Statement of Teaching Philosophy

Last Updated: December 2007 (in my ENGI 501: Teaching Engineering)

As a teacher at a university, I have a unique chance to influence the directions of my students at a formative time in their life. College is their last time that they can focus almost purely on their own goals and aspirations, and I want to be there to help them through that process.  I see my teaching role as a mentor to prepare them for what lies beyond their graduation date, be it a career in industry or further education in graduate school. I enjoy helping students appreciate how the material learned in the course can help solve larger real-world problems, and seeing the excitement that that knowledge generates.

Good teaching enables the learning of new skills and abilities and is, in my experience, both motivating and confidence-building.  Good teaching in the classroom is enabled by customizing teaching methods towards student’s individual learning styles, and by replacing passive learning (i.e. lecturing) with active learning techniques whenever possible

Learning is not only limited to just gaining information from the professor in the classroom, and from independent work, but also from sharing information with classmates. Students can collaboratively learn from each other both inside and outside of the classroom, provided that the instructor properly motivates such learning experiences. This can be accomplished, for example, through the use of active learning exercises like think-pair-share or group homework assignments and projects.

For a truly successful learning situation, students must go beyond the understanding of key concepts and their direct application to problems on homework and tests. Given an open-ended problem statement, they should be able to extract specific goals and problems that need to be solved. In addition, they should be aware of the possible approaches that might be used to solve the problems, and be able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. In order for students to graduate with problem-solving skills, I believe they need to be practiced repeatedly throughout their education, and not merely in a high-level capstone design course. Students should be assigned “authentic learning” projects with incomplete, open-ended descriptions, representative of the type of work they will be likely to encounter after graduation.  This gives them a chance to hone their problem-solving (and problem-defining) skills, move their knowledge from the classroom to the lab (or office), and receive feedback in a supportive and familiar environment.

It has long been recognized in academia that engineers need good communication and teamwork skills.  But, traditional lecture-driven classes often fail to impart these skills to students.  Large group projects help accomplish these goals by forcing students to learn how to divide tasks among team members, combine their individual components into a functioning project, and to communicate their design approach and implementation details to other people. Making these group projects interdisciplinary in nature approach can be highly beneficial in preparing students for the “real-world,” and should be pursued whenever departmental and university dynamics allow.

In the previous 3 years, I have managed a lab section of the Fundamentals of Computer Engineering course.  My responsibilities involved running a lab section and delivering mini-lectures that “reviewed” material taught in class. The scope of these lectures often expanded upon the material covered in class in order to ensure that students were properly prepared to complete the lab successfully. In addition, I would be available to assist students with their hands-on lab assignments.  In the third year, I was also appointed as a TA for the course in consultation with the Dean’s office, and thus was responsible for course management for all lab sections and not just my own.  

During my year as TA for the Fundamentals of Computer Engineering course, I first used the Owlspace course management system from an instructor’s standpoint, and greatly appreciated the transparency in grading that the online system provided. Students were always able to check their assignment grades online, which reduced the number of problems discovered at the end of the semester.  If an absolute point scale (my preference) had been used in the course as well, the system would have performed even better by allowing students to precisely calculate their final course grade as well, and thus eliminate surprises and complaints at the end of the semester.

In my teaching experience thus far, I have strived to adjust my teaching in response to student feedback.  For example, in the previously mentioned laboratory sessions where lecturing is only a moderate emphasis, I have switched to a more demand-driven format where instruction is given at regular time intervals throughout the class period, rather than all at the beginning.  This avoids overloading students with material, and increases their motivation to learn new concepts, as the lab work typically demands new skills at the same point in the period that I introduce it to the class.

In the past year, I have made several significant efforts to improve my teaching skills. First, I enrolled in a new graduate-level course, ENGI 501 – Teaching Engineering, which discussed a wide range of topics relevant to engineering education, including course design, lecturing techniques, active and project-based learning methods, assessment design, and the evaluation of teaching, among other subjects.  Second, I attended a workshop on Teaching Engineering at Rice University taught by the nationally-known teaching experts Richard Felder and Rebecca Brent.  Third, I joined the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), as well as the IEEE Education Society and ACM SIGCSE.  Forth, and perhaps most significantly, I am working with my academic advisor to develop and teach a new computer networking course with a significant project-based focus in the Spring 2008 semester. This course forms the basis of the course module presented later in this portfolio.