I believe, this can be accomplished if the educator himself has the practical experiences. Luckily, I became an engineering educator, after accumulating over 10 years of industrial experiences in various fields and working on manifold projects.

Graduating from one of the toughest Engineering Universities in the World (Sharif University of Technology, Tehran), where classes, were really “Gladiatorial Arenas” where only the strongest survive, I am of the conviction that, the engineering students will be the future Engineers. We don’t want an engineer to design a bridge to collapse or a car to fail and crash. So, I put a lot of energy into my courses, and usually demand a lot, but at the same time, I have faith in my students’ capacity.

With these mindsets, before starting my career as a University professor, I was curious to find out what defines a “Good teacher”.  The TPI (Teaching Perspective Inventory http://www.teachingperspectives.com/tpi/) defines the four perspective of a good teacher as: (i) Transmission (Good teaching means having mastery of the topic you teach), (ii) Apprenticeship (Good teachers know what their learners can do on their own and where they need guidance and direction), (iii) Developmental (Good teachers must understand how their learners think and reason about the content, by effective questioning that challenges learners to move from relatively simple to more complex forms of thinking), and (iv) Nurturing (Good teachers care about their students and provides encouragement and support for each individual students).

I found myself with holding two dominant perspectives, “Transmission”, and “Nurturing”; and “Apprenticeship” and “Development” being as the backup. Looking at my students’ feedback, confirms my solid skills in transmission (mastery on the subject), also on the nurturing side. For example, repeating the word, “caring” 89 times in one course students’ evaluation (SEoT) is a good illustration of this.

Pondering on some of my own teachers in the past, which I considered them as being, “Good teachers”, I realized all of them had one common attribute, that is, the skill to explain any technical concept to even people who are not specialized in that field, and explain things in a fun and interesting way, to anyone.

To obtain this skill in teaching any technical topic, I use a tough process on myself, if I don’t really understand something, I would push myself, “Do I understand this?”, “Do I understand why we don’t do it this other way?”, “Do I really understand this?” Because I pushed myself to such a deep understanding, I would be able to take my students through the path of the different possibilities. I take something that is a little complex to most students, and then I use a very simple concepts to explain how it works. I don’t tell them every detail or what we are looking after until the very end of a topic, so students feel like they are kind of figuring it out together with me. I remind my students how fun science and engineering is, and everybody can have a pretty full understanding. I try to provide practical and industrial examples, especially those of my own, to tell stories of challenges, success or failure in solving some industrial problems or projects; which really pique most of students’ interest.

To summarize, these simple elements form my teaching philosophy: (i) Obtaining a solid skill in the topic I plan to teach. (ii) Care about my students and provides encouragement and support for each individual student, (iii) Connection to the topic I teach, for example by telling them a personal story, relating to the topic in the lecture, from past industrial projects, (iv) Standards are important, but I don’t let them strife my creativity, so, I try to use challenging and at the same time fun technical examples in my courses, and eventually, (v) using technology effectively. For example, switch to the Online teaching has not deterred me for delivering the same quality lectures with the same level of engagements.