I offer my respectful obeisance to my masters (both material and spiritual) by whose guidance and instructions today who I am. In every step of my life, I learnt a lot and got motivation and instructions from my teachers. A true teacher can understand the potentiality of a student and unlock their hidden and sleeping talent, and uncover their individuality. He is like a candle which lighten others without considering itself. Moreover, a teacher can live in generations through their philosophy and wisdom, which is my motivation to be a teacher.
As per as I am concerned, I consider teaching as a service than a profession. It removes the darkness of ignorance through the light of knowledge and wisdom. This profession guides others to think out of the box or independently. Moreover, this is the profession by which one can learn more. Therefore, I embraced this service as my profession.
After the completion of my Master of Engineering in Computer Science and Engineering program from Japan, I came back to Bangladesh and joined as a lecturer (in March, 2013) in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department, University of Chittagong (CU), Bangladesh from where I completed my B.Sc in CSE. As I was motivated by the Japanese pedagogy system, I was trying to simulate those techniques which is based on trust and transparency. Shortly, I experience that uncovering topics to the class is not enough to convince the class. There are a lot of good and bad factors to be considered during conducting the class. One the one hand, trust and transparency based approach does not fully work here because the culture, environment, persons are different. I found that classes are difficult to organize if students are politically involved. Most of the students are not self-responsible and self-motivated. They are prone to copy-paste and emphasize on memory than understanding. On the other hand, some students are academically and technically sound, self-motivated and highly potential. Considering these factors I designed my pedagogy approach for teaching my classes in CSE, CU. The approach was based on Monitoring, Motivation, Collaboration, and Acknowledgement. Monitoring: Students need continuous monitoring and guidance so that they do not loose their attention and deviate from their goal. Sometimes, class is not enough to understand and explore the topic because of the time constraint. I open a Facebook group (forum) for each of my classes where students can discuss with themselves and myself, seek help, see what other do etc. Motivation: There are a lot of subjects/topics to learn in this world. We should be acknowledged that the students choose our topics (or us) to learn. They will inherit the understanding of the topics from us, which in turn, will be delivered to others by them. In this way, our thought and philosophy survive in generations. Therefore, as a teacher our responsibility is to 1) motivate the students towards the topics, its learning outcome, and its opportunity and 2) present the topics in an interesting, easy and comprehensible way. Collaboration: I encourage the student to collaborate themselves. I give a positive mark to students for assists. Students are more close and friendly to each other than their teachers. A student can make his classmate understand a topic easily. Moreover, I use some senior students as TAs for the class. Acknowledgement: Students should show their gratitude for their learning whether they learn it from their teachers, classmates, seniors or books. They should use bibliography sections in their writing to show proper acknowledgement. In this way, they can get out of copy-paste environment.
Later (in September 2014), I joined as a Ph.D. employee at Computer Science Department, Aalborg University (AAU), Denmark where I have to assist in teaching and supervise project groups. Aalborg University is well known for their Problem-based Learning (PBL) model. As a supervisor, my only role is to motivate and guide, not teach them, which is totally different from what I was doing in CU. However, I was also totally convinced by the method as it automatically grows self-responsibility, team work, problem solving capability. Moreover, the project management approach automatically guides them to complete their project within a defined time and in a systematic way. It adds a new dimension in my teaching philosophy. I supervised 13+ project groups in bachelor level during my AAU period. Two of them were from DAT6 and they published their thesis in peer-reviewed conferences during their thesis period.
In 2021, I again came back to CSE,CU and joined as an Associate Professor. The time has changed, new dimensions are added in my teaching thinking and philosophy, and I learnt several techniques to teach and learn. University Grant Commission (UGC) in Bangladesh emphasizes on Outcome Based Learning (OBE) approach. Now, I use blended teaching approach (OBE+PBL+own experience), no spoon-feeding approach anymore and try to 1) bring out potentiality from the students, 2) make the class interactive, 3) make the lecture in a structure and constructive way (using Moodle or Google classroom), 4) engage students in constructive thinking and exploratory analysis.
Unique techniques applied in teaching: I believe that every student has inherent potentiality. As a teacher, our responsibility is to unlock their thirst to gather knowledge. The different techniques I used to engage the students in their learning paradigms are described as follows:
1. Emphasis on Problems: The whole class will be divided into several groups. Each group will be asked to create a set of questions related to the topics discussed in the class for a group. For example, Group X will design a set of questions for Group Y which will, in turn, make a set of questions for Group Z. If Group Y can solve a problem given by Group X, Group Y will secure a point where Group X gain a negative score. On the other hand, Group X and Group Y will gain a positive and negative point respectively if Group Y fails to answer the question.
Benefit of this technique: Students think out of the box. This system works fine if the students are self-responsible and honest.
Disadvantage: The evaluation will not be properly done if the groups are not balanced in terms of the student performance. For example, on one hand, Group 1 could not answer easy questions from Group 2, which gives Group 2 positive points for easy questions. On the other hand, despite of their exploratory questions, Group 3 got negative points as Group 4 solved their questions.
2. Not Only Goal, Count Assist Too: Students are asked to solve different levels of problems group-wise/individually. Some students can solve the complex problems where others can not. The students with good score asked others to facilitate in solving the problems. For each assist, they will secure points. In this way, student will gain collaboration and cooperation quality.
3. Higher Team Spirit Leads to Better Productivity: A group needs to find their real world problem and solve it by themselves using the process studied in their class. There is a risk of some student to be inactive. To ensure that all team members on the same page, one student will be randomly chosen for checking the progress, and his obtained mark represents the group mark.
4. TA from Senior Batches : Students are more friendly and open to themselves than teachers. CU does not pay for TA. Nevertheless, I use a few students from senior batch to help their juniors. It is a voluntary job. I also have some findings with TAs. I found there are some egoistic problems among the TAs and students. Although TAs are assigned with only supervision role, because of lack experience and training, sometimes they mess up with teaching and supervision. Therefore, I understand TAs should be trained and experienced.
5. Group members sit in a circular way : When it is time to solve problems or do project work, I prefer to sit in a circular way instead of array style so that group member can see their faces and discuss. Note that CSECU has space limitation.
6. Cooperation/Collaboration instead of Competition : Normally students are prone to compete each other. However, in the long run, they become jealous and could not fit in the team environment. I encourage my students to collaborate or cooperate instead of competition. However, in the exam, cooperation or collaboration are strictly prohibited.
7. Maintaining Forum: Besides an LMS, in each course I maintain a social media forum, e.g., a Facebook group. Members can share their experience, problems, solutions.
Taught Courses: Compilers, Database Management Systems, Data Intensive Systems, Data Mining, Data Science with R, Discrete Mathematics with Python, Data Structure, Algorithm Design, Management Information Systems, Object Oriented Programing, Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, Software Engineering and Design Pattern, Technical Writing and Presentation, Theory of Computation, Computers in Psychology. See Courses and others