Engineering is defined in the American Heritage dictionary as the application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacturing, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems. I emphasize the word application in this definition as it highlights what I feel is the crux of engineering education; At the end of the day, I want to train engineers that can apply knowledge to solve practical problems, and communicate effectively their solutions.

Too often, teaching focuses on simply providing knowledge to the student. In my blunt view, this role better describes a text book than a teacher. Given the vast access to knowledge available to the modern student in this digital age, such a role is also unnecessary. Rather, the modern teacher needs to facilitate the application of knowledge to solve relevant problems. In this approach, focus is placed on equipping students with the ability to discern between relevant and irrelevant knowledge, identify gaps in their knowledge, and devise strategies to fill those gaps; all in the context of a practical problem. My first adoption of this approach was realized for a fundamental engineering course on Solid Mechanics. I led in-class discussions about real engineering structures, engaging the students to attempt to reverse engineer them, and ultimately leading to them identifying engineering concepts they were lacking. The self-arrived realization of their own knowledge gap motivated students to take an active role in their education, and I found that many students would attempt to overcome it on their own through self-study prior to it being covered in subsequent lectures.

Another important element of my teaching philosophy is to recognize and respect the diversity of learning styles within a class. Endlessly copying notes written on the blackboard during a traditional lecture may have been how I learned, but it will not work for everyone. Students, however, often find themselves in this endless note taking trap out of fear of missing something important. They attempt record everything given in class in hopes of being able to reflect on it later in a manner more appropriate for their personal learning style, transforming a lecture into a data gathering rather than learning environment. I take a two-step approach to break this paradigm. First, I remove the students fear by providing access to all of the lecture material through audio and video lecture recordings and electronic copies of lecture material. Second, I employ various learning styles in my teaching activities during a lecture to ensure there is something that speaks to everyone in the class. This increases the learning value of the lecture for all of the students and in my experience, increases class attendance despite the access to all of the lecture material.

Grades are not everything, but assessment certainly is. A complaint I often hear from teachers is that “students are too focused on grades, and not about understanding the course.” In my experience, this is a symptom of insufficient formative assessment. Students need feedback on their learning progression in order to adapt their learning approach. Without it, grades become the only real feedback they receive, and by the time they receive the grades, it is often too late to adapt. Arguments and concerns about grades then arise out of frustration of grade not adequately reflecting how the student felt about their learning progression. Formative assessment techniques such as in-class polling, and peer assessment go a long way in helping a student assess this learning progression. Assessment is not only for the student. Teachers need to listen to the feedback from their students and react to it in their teaching approach. They need to enable teaching as a dialogue. This requires flexibility in your teaching approach, yet clarity in your teaching objectives.

The final element of my teaching philosophy is that teaching is and should be fun. I adamantly disagree with the opinion that teaching is a burden on an academic’s research activities. Excellence in teaching helps hone skills for simplifying and communicating complex ideas to new audiences and ultimately the contribution to society of training future intellects can outweigh many contributions from research. Academics should thus take on their teaching activities with the same passion, enthusiasm, and creativity that they do for their research activities. It should be as fun to take a class with a professor as it is to work in their research group.