Grounding the course’s theoretical concepts in real-world applications
Chandrasekhar Radhakrishnan teaches circuits and signal processing courses in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His teaching style, which emphasizes application and intuition in engineering and mathematics, serves to significantly enhance cognitive and emotional involvement of students. Chandra believes in the value of a strong first impression for supporting student engagement, and spoke a lot about how he uses a systematic approach to teaching and learning by posing questions and exploring the different parts of the process that contribute to how systems can fail.
In keeping with this approach, his teaching philosophy is about helping students to recognize and explain connections between theory and practical applications. Chandra believes that while engineering education is founded on the use of mathematics and engineering principles to describe things, it is really intuition, motivation, and curiosity that keep students engaged, things he feels are frequently lacking in more traditional didactic teaching approaches. He refers to the quote by Henri Poincaré: “It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better [C’est par la logique qu’on démontre, c’est par l’intuition qu’on invente].”
Chandra describes how he successfully promotes student intuition and creativity by grounding the course’s theoretical concepts in real-world applications that students can relate to, such as cellphones, IoT, and even digital cameras. From the familiar, students are asked a series of questions that move from basic, to more abstract, to fully imagined. Problem sets comprising circuits that are a part of taped out IC chips are used to challenge students to come up with efficient solutions and make judicious approximations. In addition, Lab Projects are used to further connect students to the systematic process of testing ideas with the added element of having them demonstrate where theory has limitations in real-world applications. This game-like approach to pushing intriguing information out to students and encouraging them to learn along with him as they work through the details together helps his students to master content, form independent thinking skills, and develop a systems view of how theoretical concepts and reality fit together.
One thing Chandra especially enjoys is holding regular debrief sessions with lab TAs to gain insight into students’ thinking processes and their ability to collaborate. His advice to other instructors is that they should consider how they can offer students simple and complex explanations of concepts and principles, how they can get students to learn along with him, and how they can be approachable to students.
Resources: ECE Lab kit , ECE 342 – Illustration of Innovation/Methodology