We spoke with an award-winning teacher, a botanist from the Faculty of Science, Milan Chytrý, about the importance of international contacts, critical discussion, and independent student work.
How would you describe your teaching style?
My teaching style depends on what I’m teaching. When I’m giving a lecture, standing in front of students in an auditorium, I try to explain the topic in a clear and understandable way, and I watch them to see if they’re engaged or bored. Based on that, I adjust the pace of the lecture and occasionally ask a question to regain their attention. I also try to help them distinguish between more and less important information, and I might share my own opinions on potentially controversial topics. These are things that textbooks and the internet can’t provide, and where the teacher’s role is crucial.
In field courses, one has to pay attention to many other things: the weather, the condition of the road, or whether there’s enough space at a particular location for all students to see well. We can involve advanced students by having them help us show plant or animal species to beginners. The social aspect of field courses is important as well. Especially if the field excursion spans several days, it’s a great opportunity for team bonding. At the Department of Botany and Zoology, we don’t need to organise targeted teambuilding events for students, because activities like evening campfires with guitar usually happen spontaneously. It is better and easier to work in a group with thus strengthened relationships.
Seminars serve various purposes. They motivate students to work continuously on their thesis projects. Some students increase their effort mainly in response to upcoming deadlines, which are here tied to planned seminar presentations. But the most important role of seminars is to teach students how to present and discuss their work publicly. When a student works on a project, they often understand the topic themselves but struggle to communicate it to others. The seminar helps them think about how to explain the topic articulately. They also need to come up with arguments and defend their work when doubts arise about certain parts. It’s important that the discussion is “digestible” for the student and that they can accept and use constructive critique. This is difficult for some students. Especially recently, we’ve seen that students aren’t fully prepared from high school to present their work publicly and engage in critical discussion. We need to teach them – and sometimes it takes time – that the discussion is not about their person, but about their work. In science, this is a normal process: someone does something, and others try to find potential flaws. This is not to condemn the colleague, but because we all want our scientific results to be accurate. When a colleague constructively critiques my work, I appreciate that they’ve invested their time and intellectual effort to potentially improve it. For students (and even seasoned colleagues), it’s helpful to use the “sandwich method”: first tell them what they did well, then share the concerns – making it clear that the critique is about the work, not the person – and finally end on a positive note with suggestions for improvement to achieve the best possible outcome.
“If in lectures we teach facts that students can’t apply, it doesn’t make much sense.”
Milan Chytrý
You’ve supervised a large number of theses. Can you share something about this type of teaching?
For me, it’s essential that students can practically apply what they’ve learned. If in lectures we teach facts that students can’t apply, it doesn’t make much sense. From my perspective, working on a bachelor’s or master’s thesis is the most important part of education. That’s where students get a task that’s entirely theirs. They must show whether they can apply what they’ve learned in lectures and seminars, and whether they can see the project through to completion.
Some supervisors recruit students for their thesis projects to fulfil a specific task on their ongoing projects. I don’t do that; I assign topics that are thematically related to my projects but are independent. If successfully completed, these topics enrich the project, but if not, they don’t jeopardise it. That’s why I always discuss various options with each student who comes to inquire about thesis topics. I try to find out what interests them, what motivates them, and what their possibilities are. Only after such a discussion do I formulate a topic, explain it to the student, and ask if it suits them. Each topic should result in a thesis that is the student’s own work, with their intellectual contribution clearly discernible. The thesis shouldn’t look like the result of me or my team, with the student merely contributing labour. I think that’s very important for fostering motivation for independent scientific work. And it’s also important that the topic interests me as a supervisor. Nothing is worse for a student than realising they’re working on a topic their supervisor isn’t actually interested in.
Then it’s important to guide the student while also giving them freedom. Sometimes boundaries need to be set: if a student wants to pursue something and I already know it’s a dead end based on my experience, I should redirect them. Problems can also arise with exceptionally diligent students who are perfectionists. Such a student might get stuck at a certain stage and repeatedly redo completed analyses or rewrite good texts in various versions because they’re not fully satisfied with the results. In these cases, I need to monitor not whether the student is working, but whether their work is progressing. If not, I have to help them move forward. These students tend to unnecessarily prolong their studies or, in the worst case, not finish at all. I need to reassure them and teach them that nothing is ever completely perfect, that their work is already at a decent level according to field standards, and that further refinement isn’t necessary if it requires an enormous time investment. I tell them a proverb (allegedly from Voltaire) that my mentor in England once taught me: “The best is the worst enemy of the good.”
“A PhD candidate is, in every case, a partner.”
Milan Chytrý
What differences do you see between supervising bachelor’s and master’s theses, and how does that compare to supervising doctoral students?
The main purpose of a bachelor’s thesis is for the student to gradually become familiar with a topic in depth and learn something new in the process. At the Department of Botany and Zoology, we almost exclusively assign practical bachelor’s theses. Our graduates become botanists, zoologists, or conservationists with a solid foundation in botany or zoology. Therefore, they need to be able to work outdoor and correctly identify plants and animals. They usually observe nature out of personal interest, but the bachelor’s thesis motivates them to do so systematically. This work should also have some small scientific contribution, perhaps on a regional scale. The student then sees that they didn’t do the thesis just to learn something, but that it had a deeper purpose. We usually don’t assign bachelor’s theses that are a pure literature review, although literature review is typically part of every thesis’s introductory section. Some other fields are now abolishing bachelor’s theses, partly due to the rise of artificial intelligence, which can easily generate standard literature reviews. However, given our practical focus, this isn’t relevant for us; on the contrary, we see theses as an excellent opportunity for independent, project-oriented student work.
A master’s thesis may or may not build on the bachelor’s thesis. It doesn’t continue if the student or supervisor finds that the bachelor’s thesis topic has been exhausted, or if the student becomes more interested in a different topic. Some students deliberately choose different focuses for their bachelor’s and master’s theses because they want a broader overview of the field. Even when students start working on a new topic for their master’s thesis, we expect that they’ve gained experience from their bachelor’s thesis and can independently tackle a scientific problem at a higher level. The ideal outcome is a master’s thesis that can be adapted into a scholarly article with the supervisor’s help or that has practical applications, such as a methodology applicable in nature conservation.
Doctoral students are a completely different level. It’s the selection of the very best. Accepting a PhD candidate only makes sense if they know something in the field better than I do. Their specialised knowledge and skills then complement the research team. The topic of the doctoral thesis is always agreed upon so that it fits into the broader context of research in our group, and the PhD candidate doesn’t work in isolation. I aim to mentor PhD candidates with the mindset that they should eventually surpass me and advance our field. It’s important to integrate them into the international community, which is why we send them on research stays abroad. We always choose the location strategically so that they learn something not available here. It might be a workplace that is already part of our international network, but PhD candidates can also expand that network by going to places we haven’t collaborated with before. Upon returning, they help develop our research with new approaches learned abroad.
A PhD candidate is, in every case, a partner. I don’t like that they’re called “students”; they’re educated individuals conducting scientific work, even if they’re still refining their skills. But we senior researchers should also be continuously improving. A PhD candidate is a very important member of the research team.
“There’s always fresh blood and new ideas at the university; that’s why I wouldn’t want to work at a research institute without students, and I’m glad to be in the university environment.”
Milan Chytrý
Is it easy for you to combine the roles of scientist and teacher?
To me, it comes together quite naturally. When I was beginning my career, I mainly wanted to do science. If you’re not a complete introvert, you want to share your research with others. But when you dive deeply into a specific problem, it’s not easy to share the joy of discovery, because few people understand your issue. That’s why it’s great to have students – you don’t only teach them what you do but also the broader context, so they understand what impact it might have.
As a PhD candidate, I was required to teach from my first year. I taught several practical exercises in a subject that was not my focus, and I had to learn it. When you teach, you need to understand the broader context, which means you have to study much more than what would be sufficient for regular scientific work. Thanks to teaching, I actually understand my research focus better.
At the same time, if you want to develop your research, you need people who understand the field and the topic well. Some I accepted from abroad or other Czech institutions, but some of the best scientists in the team were once my students. If I worked at a research institute outside the university, I couldn’t expand my research as broadly as I can at a university, thanks to the constant influx of new students. The university environment is highly dynamic: every student brings a new perspective, every group of students focuses on something different, some stay for their PhD or collaborate on projects, and others go abroad and return with new experiences. We host international interns from many places working on various topics. This connects generations and people with different experiences. Everyone who has spent time with us has brought something valuable. There’s always fresh blood and new ideas at the university; that’s why I wouldn’t want to work at a research institute without students, and I’m glad to be in the university environment.
You’ve had experience teaching abroad. What does that bring you as a teacher?
At various foreign universities, I’ve taught short specialised courses, mainly intensive courses on data analysis in our field. You get to know different cultural contexts and how people in different cultures adopt new things and how quickly they apply them in practice. Outside Europe, we’ve had long-term collaboration with Taiwan, for example, where I supervised a PhD candidate and where my former Czech PhD candidate now works as an assistant professor. These are interesting experiences, but the greatest benefit of teaching abroad for me is expanding our network of collaborators. This allows us to send our students to various foreign institutions and has also ensured a steady stream of international interns interested in working with us.
What advice would you give to a new colleague starting to teach their first course?
I’ve certainly advised such colleagues, but they were so capable that they managed on their own (laughs). I’d recommend setting up a system for gathering student feedback. When someone teaches for the first time, it’s naturally not perfect, and they need to test, for instance, what’s too difficult for students and what’s too trivial. They should ask students about this or check it with an optional test. There’s a course opinion poll in the University’s Information System, but students often only fill it out when they’re very dissatisfied. If the lecture is mostly fine and there are just small things that could be improved, they hardly ever write that in the poll, and the teacher doesn’t find out. When someone is starting out, they can emphasise to students that they welcome feedback – whether through the poll or outside of it – because they genuinely want to use it to improve their teaching. Students appreciate this approach and respond positively.
Interviewer: Karolína Zlámalová, Quality Office RMU (zlamalova@rect.muni.cz)
We spoke with an award-winning teacher from the Faculty of Pharmacy Lenka Smejkalová about creating a safe learning environment, innovating course content, and the importance of connecting teaching and exams with real-world practice.
