TEACHING

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(1)    Subjects Taught

 

         Electric Circuits

         Engineering Mathematics

         Modelling and Control

         Digital Control

         Computer Control Systems

         Neural and Fuzzy Systems

 

 

(2)    Awards

 

·               Winner of 1999 Teacher of the Year Award, School of EEE, NTU (selected from more than 200 academic staff).

·               Winner of 1999 Best Vocal Lecturer of the Year Award (a Student Choice Award given by NTU EEE Club and it was selected from more than 200 academic staff).

·               Winner of 2003 Most Handsome Lecturer of the Year Award (a Student Choice Award given by NTU EEE Cub and it was selected from more than 200 academic staff).

·               Winner of 2008 Year 2 Teaching Excellence Award, School of EEE, NTU.

 

 

(3)    Recognitions

 

·               Invited as a seminar speaker at CAREER’2001 on 11 March, 2001. The title of the talk is “Nurturing Engineering Technologists in the New Millennium”. The seminar is opened to the public and there were about 300 participants.

·               Interviewed by ActiveMedia on innovative use of MATLAB in teaching Engineering Mathematics on 3 March, 2003. Please refer to the website http://www.techsource.com.sg/eresources/eres_userstories.asp for more details.

·               Invited to speak at the Education Seminar on Software Tools and Techniques for Academic Professionals Today organised by TechSource Pte Ltd on 26 February, 2004. This seminar is opened to the public and there were about 200 participants. Please refer to the website http://www.techsource.com.sg for more details.

·               Invited to conduct a workshop entitled “Latest Developments and Futuristic Trends in Computational Intelligence, Robotics and Autonomous Systems,” 24- 27 October, 2005, Department of Electrical Engineering, Southern Taiwan University of Technology.

·              Invited to conduct a MATLAB Workshop for the EEE Club on 7 February, 2007.

·              Invited to conduct a workshop on Advanced Linear Algebra and Applications from 18 May to 31 May, 2007 by Huafan University, Taiwan.

·              Invited to conduct a MATLAB Workshop for the EEE Club held from 19 to 20 February, 2008.

·               Invited to conduct a workshop on Intelligent Robotics from 18 to 20 December, 2007 at National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan.

 

 

(4)    Teaching Philosophy

 

The mission of the School of EEE is “Excellence in Teaching and Excellence in Research”. I am a firm believer of Active Learning. Every year, I share the following famous quote from Albert Einstein (1879-1955) with students: “Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs”. I frequently encourage students to be passionate about learning and emphasize the importance of knowledge. I  encourage them to read books and think beyond the lecture notes. In the lectures, I emphasize on basic understanding of concepts and illustrate them with simple examples and provide physical interpretation and graphical visualization whenever possible. For example, Engineering Mathematics II (EE2007) is a subject well regarded as very difficult by many students. In order to make it interesting and easier to understand, I use software tools such as MATLAB to help them visualize some abstract concepts and give them some useful external links as extra resources. I also demonstrate possible applications of some of the concepts to students during the lectures so that they can appreciate what they are learning.  I encourage students to ask questions and participate in discussions not only during tutorials but also lectures. In order to encourage participation from students, sometimes, I give them small quizzes and I use my book entitled “Engineering Mathematics with Real-World Applications” as prizes.

Many students have shown appreciation of my effective teaching method and my passion for teaching. They have also commented that my lectures are stimulating and thought provoking and they have learnt a lot from the lectures. One Ministry of Education Scholar sent me an email to show his appreciation of teaching on 23 December, 2006.  He wrote “… they way you enlightened me in creatively solving engineering problems have been an unforgettable and beneficial to me for the rest of my life …”. (The email can be made available on request.) I was also interviewed by the EEE Club for the EEE Graduation Year Book on 28 March, 2007 and the EEE Club’s Annual Magazine Bandwidth on 2 May, 2008.