clear and present danger for us. As engineering teachers, we must find a way to redefine our roles, adapt ourselves and even learn new skills if required to ...
Brief Biography of Dr. Kavi Mahesh Kavi Mahesh is a Professor of Computer Science at PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India where he heads the Centre for Ontological Engineering. He is also a Principal Consultant with the Knowledge Management Group at Infosys Ltd. His areas of interest are knowledge management, epistemology, ontology, classification studies, text processing and unstructured data management. He has two US patents and has published two books, 13 book chapters and over 50 papers which have received nearly one thousand citations with a h-index of 17 and a g-index of 30. Notable among these are the recent textbook Theory of Computation: A Problem-Solving Approach (Wiley India, 2012) and Ten Steps to Maturity in Knowledge Management (Chandos Pub. UK, 2006). He was previously with Oracle Corporation, USA and New Mexico State University and has consulted with Hewlett Packard, United Nations and EasyLib.com. He holds an M. Tech. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (1989) and an MS (1991) and a PhD (1995) in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
DR. KAVI MAHESH Professor, Centre for Ontological Engineering, Computer Science Department, PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore, and Principal Consultant, Knowledge Management Group, Education and Research, Infosys Ltd., Bangalore.
REDEFINING THE ROLE OF AN ENGINEERING TEACHER DR. Kavi Mahesh Professor, Centre for Ontological Engineering, Computer Science Department, PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore, and Principal Consultant, Knowledge Management Group, Education and Research, Infosys Ltd., Bangalore.
Why do we need to redefine the role of an engineering teacher? Why now? The ubiquitous presence and phenomenal growth of the internet along with internet-based solutions and technologies, especially in the last 8-10 years, are rapidly changing the way mankind creates, acquires, shares and applies knowledge. These changes have a significant impact on established models of education, technical education in particular. We have only begun to understand the impact. In this lecture, we make an attempt to explore the consequences of these developments on the role of an engineering teacher. What is the role of an engineering teacher? Till recently, a teacher considered the classroom as his or her private sanctum sanctorum. What went on in the classroom was privy to the teacher and, of course, the students. No other teacher, in particular, had much of a direct role to play in one’s classroom. Other teachers might have formed the curriculum and the course syllabus and written textbooks, but the delivery of that content to the students was the holy job of the assigned teacher and no one else had any influence on it. Students had access to textbooks and a few reference books and perhaps even some “notes” from yesteryears. Nevertheless, they depended heavily on the teacher’s delivery of the subject matter in the classroom to learn the material. They did not have access to better teachers. We expected them to have the necessary discipline, dedication and reverence to sit and listen to our monologues hour after hour to learn all the wonderful things we taught them. You see, that was the only way they could learn. This model of technical education and the boundaries of the classroom therein have been shattered all of a sudden by developments on the internet. Students now can learn all the definitions and theories from Wikipedia. They can see the best diagrams there or on other similar web sites. They can visualize concepts through the most wonderful graphics, animations, videos and “apps” available freely even on their smart phones and other handheld devices. They can download any number of examples, illustrations, exercises and question banks. They can read all the best (e-)books in the world. They can listen to and watch the best teachers in the world. They can join vibrant learning communities and interact with students, faculty and practitioners from anywhere in the world. They can even enroll in online courses, free of cost, at some of the best universities in the world and obtain prestigious certificates in our subjects before the end of the semester!
What does this mean to us, engineering teachers? Has it indeed diminished the role of the engineering teacher? How do we redefine our role so that we can continue to provide invaluable service to our students? A variety of claims are being made, some of them rather fantastic or outrageous, about the way our present model of higher education is going to change drastically very soon. One hears these days that classroom teaching will just disappear. One also hears that individual educational institutes will themselves become irrelevant – apparently since a student can obtain certificates from anywhere in the world. Such comments are being made by both academicians and experts from the IT industry, about technical education in particular. In my experience, the further removed an expert is from the ground realities of education in India, the more likely that his claims are so grandiose. In essence, they are saying that our classrooms are becoming rather irrelevant. While we need not accept or even consider all such claims, we must concede that there is a clear and present danger for us. As engineering teachers, we must find a way to redefine our roles, adapt ourselves and even learn new skills if required to ensure that we continue to add significant value to our beloved students. In doing this we must consider not only the cost of technical education for a student but also his opportunity cost, that is, what else the student could have achieved in that hour that we made him spend in our classroom. To begin with, we teachers must shift our focus from our teaching to students’ learning. Especially in this internet age, we must accept that we are mere facilitators in the process of a student’s learning. The classroom is not about following a lesson plan and covering, or at best uncovering, the syllabus. The classroom (along with the “notes” that we dictate therein) is not the primary source of information for the student; they have ready access to better sources. How do we continue to facilitate and add value to their learning? We generally have an exaggerated notion of our own role in students’ learning. We forget that even ancient wisdom in India – in the ideal setting of a guru-kula – said that the student acquires only one quarter of the knowledge from the teacher. Our main objective is not to convey information or even provide training to them. Rather, the first and foremost responsibility of the new teacher is to motivate the students to learn and master a particular subject. It is to create a passion in them and sustain excitement about the subject throughout the semester and beyond. How do we create and sustain interest in the subject throughout the semester? We must ensure that the first lecture in the semester is so amazing that they student falls in love, with the subject, at first sight. From then on, we must guide them and take them through a memorable experience throughout the semester. If required, a teacher may have to act, enact, choreograph, dance, sing, show-and-tell or otherwise perform in the classroom. The teacher has to tell stories effectively. The new teacher has to create suspense to capture the attention of the entire class till the bell rings. The teacher must create models, take toys and pass on
things for students to see and feel rather than just listen and imagine. We will see several examples of how to do this in the lecture. Fortunately, the teacher can also benefit from the same sources that are causing these changes to disturb his traditional classroom. The new teacher can and must show the best animations and videos in the classroom. The teacher must use high-quality graphics and multi-media to make the students’ experience effective and memorable. The teacher must borrow the right pieces of video lectures by other great teachers to enhance the learning experience of the student. Imagine how much easier and cheaper it is do this than arranging a guest lecture! The new teacher need not be the best teacher for every single topic in the syllabus. What else helps in ensuring that a class is worth every student’s time? It is well known that the majority of the best teachers in higher education throughout the world are researchers. Being actively engaged in solid, purposeful research is a huge advantage for the new teacher. He can bring in knowledge and experience from research projects to enrich the delivery of the subject beyond what any textbook or web site can do. The delivery will also be naturally unique to the teacher and therefore valuable vis-à-vis any canned video lecture. On similar lines, having practical experience in the industry either through actual work experience or academic consulting helps in a big way. We all know that some of the best textbooks in the world have the most boring and trivial examples. Teachers with knowledge and experience from the industry naturally tend to use much richer examples which are also far more likely to be current, relevant, practical, challenging, interesting and comprehensible to the student. In addition, industry experience is, arguably, essential for designing, conducting and guiding effective laboratory exercises and projects. In conclusion, there is an urgent need for the engineering teacher to realize that the familiar boundary of the classroom has been broken, perhaps forever. The teacher must in turn break other boundaries in order to adapt to this changing context. The teacher must disregard the boundaries of the syllabus, the textbook, the subject area, the very model of teaching and the classroom itself to remain effective and essential in the new, emerging, global model of higher education. The new teacher must tell complete stories, for instance. The story of a scientific discovery must necessarily be intertwined with the concurrent and collocated sub-stories of the historical, social, evolutionary, economic and geopolitical contexts in which the discovery took place. If not, the student’s time is perhaps better spent, physically or virtually speaking, outside the classroom. The new teacher must unshackle himself – from set models of teaching, from inhibitions arising from archaic notions of dignity and proper behavior, from preconceived boundaries of one’s areas of interest and from impractical expectations from the customer, namely, the student. In a way, this is a great opportunity: the teacher is finally free to teach, not just lecture!
