encourages his students to develop that same passion, but he says he became a teacher by accident. “I was working for the number one interior design firm in the world, and we had a Japanese intern,” Williams said. “He was very talented, but he didn’t speak English well, so he asked me to help him with his language skills. At first, I didn’t know what I was doing, but then week-by-week I started developing little lesson plans and realized how much I enjoyed teaching. That’s where it fell into place. I went back to school and received a master’s degree in applied linguistics. I love English. Whether you’re writing a poem or business letter, you try to find the exact word to convey a certain nuance. It’s a game.”

In the classroom, Williams wants his students to learn to play that game as well. “I tell my students that I know what it feels like to be in their position because I have been on the other side of the desk in Arabic, Spanish, Turkish and other languages,” Williams explains. “I know how frustrating it is to try to grasp another language, much less produce professional or academic writing in that language. I provide different levels of scaffolding for students. With lower-level students, I offer more help, but as they grow, I want them to become independent learners.

“This entire process is really about motivating students to be active learners, to go out and seek answers for themselves. In the workplace, we often have to find answers for ourselves, so this is an important skill to develop. I try to make myself very available inside and outside the classroom so that students can find help from me when they need it. I even give students my mobile number. As long as it’s a reasonable hour, they’re more than welcome to give me a call.”

Williams is a living example of an “active learner,” always seeking a new challenge. He described his latest project, which incorporates cutting-edge technology in the classroom to support student learning. “Each student in my Language of Film class receives an iPad 2 with everything for the course already loaded onto it,” said Williams, who is collaborating on the project with the University’s Information Technology department. “This project is exciting because students today don’t learn the way they used to learn. They are much more visual and tactile.”

The iPad 2 becomes a one-stop shop for the course, containing the assignment prompts, applications for students to do the assignments, required readings and films. Williams describes the benefit of this, saying, “Instead of watching a movie together and students having to report on the movie at that moment, they are able to rewind and watch the movie as many times as necessary to grasp concepts.

“With that, Twitter is a part of the course grade. I give students a Twitter prompt – for instance, something about pacing in the movie or saturated versus unsaturated colors. I ask them to tweet six times while they watch the movie. Sometimes students get so excited that they give me twenty or thirty tweets instead of only six. With the iPad 2, students can rewind or pause as often as they want to tweet.”

Williams also encourages his students to cross cultural boundaries, using technology to increase interaction between Aggies in College Station and Doha. He explains, saying, “My students may create a podcast here and then forward it to the main campus and receive some sort of critique from main campus students. These collaboration teams often become friends. As they learn about each other, they make cultural gaffes, but even with these, the interaction has always been very positive.”

This is part of how Williams describes independent, active learning. Students are challenged to find answers for themselves, explore new ideas or cultures, correct their own mistakes and figure out when to ask for help. Along with this, Williams says it’s important for students to understand the other side of each argument and learn to respect it even if they don’t agree with it. “I make my students argue for topics that they don’t believe in,” he explains. “For example, they have to argue that the world is better without technology. Incorporating the opposite side of an argument into your own argument also strengthens your argument.”

Ultimately, Williams cultivates respect in the classroom amongst his students, but he also takes that same Aggie core value outside the classroom. He describes a typical morning, saying, “I’ll go to four different places and interact with people in four different languages. I’ll say ‘Good morning. How are you? See you later.’ in Nepalese, Arabic, Turkish and English. When you learn a local language, you endear yourself to people because you are showing a respect for them and their culture. I speak an Egyptian Arabic dialect in the souq, and they give me a discount. Or I ask a Qatari policeman for directions in a Gulf Arabic dialect, and he is so pleased that he takes my hand and shows me where I want to go.”

For Williams, this mixture of cultures and languages, all learning to respect one another, makes Qatar special, whether in the classroom or local souq. Conveying this to his students, along with a lifelong love for learning, is one of Williams’ central goals.

“I hope to engineer a world of difference by promoting learner autonomy – for students to try to find answers for themselves and know how and when to ask for help,” Williams said. “Sometimes it hurts to learn; it’s hard. But it’s important to be an independent learner because that skill will serve students throughout life.”

Williams will present his research and experience using iPads in the classroom at the Technology in Higher Education (THE) Conference 2012. The title of THE 2012 is “Mobile Learning: Challenges and Opportunities.” For information visit the conference Web site.