” Learning is more effective when it is an active rather than a passive process.” -Kurt Lewin
My teaching philosophy is based on experiential learning and the idea that active involvement in the learning process produces a deeper and longer lasting understanding. Experiential learning can come in many different forms ranging from laboratory experiments, active discussions, team design projects or simulated mixed reality experiences. Many of the courses I have taught and developed are focused on providing authentic experiential learning experiences. A few include:
- Developing Active Learning Sessions to teach microcontroller programming and provide students with the opportunity to design and build analytical chemistry instrumentation.
- Creating interactive engineering team environments where students can assess and grow their engineering leadership skills and develop a personal leadership framework.
- Designing a fully immersive virtual reality chemical processing plant which allows students to tour and interact with a full-scale plant as well as develop their chemical engineering design competencies.
- Developing open ended engineering design projects where student teams can generate and develop their own solutions to key UN Strategic Development Goals.
- Active exploration of ethical and EDII (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Indigeneity) scenarios in engineering. These discussions focus on the underlying ethical and EDII frameworks as well as how these principles are key considerations in the engineering design process.
Since my faculty position at Queen’s University is teaching focused, one of my goals is to incorporate my research interests into teaching as much as possible. Many of my new research projects, which are focused on developing adaptive mixed reality simulation and its incorporation into medical and aviation training will also be applied to engineering education. One of the key strategic goals for the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science (FEAS) at Queen’s is to push the frontiers of engineering education and I am excited for my teaching and research to contribute to this goal.