Dear Newbie......

My fellow educator

Firstly, my heartiest congratulations on joining this noble profession.

This profession (or shall I say mission) has been the domain of some of the greatest personalities to have walked this earth since the beginning of time. This journey not only allows us, as educators, to impart knowledge and learning to others but also requires in-depth self reflection and continuous improvement.

A few pointers and check points that might help you (in my understanding at least) in beginning your trip down this challenging path are compiled below.

First and foremost it is a good idea to read up on the theories on how and why people learn. Different people subscribe to different theories. Your role as an educator might need some tweaking depending on the theory you find applicable in your circumstances.

Another area to prepare upon is the forming of a learning network formed with individuals with similar skill level sets. These could be your fellow graduates from the university times or peers at your workplace or similarly positioned individuals in other organisations.  This network of people will be your cushion to fall back upon when you need help academically or professionally.

Before proceeding with your first class with your students I suggest that you edit the course outline in such a way that it is very clear for the students to know what is expected of them. This will enable them to be certain about the requirements of the course from the onset.

It might also be a good idea to have the students discuss their expectations of the course during your first session with them. It will help you in gauging their strengths are requirements for the next 16 weeks or so.

As an educator your biggest aim should be to make the students independent, self-motivated and lifelong learners. Try to use strategies and techniques that bring out and establish these values in your students.

From my experience I can vouch for interactive learning and Project Based Learning strategies to be the most satisfying for engineering students but that should not stop you from experimenting with other strategies as different folks require different strokes!

A new technique that I can recommend for a trial in your class is the concept of a “Flipped Classroom”. I had tried it recently for the first time and my students found it to be very interesting and motivating. In fact in their feedback the students’ mentioned that they have understood the concepts much more thoroughly and completely.

Another important aspect that students appreciate is constant feedback on their performance. It will be prudent to have an honest channel of communication with all the students, ensuring they are always in the know of their progress and its comparison with any benchmarks. The reverse process of receiving feedback from students on your own performance is just as important for exactly the same reasons.

Finally a word on assessments.

Use a variety of assessments to gauge the students’ abilities with the content. The emphasis should be on understanding and not memorising. Both summative and formative types of assessments form integral parts of the assessment strategy and a good balance will able to reflect the students’ real ability.

I wish you all the best for your upcoming endeavours

Looking back at the strategies

Each of the discussed learning strategies have their benefits and are useful in certain situations. I do not think there is a case of “one strategy fits all”. Teachers may wish to try different strategies for different groups of students and continue with the successful approach.

In my opinion, if we keep the focus on the student, then PBL is the best strategy for engineering courses. It incorporates all the aspects of the students’ learning and manifests it in form of a multi faceted project. In my experience, the students tend to enjoy PBL the most as they find it more challenging and hence more satisfying too, once they accomplish the learning outcomes. 

Interactive learning can play a big part in keeping the students engaged and can lead to a deeper insight into to the subject matter. It also ensures the students to learn by doing embedding understanding of the concepts.

Direct instruction although gives the teacher control over the students and the content to be covered, I do not think it should be used generously in institutes of higher education, such as ours. It makes the students too dependent on the teacher. Hence they fail to explore other different means of learning. I admit there are certain courses that do need to employ this method but its use should be minimal.

A new strategy (or two!)

Couple of new strategies that I tried lately are

I found it very interesting how students perform differently when they are working in groups. I had intentionally formed the groups in such a way that there was at least one strong student in each of the groups comprising of 5 students each. I noticed that the weaker students tend to rely on the stronger student to do most of the research. Hence I changed the rules so every student was responsible for one part of the assignment.

When I collected feedback from the students using informal interviews a few interesting points were raised. The weaker students were happy being coupled with the stronger student but the same feeling was not reciprocated by the stronger student. A few of them even admitted to willingly doing the work for the weaker ones so that his own grade did not get affected by the bad performance of his team mate. Some of the stronger students also complained about being grouped with weaker ones as it was affecting their assignment and eventually grades.

On the positive side there was general consensus that this exercise did teach them how to work in teams and how to rely on each other and it was a good simulation of how teams operate in workplaces.

Another strategy I used was for the students to find applications of three-dimensional geometry in real life before they even started learning about them. Previously all the groups who I had taught this topic had difficulty understanding the uses of this complex concept. I referred most of the students to vessel design firms, geo-spatial data organisation or the air control department at the airport.

When the students gave their feedback (in form of a section in their research report) it was evident that although the students manage to get some useful information from these sources, they were unable to really link their curriculum to the way it is applied in the industry. This was caused by two main reasons. Firstly the level at which the students cover the topics in class is very basic compared to the extensive level that it gets used in the industry. Hence they had to take crash course in the deeper concepts. Secondly and most importantly most of the work in the industry gets done via very powerful softwares whereas at the college we are still using the good old-fashioned way of pen and paper. The students were totally at sea with the technology that is getting used by industry and could not relate to them at all.

On the positive side the students did manage to learn the real use of their course concepts and these visits to some of the relevant workplaces also motivated a few of them to consider employment at these organisations into these chosen fields.

Aligning Goals with the Course

After watching the video it is apparent that I have to deal with more Roberts than Susans. I think it can be partly blamed to the fact that I teach higher end engineering courses which give cold feet to even the above average students.

As it is mentioned, the trick is to accommodate for both types of students without compromising the quality. This becomes even trickier if we focus on assessments.

The assessments for engineering courses tend to have a practical component but unfortunately its contribution is not more than one fifths of the total course work. This can create minor hurdles for students as a vast majority of the students tend to learn more by doing. This type of learning has a much longer shelf life compared to a theoretical exam where the students try and memorise rather than understanding.

 When it comes to teaching students on how to perform a practical assignment, a thorough demonstration is usually the way that I follow. A question and answer session follows where the students understanding is checked by asking them about the key topics covered. I observe the students as they try to perform the given tasks and provide them feedback at the end of the session to help them improve their skills and concepts.  

Assessing: In More Ways Than One

I have been a staunch supporter of open book and project based assessments. Adding to these two, I would like to add a blog, a student-developed question bank and lastly a real world application for each of the major components covered.

Open Book

Somehow too much emphasis is put on memorizing the formulae and methods involved in solving engineering related problems. However in real life scenario an engineer will have all the information at hand and he/she will be expected to make the best decision for the given situation.

 Project Based   

Once again the various courses, that engineering students study, are always used in tandem in a real life situation. Hence it would be prudent to assign students projects where all the concepts from a variety of topics can be assessed to simulate a life like scenario.

Blog

A journal/diary/logbook has always been a method used by scientists and engineers to record and share their research, findings and actions. In this day of computer age a blog is a convenient replacement of such a document.

Student-developed Question Bank

The students are given the freedom to choose what they think are the most important and useful aspects of a particular topic. The students then form questions that they deem appropriate to encapsulate the gist of these aspects.

Real Life use

The students can be asked to find a use, either current or futuristic, for the core concepts that they have learned. This idea helps them to cement the understanding of the application of this concept in the real life. 

What about the students?

My students are young Emirati men who are studying various engineering courses at the Men’s Campus

It would be difficult to generalize on why the students learn or what makes them make the effort as different students have different motivation. However we can generalize to say that the majority wishes to seek knowledge to empower them to get good grades in exams, enabling them to complete their qualification and gaining attractive employment.

The section being used as example learns an Engineering Mathematics course which is the highest level of mathematics these students have to learn. This course gives them knowledge on a variety of topics including Statistics, Probability, Three Dimensional Geometry to name a few. The students are expected to have the ability to utilize and apply their knowledge on these topics in their engineering career.

Most of the learning takes place using the conventional pen and paper method by solving various types of engineering problems related to the topics being covered. The demonstration of competency is also in a similar manner with tests and exams forming a major component of the students’ final grades.  

Project presentation

As the readers of this blog may remember I had chosen MS Excel as the technology for using in my Mathematics class.

I had a three pronged logic for using this technology with the primary reason being using something different to perform mathematical operations.

Excel was used by the students to learn how to do Numerical Differentiation. Traditionally we had taught this topic using pen and paper. My assumption was that the students would find the usage of technology beneficial as it will help them in doing the calculations plus the convenience of making any changes in the formulae without losing any work as well as eradicating any incorrect uses of formulae.

Once I introduced the idea to my class about using something different to solve these differentiation problems, most of the students were enthusiastic about it. However there were a small minority who still preferred the pen and paper method. However by the conclusion of the topic they too were convinced that Excel did make the solution of these problems easier.

To record the success, or otherwise, I asked one of my students, Khalifa, to give a crash course to his peers. One of the students then made a video of this presentation using his cell phone and it is available at

 http://youtu.be/T8J2qRDeoJ0

This is another example of using a technology in class as the students can view the video of any learning or teaching at their leisure for after hours help.

Looking back, I think the experiment was a success it made the students' learning easier and hence my job too.

I am so convinced of using Excel for such problems, that in the upcoming semester I would use it to teach the whole of the Numerical Techniques learning outcome, of which Differentiation was just a part.