Talk with the Teaching Assistants - Pavlo Topalli

Pavlo Topalli

TA of the Ethics Innovation & the Corporation, Research Methods, Digital Business Process Management, and Inter- and Intra- Organisational Decision Making 2023/2024 Course

How has your experience been as a Teaching Assistant of TPM?

I participated in multiple courses so far as a teaching assistant, one course for every quarter. So far my experience has been great. I really enjoyed being involved in multiple courses and understand the subjects even more in-depth but from another perspective- that of the teaching team. To me being a teaching assistant meant that I could help my fellow classmates, by being in contact with the course managers and bringing my student perspective, in the course structure. Therefore, it felt fulfilling because I felt I was giving back to the student community by having these discussions with the teachers. Also, the Course Managers I worked with, were always open to feedback and really listened and valued my opinion on how things should be done in the course, because I, as a students, have a fresh and more relatable perspective. This meant that they provided me a lot of freedom on how to assess situations and what I thought was the right way to handle certain situations (e.g. delayed submissions of students, personal issues, providing feedback regarding assignments etc.). Overall, it was a great experience for me and if being a PhD wouldn’t be mandatory to teach in University, I would definitely think of doing it after experiencing how it is to be a Teaching Assistant!

P.S. The financial compensation is also worth it, to be honest!

According to you, why should engineers choose to pursue MOT?

Engineers should pursue MOT if they want to widen their lens and understanding of the world. As a computer scientist myself, I couldn’t comprehend the complexity of putting a technology into use. To develop something, you need financial support, and to get that, you need to leverage people / organizations and show that what you are doing adds value to them. In the meantime, you need to consider what value you add to the society as a whole and that what you are developing or trying to create corresponds to the policies/regulations and even societal rules of the environment you are in.

What do you think makes MOT different from other programmes in management?

I don’t know how other programs in management are. However, what I liked during MOT was the constant connection with technology. Considering that TUDelft is a technical university, having an MSc Management program is a unicorn within the university. Though, who doesn’t love unicorns, especially the ones that are real? Indeed, the approach to management within TUDelft, is quite different from other programmes in other universities that focus on numbers, profit, and stonks. This program gave me the opportunity to understand how to bridge the gap between my own engineering background (which is TUDelft’s specialty) with the wider societal context, which is missing from the business environment. Being a mediator between engineering and business stakeholders is an important role to achieve operational excellence especially in a world where things change rapidly and you need to adapt to new realities.

How do you assist students in understanding complex concepts in the MOT program?

It is a thin line to be the mediator between students and teachers within a course. As a teaching assistant I tried to help students the way I wanted to be helped when I was in their position. I tried to convey my understanding of the concept to them and how I worked to achieve what I wanted, and so far it seemed to have helped. I believe a teaching assistant brings something very valuable to the table of the course, being empathetic and relatable to the students. A TA knows what kind of questions they had as a student and now, after being done with the course, they can communicate the knowledge how they perceived it. This perspective is naturally, quite different from how a teacher would answer a question, and more so, how would the student understand it. Therefore, being a teaching assistant entails one very important thing: remembering the difficulties that you had when you were at that position as well.

What insights have you gained from working closely with professors in the MOT program?

So far, I have worked with a lot of professors in the MOT program. All of them would see me as a colleague and I felt respected regarding what I was bringing to the table. Their openness to my feedback and listening to my opinion, constantly made me feel comfortable and I had a lot of discussions with them in terms of the learning process and the course content/structure. Sometimes though, this difference in expertise and hierarchy within the academic context makes us forget that professors & students are also people and that they are here to help us achieve something better. In that sense, I realized that it is not students versus professors, but rather it is US, as a team, to make each other better. It is a team effort.