My Teaching

Awards & Recognition

Philosophy

I believe that what students learn and carry with them are the fundamental concepts and a basic understanding of the subject matter. They may never use the specific skills they learn in school, however, they develop basic intellect that gives them the ability to learn higher-level concepts quicker. My teaching is centered on the conceptual foundation of the subject matter with tools, projects and assignments to support the learning effort. I also believe in setting high standards for the students and make them rise up to the challenge. At the same time I support the weaker students via one-on-one training as they struggle through difficult course material. There are two advantages to it: 1) It clearly differentiates between the strong and the weak students 2) Students work harder and interact with each other and the faculty in order to get their concepts clarified. This improves the overall learning experience.

I try to make my classes as enjoyable for the students as I can, depending on my abilities and the subject matter that I am teaching. For instance I have experimented with different formats for breaking the 3-hour classes between lectures, lab work and student presentations and reviews to break the monotony of the class. On occasion I also teach 3-hour classes as two one and a half hour classes with very different subject material for each to change a pace of the class.

I believe that the concepts are better grasped if students have a chance to apply the concepts to implement systems thus I have tried to introduce hands-on development along with the theoretical concepts. In some courses software development has been made a part of the primary curriculum whereas in some other courses immersion classes have been added to complement the curriculum. I have used Java language for software development projects in my classes. In the first month of the Fall-semester I teach the foundation course in Java and then use different extensions of Java in the other classes that I teach, such as, security development, enterprise development and XML development. The immersion classes were introduced to supplement course material if the class time was not sufficient to add a hands-on development portion to the curriculum or if I felt that the subject matter was difficult to handle with the other material during the semester. These classes are absolutely voluntary, however, it has invoked a lot of interest from the students not only from the business school but also from other departments as well as outside agencies like the State Police and GE. I occasionally invite speakers to my classes if they can complement a part of the lecture with some real life examples.