Teaching

Brian Fiegel in meeting with a project group

Before returning to graduate school, I spent the previous 20+ years as an engineer in the computer technology industry. But my initial trajectory out of high school was that of a math teacher. In college, I fell in love with engineering and my focus shifted to computer engineering. While in industry, I worked on computer systems ranging from deeply embedded without an operating system to cloud based and highly connected. Things have come full circle and I am back to teaching, this time with years of engineering experience. My desire to teach never ended, in-fact some of my fondest memories have been of training and mentoring young engineers.

I am excited to take my industry experience into the classroom and see myself being able to immediately takeover any undergraduate computer technology course. I would like to develop an undergraduate introductory mechatronics course. This course would focus on understanding the basics of real-time software development and integration with discreet electronic components.

Experience

I find that I am energized by leading a classroom and am thankful for the opportunity to teach. During my time as a graduate student, I had the opportunity to lead multiple interactive problem-solving lessons in 3 different classes: Introduction to Engineering Problem Solving, Information Systems Design, Mechatronics Engineering for Smart Device Design.

ENGR:1100 Introduction to Engineering Problem Solving

This class was structured as lab with brief presentations used to introduce the topics being tackled. I acted a general classroom assistant, working with student groups to guide them through their projects. As part of my role in this course, I lead the introductory lesson on Additive Manufacturing (3D printing) and worked independently with the electronic product teams in the archeology research lessons.

ISE:3500 Information Systems Design

This class was structured as a flipped classroom where students received a small lecture at the beginning of class and used the remaining of the class time to work on either their individual or group projects. As part of my role in this course, I lead class during the introduction to SQL lessons, developed and presented lectures on introduction to Visual Basic for Applications with Excel, and participated in exam/quiz question development.

ISE:5650 Mechatronics Engineering for Smart Device Design

This class was structured as traditional lecture class, with the occasional class session dedicated to project development. As a member of this class I was given the opportunity develop and present lessons on hardware/software integration using Arduino and the Arduino IDE.

My Classroom

The immediate goal of my courses is for students to internalize the course material and apply it to new scenarios, solving new problems. The class learning process starts with students being interested in the material and wanting to work to achieve the course goals. Engineering is an applied discipline and we use our scientific knowledge to directly solve problems. I see students responding most positively when the classroom functions in the same way. To create a more “applied” classroom, I take advantage of our latest technology and “flip” the classroom. Short (15 minute) lectures are pre-recorded and one or more are assigned as homework while problem solving exercises, typically done as homework, are moved into the classroom.

Classes would begin with a short opportunity for students to ask clarifying questions from the pre-recorded lecture. Students proceed with group solving problems during remaining class time and only take home the work they were unable to complete in class. The in-class problem solving gives me direct insight into where students are struggling and allows the instructional team an opportunity to immediately correct misunderstandings. What was student homework, becomes an interactive learning experience.

Exams would be replaced with several small-to-medium sized individual projects. The projects encompass the material covered in the course and require students to integrate the individual skills learned in class. Mastery of the material is evaluated during the grading of the individual projects.

Brian Fiegel demonstrating an activity with a student

Student Focus

I have seen that students are often resistant to come a faculty member for assistance. Some of this can be attributed to the artificial separation that the traditional lecture format creates. If a student is struggling, they are more likely to seek out someone who has helped them in the past. If the only experience a student has with a faculty member is that of someone who lectures, then they may be hesitant to seek help from that authority figure. A flipped classroom offers more opportunity for joint problem solving with work happening in groups that emulate an industry team-based approach to problem solving. This collaboration in the classroom increases learning of the material[1].

I believe that grades should fundamentally reflect a student’s mastery of the course material. As such, I will use mastery-based grading[2] . Students earn their grade through mastery of major and minor course topics. This mastery would be assessed through evaluation of both in-class work and projects. Since mastery of a topic and not the timing of mastery is how students would be evaluated, students would be allowed to resubmit work (as time permits) for re-evaluation.

In summary, my teaching philosophy is focused on student success and accurate evaluation of their subject mastery.

References

1. Gomez-Lanier, L., Building collaboration in the flipped classroom: A case study. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2018. 12(2): p. 7.

2. Armacost, R.L. and J. Pet-Armacost. Using mastery-based grading to facilitate learning. in 33rd Annual Frontiers in Education, 2003. FIE 2003. 2003. IEEE.

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