Goals of Student Learning:
My goal in teaching is to encourage my students to actively participate in the class activities in order to improve critical and higher-level thinking skills. Besides, I also encourage students to become independent learners by asking them to provide written and/or oral feedback on classwork and homework and encourage them to learn from each other. In addition, I believe and understand that some students will learn fast, and others will be slower. Therefore, it is important to identify and meet individual student needs when teaching in order to achieve quality, develop talents, create interest, and plan classroom activities. Lastly, I hope all these efforts will help students to reach their full potential.
Personal Philosophy
My teaching philosophy is to be passionate, enthusiastic, and engaging every time that I give a lecture so students are excited to learn more about the topic and become active learners. Through my many classroom experiences both as a student and a teacher, I have developed a sense for teaching techniques that effectively empower students and create a desire for learning. When objectives are clearly stated and lecture examples are well-planned, I believe that the students are more apt to absorb the key concepts rather than get confused or frustrated in the details.
Since engineering is all about problem solving, I emphasize the methodologies and intuition behind the subject matter rather than memorizing formulas or regurgitating examples. I also understand that students’ backgrounds can be quite different. Therefore, I approach the problem a couple different ways to mesh with their own unique understanding.
Students also bring individual interests and goals to a course, so I believe the best motivation comes from supplying examples related to my research or subsequent courses as well as emphasizing analytical skills that translate to and from other disciplines in science and engineering. By encouraging students to make such insights and connections, I hope to inspire and equip them to advance in their engineering education.
Belief and practices of assessment and evaluation
I believe that the measurement of student learning through assessment is important because it provides useful feedback to both lecturers and students about the extent to which students are successfully meeting course learning objectives. Based on that, as a lecturer, I need to provide a clear outline of how the assessment will be conducted. A rubric which is an assessment tool that clearly outlines marking criteria is also given to students. Thus, it will encourage critical thinking/self-evaluation, communicate expectations to students, expose the component skills of any task and encourage fair and consistent marking.
In my class, student’s assessments are divided into formative and summative assessments. Formative assessment is carried out throughout a course such as quizzes, tests as well as assignments. While, summative assessment is carried out at the end of a course such as Final Examination and final course work. This assessment is used to assign students a course grade.
Self-reflection of teaching development over time and how this relates to future goals
As a lecturer, I always try to improve my teaching method by considering some comments from students through e-PPP and by evaluating the students’ understanding in the class. There are a few steps taken for improvement, for example in the Traffic Engineering Course (SKAB3842):
- Updating the lecture notes with new examples and more organize information.
- Provide teaching videos to ensure student can fully understand the content.
- Give real transport project and situation to make connections to real-world applications of the course materials.
- Use various teaching style such as active learning, practical learning, cooperative learning, etc
- Inform students what I expect them to achieve at the end of the lesson to make course expectations clear.
- Use the technology in teaching and learning to make class interesting.