Jakob Iversen, professor of information systems in the College of Business at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, said his favorite part of teaching is that he gets to learn at the same time as his students.
“What I really like about teaching is that I get to learn as well. I teach in the field of information systems where things move very quickly so every time I have to teach something again, even though I’ve taught it before, I have to really go back and see what’s new and learn all the new stuff so I can teach the students that,” Iversen said.
Sometimes those revelations come ahead of time during class preparations and sometimes they come in the middle of a lecture.
“Those discoveries are really what makes it exciting to be teaching and then you get to share all of that knowledge with the students and help them to prepare for careers and further study,” Iversen said.
Iversen has taught at UW Oshkosh for 16 years and has a master’s degree in computer engineering and a Ph.D. in information systems.
His research focuses on the use of collaborating technologies, such as Wikis, Google Docs and Microsoft Word.
“We started when Wikis were a big trend several years ago and looked at what tools you can use to do a good job editing collaboratively,” Iversen said. “We expected Wikis to score higher than Word documents being emailed back and forth and were surprised when Word scored so much higher.”
Iversen and his fellow researchers expanded the project to include Google Docs and Microsoft Live.
“We expected that Word would score well against all the others and we were surprised again to find that Word scored the lowest,” Iversen said. “It was interesting to see that you have one set of expectations going into a study and you come out having found something completely different.”
Watch Iversen’s Faculty Five video:
For Iversen, the most rewarding part of his job is the students he gets to work with.
“Working with the students, following them throughout their academic career and guiding them along—that’s the most rewarding part of the job,” Iversen said.
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