On Monday, April 17th, Arun Srinivasa presented “An Old Dog Learns New Tricks” to our Engineering Education Faculty Group. During his presentation, he discussed his journey into teaching and how his teaching methods have evolved over time, starting with a “content-focused” approach and progressing towards an “empowerment-focused” approach.
Initially, Srinivasa’s focus was on what material he needed to cover during his lectures. As he gained more experience, he shifted his focus to ensuring that he was delivering the material effectively. Eventually, he realized that his primary concern should be what his students were actually learning in his class. Finally, he arrived at an empowerment-focused approach, where his focus is on empowering his students to learn.
One key takeaway from Srinivasa’s presentation was the importance of using technology to help students gain insight. He highlighted that many students struggle with moving between different representations, such as from real-world to graphical to symbolic representations. To help with this, Srinivasa emphasized the importance of teaching transferable knowledge and using technology to remove and streamline routine tasks.
Srinivasa also discussed the “3 C’s” approach to teaching, which involves starting with a specific context, introducing key concepts, and then gradually moving to more complicated contexts. He emphasized that the context should be specific, unexpected, concrete, emotional, and tell a story (SUCES).
Throughout his presentation, Srinivasa shared a number of insightful quotes, including “We are all amateurs when it comes to teaching,” “Learn how to teach on the flight,” and “Students will only do what is INSPECTED, not what is EXPECTED.”
Overall, Srinivasa’s presentation provided valuable insights into effective teaching methods, the importance of technology in the classroom, and the need to empower students to learn.