Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.

  - Albert Einstein

ein

My regular teaching portfolio concentrates on the past 24 years during which I taught 14 subjects at graduate and under-graduate levels (Please see Table below).

summary

Teaching during Ph.D School


I also have experience in research student supervision and consulting work. I have successfully supervised several PhD students, post-doctoral fellows and masters students. I have also guided several undergraduate project works.

Academic Advising - Completed Research Students


Supervisor -  (Doctor of Philosophy)

Supervisor - Master of Science (MS)

Committee Involvement (Doctor of Philosophy)

.
Thesis Examination (Doctor of Philosophy)


Thesis Examination - (Master of Science)

  • University of South Australia, Australia

  • University of Pretoria, South Africa.

  • Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.


Teaching Philosophy


Higher education around the world is facing unprecedented challenges. Long-standing and cherished values and practices are being questioned both from within the academia and by various stake holders, including students, industry and finally the government. Within the core of teaching and research, academic work has also become more specialized and demanding. Deeper understandings of the nature of students’ learning, and pressures to reposition the teaching and learning environment around learning outcomes, demand a more professional approach to university teaching. Similarly, research demands are increasing: to improve postgraduate supervision, to publish or patent, to establish links with industry, and to prepare, submit or review grant applications. Research and teaching are not separate parts of academic life; rather they are expressions of the quest for a deeper understanding and appreciation of our world. The interplay between the two is widely held by academics to be a necessary part of ensuring quality. Teaching is merely the process of enabling the autonomous conduct of research. Teaching enables autodidactic behavior.

For me teaching is something which needs constant reassessment, updating, and adaptation of both the content and presentation, searching for a more effective way to challenge students to realize their full potential, to encourage them to thoroughly learn fundamental concepts, and to develop their skills at designing, writing and documenting software. Sometimes it is the joy of seeing the best students excel with fantastic achievements, seeing the pride of the average student in completing hard problems, more challenging and better crafted than they thought possible, and seeing the satisfaction of the lesser student persevering when they thought they couldn’t make it. I believe that a teacher can only motivate and guide through and complete learning could be achieved only by the efforts of the student.

In addition to the lectures, I believe that active learning is an essential component of every class. Sometimes it is as simple as posing interesting questions to the class - questions that depend not just on recall of factual material but require the students to apply, analyze and evaluate the problem. In addition, I always believe in giving real life problems where students could visualize and understand the situation easily. It is always better to start with simple problems, which might help to build up student’s confidence level and also prepare the students for more challenging problems and programming assignments. It is also beneficial to ”strike while the iron is hot” and have the students apply a new concept immediately after they have been introduced to it. During some class sessions, sometimes, I prefer dividing the students into groups and encourage group discussions (cooperative learning). I believe that the teaching approaches (using visual aids, demos, presentations, pictures, diagrams, etc. and others from verbal explanation) also matters a lot to convey the real message and to kindle the passion for the subject. Some students like it when it is shown, heard and touched while others are intuitive learners (ideas, memories, possibilities).

Efforts should be also made to let the student know what he/she might be able to achieve at the end of the course and what we expect from them (assignments/tests etc). Normally I indulge in a combination of continuous motivation and giving interesting assignment problems. I often feel that the student -academic relationship expands beyond teaching. Spending some extra off-duty hours for weaker students ensures homogeneity of learning. I also learned from my experience that If we show our care for them, we can expect a lot more than we could have imagined. I guess this practice has helped me a lot especially dealing with students having lots of personal problems. I also practice treating all students with absolute equality, regardless of age, gender, nationality, intellectual ability or personal attractiveness. I view the purpose of grading as mostly motivational, not judgmental.

I have taught a wide variety of artificial intelligence courses, data mining, e-commerce (with a security emphasis) and core courses in computer science like operating systems, computer architecture and data structures for undergraduate and graduate classes.The maximum number of students involved in these subjects was around 10 (minimum) - 150 (maximum).  I have demonstrated commitment to individual student progress throughout the course, initiating remedial actions for struggling students who would otherwise have simply slipped from academic sight. I have spent many hours outside my allocated sessions in the computer laboratory/office, talking to students and providing every assistance. I have received excellent/ good evaluations in most of the subjects, which I handled. Students generally comment positively on my presentation, organization, clarity and availability. The usual negative comments are that I go a bit too fast sometimes, hard assignments, and there is too much of study load etc. We have to strive hard and continuously evolve the teaching methodology. This means looking at all aspects of the course/subject, not just trying to improve my lecturing skills. I have found that it is especially important to remain flexible, and modify the teaching methods to fit the students in the class. Some students thrive on lectures with lots of theory while some others need lots of examples and demos. While some students learn well in groups, some others prefer individual attention. To me, it is important to talk to the students and get some feedback early in the course to get an idea of the various student’s strengths and weakness so that I might be able to adapt to the situation accordingly and in the process hopefully benefit all the students.