VIJAY V S

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

It was during my engineering study I realized a teacher in me. I was very much studious and deeply involved in studies during my high school and college days. My passion to learn and understand the concepts in every subject has resulted in keeping myself prepared in advance for every semester exams. I used to stop reading at least 30 minutes before the exam begins. During this time my close friends used to discuss with me and clarify important concepts. One of my close friend during my engineering study was so much dependent on me that he used to enjoy learning from me rather than the lecturers and in the classroom. This is where the teacher in me born and I always relished the happiness when the person whom I taught started to learn. This unfulfilled desire to teach again arose in my heart when I had a very tough time in industry after one year of my graduation. So I finally decided to take teaching as my career and joined as a lecturer in a polytechnic college. Thereafter I never looked back and my journey of teaching and learning is moving on with tough challenges encountered year by year.

My field of interest was always thermal engineering. This continued both in my teaching as well as research. Concept of heat and work, thermodynamics laws, heat transfer and Internal Combustion Engines were real challenges to my intellect and enjoyed its company during learning. The desire to learn the basics of thermodynamics with a fantasy towards working of engines motivated me to take up Post Graduation studies in IC Engines and also at present PhD work. With a strong background of technical concepts in thermal engineering, I used to teach subjects like Basic and Applied Thermodynamics, Heat and Mass transfer, Turbomachines, IC Engines, Automotive Engineering, Energy Conversion Lab, Fluid Mechanics Lab, Heat Transfer Lab etc. for engineering students. I always felt that taking most difficult subjects and helping students to learn the most difficult concepts in that subject is one kind of a social service a teacher can do despite teaching being his profession. When many teachers hesitated take the above difficult subject citing poor semester exam result as a reason, I took it as a challenge with an only motive of helping students in learning and the challenge it provided to my teaching career.

At present my focus is on building a strong expertise in thermal subjects along with an everlasting effort to become a “great teacher” by learning the intricacies of Teaching Learning Process. For this reason I have enrolled myself in many certification courses on advanced Teaching Learning practices like IIEECP- (IUCEE International Engineering Education Certification Programme), Online Course on Outcome Based Education etc. This has helped in understanding the basics of learning methods of students, Importance of Blooms Taxonomy, Pedagogies of Teaching, Classroom Assessment Techniques and use advanced tools like Google classroom, Canvas etc to design and manage the course content. These efforts will enable me to upgrade and tune my teaching skills and play a role of facilitator or guide as per the present needs of teaching learning process.

Finally to end, a quote says “Teaching without learning is just Talking”. Keeping a learner in our mind and with a duty to explore Graduate Attributes in every student, as required by Accreditation bodies like NBA, teaching profession now is as challenging as any other professions in the world.