Innovations and Success
Over the past few semesters, I was involved with developing a new laboratory course for my department – EEL 3472C – EE Science II – Electromagnetics. This was my first experience with course development, and my responsibilities and contributions have been presented in detail in the Narrative page of this website. Helping build a course from scratch has been a very enriching and exciting journey for me - both professionally and personally.
Prior to being involved with the new course, I served as teaching assistant for EEL4471 - Electromagnetics for three years. Through my conversations with students, I learned that many had trouble visualizing concepts taught in class. Therefore, I decided to develop animations and software codes (written in MATLAB software) to help students understand difficult and often abstract concepts. I believe these efforts had a positive impact on student understanding as we received favorable feedback at the end of the semester as shown in the graph to the right (this survey was conducted at the end of the Spring 2017 semester and 28 responses were recorded).
When I was tasked with developing labs for EEL3472C, the positive feedback my work received in EEL4471 played a big motivating role. I designed the experiments for the labs, ordered samples/components for the experiment and prepared lab documents and assignments for Labs 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 11, and taught all the labs in the course. Some of the animations from EEL4471 were incorporated into this course. I believed that these laboratories must serve as an opportunity for students to engage in simple engineering design scenarios. The pre-laboratory assignments were designed to achieve this goal; problems in these assignments were a combination of theory, design, and some simple calculations on results expected from the actual laboratory experiment. Students then test their designs in the lab, compare measurements with theory, and analyze possible error sources. This process flow is a well-established practice in STEM fields and exposing students to it on a regular basis will hopefully make them better engineers.
"She was extremely knowledgeable and very helpful. She really understands what she is doing and that helped her communicate the material to the students well. "
"The lab instructions were probably the clearest that I've had for any lab and despite having taken several labs before that covered similar material I still learned new information in each of these labs. "
"Really enjoyed the lab! Perhaps the most useful lab I have taken at USF so far. "
~ Responses collected from student feedback (EEL3472C, Fall 2017)
Overall, student feedback for the lab experiments were positive as shown in the graph below (this survey was conducted in Fall 2017 and around 50% of the students answered the survey. Lab 1 is an introduction lab and was not included in the survey, Lab 8 was not conducted in Fall 2017). The labs I developed are highlighted in the graph. However, the labs need to be perfected further and I am working on improving them this semester by incorporating some very good suggestions from students. Response from faculty has also been very encouraging as shown here.
I strongly believe that student interaction is crucial to excellence in education. When I lecture/interact with students, I try my best to engage students in discussion. Additionally I keep office hours flexible and encourage students to meet me or email if they have any questions regarding the subject. This semester, when some students told me that they would like to practice using the equipment in the lab, I decided to change my office hours from a regular "office-room" style session into an open lab hour. Students can come during this time to practice, complete any unfinished measurement, and ask me any questions related to not just the lab component of EE Science II but also the coursework component.
"Very knowledgeable on the subject matter - always probes discussion from the group - always ready and willing to answer questions - creates a good learning environment - everything really - too much to explain :) "
~Response from a student in a feedback survey (EEL4471 Spring 2017)
On a more personal note......
Serving as teaching assistant has been a very challenging yet fulfilling endeavor for me, and I am very grateful to my advisor, Dr. Weller for giving me the opportunity. Developing course content for EEL 3472C - EE Science II taught me the importance of planning in order to execute a laboratory course efficiently. I have also learned to put myself into the shoes of students to understand the difficulties they face in coursework and then arrive at solutions to help overcome them.
I am honored that student response to my teaching has been very positive and encouraging. I look forward to contribute more towards building great learning environments that help students attain successful careers.