Teaching
Teaching Statement
Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all, said by Aristotle. The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but illusion of knowledge, said by Stephen Hawk. One important task of teaching is to facilitate learners to master complex knowledge and skills in science and engineering. Hence, the primary role of professors should be the facilitator of making knowledge and skills easily accessible to learners of different capabilities. As shown in the Figure below, I concur that a good educational system should include a) video-based self-learning, b) classroom-based interaction learning, and c) experiment-based live learning. In fact, all my teaching materials do include a) recorded videos of lectures/tutorials, b) slides for classroom lectures/tutorials, and c) hand-on sessions for learnt knowledge..
In order to help students to adjust their mindsets to match with any specific course, I always remind students to position themselves into one of the following two roles, which are: a) to become future designers of products or systems in which the knowledge and skills will be covered by a course to be learnt, or b) to become future users of products or systems in which the knowledge and skills will be covered by a course to be learnt. In general, the learning objective of any course should be a weighted sum of both roles.
My contributions toward teaching include a) design and refinement of “robotics” course as course coordinator, b) design and refinement of “measurement and sensing systems” course as course coordinator, c) design and refinement of “microprocessor systems” course as course coordinator, d) design and refinement of “machine intelligence” course as course coordinator (subsequently the role has been transferred to another faculty member due to my heady workload as multiple course coordinators). In parallel, I also contribute to the teaching of “control theory” course and “manufacturing automation and control” course.
Last but not the least, I advocate that a faculty member’s abilities and contributions are to be evaluated according to quantity, quality, and competence of his or her teaching, research, and service. The better ways, or outcome-based ways, of assessing the quantity, quality, and competence of a faculty member’s teaching performance and excellence should be based on KPIs such as:
Teaching Quantity: The number of student-hours devoted to teaching (i.e., each course’s student-hours = number of students taught x number of teaching hours + hours of setting exam/quiz papers + hours of marking exam/quiz papers). The amount of AUs (Academic Unit) earned by the students taught (i.e., each course’s AUs earned = number of students taking the course x number of AUs assigned to the course). The amount of revenues generated from the courses taught (i.e., amount of revenues = amount of AUs earned x unit revenue per AU) (NOTE: A student must obtain X amount of AUs before being qualified for graduation. If the total revenue received from The Ministry of Education is Y dollars per graduated student, the unit revenue per AU should be Y/X).
Teaching Quality: The number of awards received from internal teaching activities. The number of invitations received from external learning groups.
Teaching Competence: The assessment by the students taught in terms of the sum of the scores received from the students taught (NOTE: it is totally wrong to use the average score per student as a KPI). The assessment, in terms of the teaching leadership as well as the teaching challenge level, by the scientific committee in charge of teaching evaluation.
(Module 1, Module 2, Module 3, Module 4, Module 5)
(Module 1, Module 2, Module 3, Module 4)
(Module 1, Module 2, Module 3, Module 4, Module 5)
(Session 1, Session 2, Session 3, Session 4, Session 5, Session 6)
