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Teaching Philosophy “Winner of the EEE
Year 2 Teaching Excellent Award, EEE, NTU for year 2012”. The subject has
student size of 639.” |
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As a lecturer
in EEE, NTU, it is my mission to groom and train engineers of our immediate
and future generations. It is my conviction that in order to do well in the
above mission, two basic elements must be well established, namely teaching
philosophy and teaching technique. Teaching philosophy is about what we as a
lecturer believe in teaching, while teaching technique is the mean needed to
execute our beliefs effectively. Lacking either of these two elements will
greatly degrade the learning experience of our young engineers under our
charges. I always
believe that fundamental physical principles coupled with critical thinking
skills provide the learning foundation of every good engineer. Based on this
belief, there are five pillars to my teaching philosophy: (1) To arouse
interests in order to gain their attention and to ignite their will to learn. (2) To unravel the
fundamental concepts in electrical and electronic engineering. (3) To teach
students how to fish instead of giving students the fish. Encourage the
students to apply the fundamental concepts rather than force-feeding them. (4) To help students
in linking knowledge from previous courses with the current course. Let them
understand the big picture of the entire EEE learning experience. (5) To help students
become independent learners, as learning is a life-long process. Learning
does not end with graduation or becoming a Professor. As
important as the five principles are, it will never work well without proper
teaching techniques. In order to teach well, we as lecturers have the
responsibility to hone our teaching skills. A bored student will never be a
good student. Thus, I motivate the students by first breaking down their wall
of complacency. Most of the time, students do not understand the reason of
learning a certain course or fail to appreciate the beauty of the knowledge
presented to them. This sets a psychology barrier stopping them from learning
effectively. Lacking a better term, I name such barrier as wall of
complacency. One example on how to tear down the wall of complacency is what
I have employed in course “EE4343: RF Circuit Design”. I invited the students
to go through a “thought experiment” with me. In the thought experiment, I
shattered their old belief that voltage values are constant along a wire
(metal line) by proving to them that it is otherwise. This way, I will be
able to highlight the importance and the beauty of the fundamental concepts
that I will subsequently discuss with the students. This keeps the students
to be on their toes and eager to learn. NTU is an
important tertiary institution and it is understood that not all the students
who have enrolled into NTU are of equal academic prowess. It is very
important for a lecturer here to acknowledge this and to adjust his/her
teaching techniques accordingly. The biggest hurdle for a poor performing
student from becoming a good performing student in a new course is his
limited fundamental knowledge. The gulf separating a poor performing student
from a good one will widen each time the students join a new course as old
fundamental concepts are often needed to fully understand a new fundamental
concept. Sometimes lecturers face the dilemma of either cutting down the
materials to be covered for the sake of poorer students or simply focusing on
the better performers. I chose to do neither. I spent three months with an
average of five hours per day over the school holidays to improve my lecture
materials. These materials are prepared so that all the fundamental concepts
can be explained in a simple and concise way. Sometimes during the lectures,
I even had to “bring” the student back through time to revisit some
fundamental concepts they have learned in their secondary school like “how to
describe a circle using an equation” etc. As you can imagine, this is not
only effective in teaching but also in gaining interests of the students. In
addition, I provided reading materials to cater to different styles of
learning. Each student is unique and has a varying style of learning. Some
students can practically self-study from a text book, so teaching right out
from text book is not a good idea if you wanted their attentions. Some
students need examples or analogies to attain proper understanding. In my
courses, I recommended readings from textbooks and reference books to the
students. During the lectures, I went through many examples by using
transparencies and overhead projector (OHP). Instead of solving the questions
and let the students copy, I encouraged the students to answer on their own
and to teach their fellow classmates on what they have learned. Often I
have heard comments of how students from NTU are rather passive unlike those
in the west. While I agree with the comments as majority of the students here
are raised under the Asian culture, it is only natural for them to be a
little passive. Acknowledging this trait of our students leads to another
aspect of teaching, which is often over-looked, namely the trust issue
between lectures and students. I found that students here might be passive
but they are actually just as inquisitive as students in the west. As
contradicting as it sounds, I have proven this to be true through my courses.
To gain the trusts of my students, I set a few ground-rules with them at the
beginning of the course. One of the rules is that I promised to never utter
negative remarks when a student asks a simple question or replies wrongly. In
fact, praising a student works very well in inspiring the students to be more
pro-active and eager to question and learn. They actually became so active
and asked so many good questions that sometimes I became worried that I might
not be able to finish the day’s lecture. I believe that through a good
trusting lecturer and student relationship, students will be more open and more
pro-active in learning. By means
of simple, intuitive, proactive teaching methods and a sprinkle of trust, we
will be able to prepare our students to face the ever changing field in
industry or academia. Our students will use their skills and knowledge
learned here to create those of their own that will ultimately benefit the
community. I like to
do student feedback as through comments on the student feedback form, I will be
able to improve my teaching. Enclosed are some of feedback forms. CLICK HERE for > Teaching
clicker template CLICK HERE
for > Recent
student feedback
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