Thoughts, Goals, and Experiences - The Teaching/Learning Dynamic

It is my intent to make learning engineering topics an enjoyable, inclusive, and inspiring experience. In applicable courses I include projects designed to emphasize learned topics while encouraging innovation and exploration. This is done by dividing the grading between demonstration of course topics and the creation and solution of an open-ended problem. For example, in Digital Signal Processing, students must identify a problem such as noise cancellation. In the solution to this problem, they must utilize and describe at least two course topics.  In courses with adequate enrollment, I require projects be completed in teams to promote collaboration. This is utilized in Robotics 1 and Robotics 2 where students demonstrate some key course topics and explore a new topic of their choosing.

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Students are strongly encouraged to reach out when experiencing difficulties with course material or workload. To facilitate this, I strive to maintain an open door policy - if I am in my office, you are welcome to come in for discussions. I have found that stating this at the beginning of the course and having occasional reminders during the semester encourages students to take advantage of the opportunity for 1-on-1 instruction. I have found 1-on-1 interaction to be a great opportunity to learn how to improve topic delivery and course structure. It is also helpful for determining student management of the workload. One of my key philosophies is "a poor assignment grade does not always mean a poor student". I encourage students struggling to master a topic to reach out soon and often.   

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I am also making efforts to increase accessibility of my course materials. The first of these is the use of the OpenDyslexic (https://opendyslexic.org/) font for my lecture slides. Students can also request this font for exams. In addition, I try to be mindful of color choice. For example, using magenta instead of red to improve contrast for color-blindness.