"What you can not create, you can not understand.", Richard Feynman
I believe that a well designed engineering course will integrate both theoretical and computational aspects. The integration will make lectures more attractive, which enhances students' learning experience. This way, students will be able to engineer systems by using computers and implement engineering theories in the design. Such training can be achieved through group projects and assignments.
I view my role as a mentor to students. To motivate students, I will design interesting and effective course materials. Along this line, I will encourage students to explore relevant research areas. My goals in teaching are to pass down knowledge to students and initiate their creativity in the course subject.
I have been a teaching assistant in two biomedical engineering courses: "Bio-transport phenomena" and "Modeling cellular and molecular systems". The courses cover materials such as advanced mathematics, fluid mechanics, and reaction kinetics. My responsibilities in the courses include grading exams and giving lectures. I have also conducted several review sessions to prepare students for exams.
I view students' performance in a course as an indication of my teaching efficiency. I will constantly adjust my course materials to adapt to students' learning patterns. If large percentage of students is slow on a particular topic, I will make sure to slow down and enhance my teaching in that topic.
I also hold office hours, so that students can approach me with their questions. Students can also email me with regards to the course materials. In addition to that, I will encourage students to post comments or questions in my blog.
Lectures: I will design powerpoint to strengthen my verbal presentation. The powerpoint will have illustrations or pictures to enhance visualization of the topics. In every beginning and end of a lecture, I will present overall picture of the course. This way, students will be able to connect current topics to previous lectures. This way, they can visualize connections between different topics. During lectures, I will pause frequently to answer students' questions. Depending on time allowance and the amount of course materials, I will also post questions to students, in order to stimulate discussion among them during or after the lecture.
I will use chalk board to present derivation of mathematical equations. This way, students can follow the derivation easier than reading the derivation in textbooks. After lectures, I will combine recorded lectures and powerpoints into narrated powerpoints. Students will be able to download the narrated powerpoints and revise important concepts covered in the lectures.
Cooperative learning: Cooperative learning allows students' interaction with one another, which enchances the exchange of ideas. This way, students will learn a subject better by explaining it to their peers. To further promote collaboration, I will assign a wiki project to the entire class. The wiki will focus on an engineering problem, which requires understanding on course materials. The wiki will also extend beyond classroom by including some cutting edge research problems. Students will contribute to the wiki by formulating hypothesis, designing experiments, conducting simulations, and analysing results. The amount of contribution will be graded accordingly.
Continuous Assessments: I will assign one homework per week to access students understanding on the subject. I will also hold pop quizes before lectures to make sure that students are well prepared. There will be 3 exams in a course. The exams will be open-book where students can refer to textbooks. I will design the exam questions based on important concepts in the course. The questions will require students to formulate engineering problem in the form of mathematical equations, make assumptions, and eventually solve the equations. I will balance difficulties of the questions so that the grade distribution is a Gaussian with mean around 80%. I believe this is the best way to reward students who has worked hard for the course, while making sure that the others keep up with the course.
Computers and Internet: Throughout the course, students will solve engineering problems using programs such as Matlab or Mathematica. The programs are applied to simulate complex problems and to visualize results. Students will also use internet to search for information or literature pertaining to the course.
This course focuses on modeling of biological systems by using applied mathematics. The preequisites include basic engineering mathematics, Finite Difference Methods, linear optimization methods, and nonlinear dynamics. Students are expected to be proficient in both C++ and matlab programming.