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Perhaps he once passed you by, whose light eyes and hair may catch all your eyes; maybe he hada short conversation with you, whose gentleness and kindness makes you comfortable; or he talks with you in the classroom, eloquently and volubly. You may haven’t heard of him for a long time, however, the news released on April 10, Several online teaching cases from Guangzhou College of South China University of Technology were awarded Outstanding Teaching Cases of“Teachers or Courses ”, makes Nico T. P. Booij return to the fore again.

The news introduces that the online English teaching cases taught by Nico T. P. Booij, Application of Mathematical Knowledge in Robotics Engineering, enjoys popularity among students since he explains difficult concepts simply while he creates characteristic online course tasks and evaluation systems. His course, based on digital teaching, won the first prize of outstanding teaching cases of “teachers or courses”. It is said that there were over 1,500 teaching cases totaled in the first and second batches of participated cases, 419 of which were awarded. Among all the awarded cases, only two were led by foreign teachers while Nico was the only foreign teacher that independently taught the online course, who is also the first foreign teacher of GCU to win the provincial teaching prize. When he got the good news, he felt grateful for his students and moved about their keeping learning during the epidemic other than being surprised.

      
You may wonder who is Nico. For GCU and GCUers, he is a friend, a visiting academic and lecturer. Now he works as a teacher of the School of Mechanical Engineering & Robotics Engineering. Nico once learned and taught at Royal Naval College (Netherlands). When he turned forty, he got a master’s degree in mathematics at NHL University, which now is renamed as “NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences” (NHL-Stenden or NS). Nico hastaughtand devoted to academic research at NS since then.It is believed that his professional career will continue as time goes by, however, his encounter with GCU has changed his life. Let’s get a closer look at his stories with GCU.

Destiny: feeling at home at the first encounter

When asked about his first visit to GCU, Nico recalled an interlude: “my superior required thatI go to China with our students to GCU for exchanges. I felt reluctant about it at first since I have a tight schedule already. Therefore, I talked to her several times, hoping to cancel my visit. Luckily, I made a compromise at last. When I first came to GCU, it feels like a garden to me as it is surrounded with mountains and rivers with an attractive scene. It took a short time for me to adapt to GCU while the campus made me feel at home. Such feeling cannot be explained with words or is resulted from one or two issue. It is exactly the people, things and everything that happened here that make me ‘get on like a house on fire’”.

It is said that his first trip to GCU was to attend the 13th two-week intercultural exchange program of “Chinese Dragons & Dutch Lions” hosted by GCU in October, 2017. The program ended with great success while hosts and guests all enjoyed it.In October, 2018, Nico held a symposium at his own cost in GCU in lieu while attending a training for newly coming teachers as a guest speaker. Nico became an external teacher in the School of Mechanical Engineering & Robotics Engineering at GCU in March, 2019, where he delivered speeches and taught lessons for GCU’s students.

Original aspiration: teaching and learning promote each other, not tired of teaching

Nico has been doing his job conscientiouslyfor the past twenty more years.Such perseveranceoriginates not only from his love for education, but hishope of achieving self-fulfillment through communication, interaction, inspiration and learning from students. When talking about his original aspiration of teaching at GCU, Nico said that China and GCU had stay in his mind since he participated in the exchange program in 2017 as the Chinese culture, Chinese people and the its society with vitality became attractive to him. While most of people stick to the armchair strategy, Chinese people take real action. He also shared his views by quoting an old saying in Netherlands, namely, “neighboring gardens always outshine mine”. In his opinion, GCU is exactly a neighboring garden for him. Moreover, he believed that when one has a family, one would like to stay with them. And his second hometown is GCU. Karl Theodor Jaspers, a German philosopher, once said that “education is a tree shaking a tree, a cloud to promote a cloud, a soul awaken another soul”. For Nico, students of GCU are exuberant trees, iridescent clouds and interesting souls.

The roles of “teachers” and “students”are sometimes flexible. That’s how Nico interacts with his students. “We all need to make progress through learning. Students acquire knowledge in my lessons while I need their feedback to perfect my teaching. Therefore, I need your help in giving me more feedback”, he said so when asked about his wishes for students. Furthermore, he added, “students may be aware that teachers and students usually grow up in different ages, however, teachers should lay a solid foundation for students integrating with society in the future. Nowadays, we live in a rapidly changing era when technology develops by leaps and bounds, thus we cannot adopt the traditional way that teachers used to in class. Therefore, I need my students to join hands with me to explore successful methods in modern teaching.”

Teaching: online and offline courses, each have its own merits

Nico looks forward to every visit to China due to GCU. It was scheduled that he would have taught in China in April this year, however, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, he had to postpone this plan. It was a regret for him that he could not enjoy the blossoming Chinese Redbuds along the lake, nor to wander in the campus with his friends. Not to delay the curriculum, he has taught online regarding the suggestion given by the School of Mechanical Engineering & Robotics Engineering in March. When asked about whether he had any difficulties in online teaching, he denied it and claimed that nothing could be called as difficulty for him since he desired to work at GCU, “I just need to speed more time on it”. Though he said so, language barrier may be the greatest challenge that confronts him. He would feel overjoyed when he could say “good morning” in Chinese as a new comer at first. Whereas, since he lives longer in GCU, Nico hopes that he can better integrate with the big family. He set a goal of learning to speak Chinese when he goes back to GCU since he hopes to make progress with GCU in the future while he believes that as a part of GCU, speaking Chinese enables him to communicate with his students better.

Furthermore, Nico also has his insight about online courses. He introduced that Delft University of Technology, the most modern university in Netherlands, has most online courses. Even so, its students still need to take offline courses due to the fact that only by offline courses, can teachers better explain to their students how theories are put into practice in daily life. “Theories are fixed, therefore, we can adopt digital technologies to improve our efficiency, such as easing teachers’ excessive burden and helping students to speed up their learning schedule. In this way, repetitive and miscellaneous work including marking can be handed over to the computer, while teachers can devote themselves to the application of flexible issues apart from theories. I hope I can have more opportunities to discuss this problem with my peers at GCU”, he illustrated.

Expectation: learning from overcoming difficulties while putting theories into practice, we share the same trials and hardships together

Every trial and hardship will be overcame sooner or later, the same as the epidemic and temporary bearing. Nico is confident about the future of GCU, saying that “being an external teacher of GCU marks a beginning of me striving to be a GCUer. With the journey ahead, I expect to give full play to my strength no matter how the process develops. If permitting, I hope to know more students and friends while finding the attractiveness of GCU and witnessing more wonders of GCU”. Concerning the fight against the epidemic, Nico stated that “sharing weal and woe makes us aware that a friend in need is a friend indeed. Hopefully, we can learn lessons from the epidemic, and treasure the present, kinship, friendship and teacher-student relationship”.

As an old Chinese saying goes, when peaches and plums are ripe, their branches begin to rot. It is the same as teachers cultivate their students, which is a vivid picture of Nico having stayed committed to his original aspiration that cultivating talents through education for several decades. From Leeuwarden, Netherlands to Guangzhou, China, since Nico came across GCU in his forty, the closeness between him and GCU began to established. Consequently, he got the bit between his teeth to work and live in China. Nico stepped up his journey here with his passion for GCU, his consent with GCU’s educational principles as well as his appreciation for GCU’s inclusiveness. Under the initiative proposed by President Xi Jinping of building a community with a shared future for mankind, Nico is an active participant in the Belt and Road Initiative and intercultural communication between China and Netherlands as well as a witness of the development of the internationalization of GCU’s school running. Meanwhile, Nico also pictures how outstanding foreign teachers devote to their teaching career. GCU takes educational internationalization as an important development strategy, thus playing an active part in building “new engineering” and “new business” studies in line with international standards, in which professional foreign teachers help to boost the development of the two studies while injecting vitality into the cultivation of versatile, application-oriented and internationalized talents.

Nico’s story with GCU is to be continued. With the development of GCU, there will be more foreign teachers like Nico to join its advancement, who seems like blossoming kapoks, passionate and sincere, accompany your growth.