Edited: Csókay Bernadett
As a first year student, getting right into university studies that are vastly different than what was expected from us in high school, we all need charismatic teachers, who not only teach us the material, but create a friendly teacher-student relationship, encourage and guide us, and explain the same thing with unshakeable enthusiasm again and again, until we understand. This teacher for me was Dr. Károly Altdorfer, who did all of the above right as the practice leader of my Macroscopic Anatomy class.
You won the Merit-price for the first time this year. What do you think, why did you get the most votes from the students? Did you do something different compared to the last few years?
I don’t feel like I did something differently, nor did I use mental tricks, to make them vote for me. I didn’t change a lot, but I consciously paid more attention to the classes and the exams, trying to make them less stressful; achieving a relaxed mood. I even think it’s important to say some jokes related to the topic in order to get the lost attention back or to „fry” the important information into the students’ brains through a humorous remark.
Are you making sure of this on exams too?
Yes, as an examiner I try to lighten the mood so the examinee can get relaxed. When the exams were in the examiners’ office, I for example played comforting music for the time of the preparation. It is, however, hard to calm the students down in exam situations, but if we are not getting started on the hardest question, rather with some easier ones as a warm-up, that can work. I am interested in what they know, and it is important to me that they feel it too. On the other hand, if they need some time to think,and can’t answer right away, I try to help.
In your opinion, what is a good teacher like? What are the 3 most important characteristics? What are the characteristics you are still working on?
That is a great question, makes me think. A good teacher should be empathetic and should pay attention to the students. The lecture and the practice has to be interactive, the teacher should watch the faces, reactions, ask questions, but the students also have to admit if something is not clear. It shouldn’t be impersonal as a lecturer or practice teacher, the goal is to help the learning process and make sure that the students dare to ask their questions. Other than that, the lecture has to be high quality. You can’t just talk about anything, you have to expect high quality from the students too. This includes being able to learn the basics. All of the subjects have great books, so does anatomy, this is why we are not the source of the information. Our superpower is to highlight the essential facts, the most– even clinically – important pieces of knowledge that are useful for life and exams, and hand them over to the students in detail. In addition, a good teacher is patient. They say a teacher needs the patience of a saint. As I said it before, the students have to ask questions, give feedback, and the teacher shouldn’t take that as criticism or as an offense that they didn’t get it for the first time, in fact he has to explain it with the same enthusiasm , maybe a little differently, slower or from another side etc. I try to do better in these and I feel like it is worth it.
How can you turn that into action, how do you create a relaxed mood?
Even though I learned it at the practices last year, the Readers may be interested too..
I always offer my students to cut the formalities and I believe that makes it possible to have a lightened atmosphere, so it is not ’awkward’ if they don’t understand or know something even if it’s not the first time. Of course, this requires mutual respect, something I can expect while keeping up the quality. i try to be friendly and easily approachable and to learn the names in a new group quickly so we can start off in a relaxed mood. I also try to keep the students interested, I usually add information that motivates them to learn the material. And there is humour too. Of course, it is not appropriate to joke in a dissecting room, but in my opinion, it is okay to slip some humour into the communication while taking reverence into consideration. That’s way better than sticking to the stiff material of the day.
What were your plans when you started university? Were you planning to become a teacher or did you have aspirations as a clinician?
No-no, it was not always like this. I remember, as a first year I had a conversation with one of my groupmate. We were standing in front of the dissection room, and I told her no matter what happens, I will never be an anatomist. The picture of the job in our heads was finding a capillary here or there, or some other structure, and being very happy about it. However, in the first two years I started to like anatomy, I participated in contests and I was able to succeed, I had an excellent teacher. Because of that, I stayed as a demonstrator in third year. I was afraid at first, I only taught first-year students, but after that I started to get a feel for the game, and I realised how much I can help the students. I had my first group of my own while still studying. And after that the question surfaced: What am I going to do next? It was believed that anatomists were going to become surgeons, like neurosurgeons for example. This was not the case for me, I was interested in internal medicine and otorhinolaryngology, ophthalmology and cardiology. As a sixth year I was an assistant of an old ophthalmologist, and I saw a lot of interesting things there, I even did my Accident Surgery exam by his side. I wrote my thesis in cardiology about the ischaemic diseases of the myocardium. I also got a job offer there, so it was not a ’there-was-no-better-option’ decision to become an anatomist. It was a choice made between cardiology and anatomy. I have never regretted it for a second, I still love it and I am happy with this decision. I have at least three groups a year, sometimes four. I have been the Hungarian Educational Director for 15 years and have been working as the German Educational Director for two years so I have to do a lot of adm
inistering and organising. So I knew and loved anatomy, but what kept me here was my love for teaching.
What does the department think of online education? What do you think, will there be something that remains after everything is back to normal?
The idea is to have the practices of Macroscopic Anatomy as contact classes. This is a good theory, because I think it is hard to understand and learn this material. Online classes can’t be that interactive,so I hope the students can still come in and have contact classes. In March, the first wave of Coronavirus we tried the full online presence, but it was hard. It took a long time as a teacher to prepare for the classes, but it couldn’t have been easy for you either with the consultation week, to practice everything in three days that you only learned in theory before.
But there is a little advantage in online teaching. We needed to make beautiful pictures and videos with explanations.
We were also thinking about professional sound- and filming techniques in the long run, but it is not entirely feasible not only financially, but it is also hard to organise the online and live presence at the same time. I think the best option is live, contact lectures but it would not be bad if the lectures could be replayable. The workers of the department improved a lot in a short time, and so did the technical standards. We did a survey whether we should make presentations with long explanations, or record us explaining it, and the answer was hands down that it is easier to understand and study if we record the lectures with sounds, so that was the only way we uploaded them in the autumn.
How do you feel about the second wave of the virus? What does this mean for a university teacher in terms of time management?
The second wave got to me personally, as I caught it in the middle of September, it went through the whole department. I experienced an upper respiratory disease and got tired easily, and also lost my sense of smell and taste. We tried to do the right preparations in the department to hold the virus back as much as we can. It is harder to follow the students’ work through online classes, for example if they were able to find a structure on a histology sample. It is also sad that we were not able to open the Museum of Anatomy this year which provides a lot of help to students learning Macroscopic Anatomy every year. Preparing for online classes takes a lot of time for real. It was especially true last semester, when the macro practises were online too, because previously I would have just shown something in the dissecting room from the front and – after turning it – from the back, but online, that required a lot of work to show on pictures.
What do you like most about teaching?
As an examiner I haven’t met you yet, but I have heard both good and bad. Those who have passed the exam said it was a really great experience, and felt lucky to have had a nice examiner; but those less successful had an opinion a „little’’ different. What is your favourite exam question?
I can’t tell you a concrete favourite question in Macroscopic Anatomy, but I like to ask the role, function and connections of a structure. I don’t expect the examinees to know these right away, but if they are aware of the basics, they can get to the answer with some helping questions or information. On Microscopy exams my recurring question is „Where is the axon of the perikaryon?”. This is a question that shows the student’s real knowledge, if he or she actually knows the subject or just learned it word to word. I can surely have a pleasant conversation with the examinees who answer that right away.
What can „piss you off” on an exam?
I try to stay calm, I have put up with a lot of wrong answers with the biggest patience. After the exams, when the cafeteria was still open we used to talk about the funniest or craziest answers with the other examiners.
I’ve heard a lot, it’s hard to surprise me. It annoys me when I can’t even help with questions because the knowledge of the student is too cloudy. I can help if there is at least some knowledge. The other very inconvenient thing is when someone comes to a second or third exam and doesn’t know the answer to the exact question he or she failed on. That is written on the paper.
There are examiners who are only curious about that, wouldn’t even ask anything else. If the student doesn’t even know that, there is no point in coming to a second exam anyway.
How do you relax?
I don’t really have free time unfortunately. I’ve been working almost throughout the whole summer. I like to ride the bike, to read or even travel. I have a friend group, we rowed through the bigger rivers of Hungary (Danube, Tisza, Hernád, Sajó), even the wildest river, Rába. We can’t do this now, but I like to read reports of trips like this and remember the ones I’ve had with joy. Now we can’t really meet because of social distancing . I like to go on trips everywhere in the country, seeing churches and castles from the Árpád age. There is a Facebook group I registered for. It has people with the same interests, sharing experiences and tips about these kinds of things. Nowadays we only have the picture and video watching from home, reading, watching movies. I like crime movies, I don’t really like series, I don’t have the patience for that, but I love the Colombo movies very much, I saw all of them and I would love to watch them again, if it is on TV.
+1 fun fact about Altdorfer Károly and the german language
He started to learn German as a grown-up man because of a flyer of a language school in his mailbox, and now he has been the German Educational Director for 2 years. He studied German while he was still a student of the university, but that was mostly about fun for him. Otherwise spontaneous decisions are not typical of him, but this he does not regret, and he would still like to improve his language skills