Suren's Teaching & Learning Philosophy
“Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.”
– George Evans (1920-2001)
This quote from George Evans concisely summarizes my core teaching belief. As a professor of media and creative arts, I am aware that I need to induce students’ creative side. To achieve that, I strongly believe that I need to reach every student in a way that they would welcome and appreciate. I understand that the key to becoming a successful teacher among students is to gain their trust. When a student starts trusting his/her teacher, the psychological gap between the learner and teacher reduces and the students will open up to receive the knowledge that is being delivered. My philosophy of education is that all learners are unique and must have a stimulating educational environment where they can grow physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. This type of atmosphere is what I create in my class sessions and I am witnessing positive outcomes year after year.
Teaching became my passion when I accidentally conducted a session at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), UK; while I was pursuing my master’s degree there. I am grateful for my professor Dr. Rahlibi who allowed me to teach undergraduates while I am still pursuing my degree. I did not find my master’s degree much of a challenge as I joined as a student after working as a 3D Lighting artist with leading studios such as Technicolor and Nickelodeon. Due to this reason, the subject contents came easy to me and my professor encouraged me to share my knowledge with junior students, as well. It was my first time teaching a class and surprisingly I lived every single moment while I was explaining the subject contents. Many learners who attended my class gave their feedback that I managed to explain complex things simply so they could be easily grasped and remembered. My professor said that this skill is an expensive gift for a teacher and encouraged me to do more sessions. I did gain a lot of confidence as well because the crowd I taught was an international group that had students from the UK, China, Nigeria, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Ireland. So constant positive feedback from these international students sharpened my skills in a very short period. That is when I decided that academia is the perfect place for me. In 2010, soon after I graduated from LJMU, I had the wonderful opportunity to join a lead role in the department of computer animation and VFX at Digimation UK Inc operated in Harrow, London. I was there for 2 years and flew back to India to continue my academic career.
Students’ Engagement
For the past 13 years, I teach creative and multimedia content and to name a few, I teach 3D Lighting/Rendering, Graphic Design, Digital Photography, TV Production, Audio Editing, Video Composition & editing, 3D Rigging, User Interface Designs, 2D/3D Game development, VR/AR development, etc. All these subjects are practice-based and I strongly believe that the students must get their hands-on experience to learn. I am aware that students are gaining not just knowledge but practical skills, as well. Their skills get sharpened only when we allow them to practice often. I always engage my students with practical sessions with a hint of ‘fun-factor’ even when the subject is theoretical. But I also will never forget the ‘challenge factor’ in the assignments. I make this happen by incorporating real-life examples, role-playing sessions, flashcards and so on. I also use a plethora of ICT tools such as Schoology, Kahoot! (Collaborative quiz platform), Smartboards, VR experiences, etc. in my classes to bring in the ‘challenge-factors’ wrapped in ‘fun-factors’. Mostly, I would never interfere with my students while they are about to perform non-destructive errors. I patiently wait until the students themselves discovers that they messed up somewhere. And then, I stand by them walking them along the steps and elaborating extensively on the step where they committed the mistake. I have got much positive feedback from students that this helped them to remember the skills in their long-term memory. I am well aware that I am in the job of creating creative artists! Creative minds flourish when they have the freedom to try new methods and when they are put into a fun-filled, friendly and safe environment. This is what I facilitate in all my sessions.
Research Interest
As I mentioned earlier, I am a strong believer in practice-based learning. Unfortunately, during the COVID pandemic, all class-based teaching was disrupted. The educators and learners were forced to learn online. My classes were affected heavily due to this because I was unable to provide hands-on training to my students. Those were the moments that triggered me to concentrate on my doctoral research to find a cost-effective solution for conducting practice-based subjects (most of my subjects demand hands-on training) completely online. For my doctoral thesis, I developed an Augmented Reality mobile application, that would allow the educators to beam an interactive AR 3D model of the subject contents from the learners’ mobile phones. The learners can interact with the 3D model and solve tasks that are assigned to them to gain credits that are meant to be given for practical sessions. My doctoral thesis was titled “Study of Introducing Augmented Reality in Learner-Content Interactions of an Online Digital Photography Course: Measuring Learners’ Perceptions of Transactional Distance and Performance”
Collaborative Learning
Since I started teaching, I have been following collaborative learning methods such as team projects, group discussions, think-pair-share, jigsaw and so on. I believe peer learning is one of the most important variables of the learning process mainly because it happens outside of the classrooms, as well. Another important factor is that I am aware that my students are going to be working in teams. Film making, game development, storyboarding and most of the courses I teach will lead to team-based job profiles. So, I employ flipped classes often to utilize the class hours in some group learning methods.
Valuing students’ feedback
Another practice I follow is getting early feedback from my students. Every semester, when I finish the 4th week of my teaching, I circulate a digital feedback form where I request the students to give their feedback in terms of my subject knowledge, punctuality, clarity in speaking, teaching methods, subject contents’ relativity to industry, respect towards students and so on. There’s also space for the students to write elaborative comments and suggestions. The students’ names are optional and I encourage anonymity in the feedback. I believe that this early feedback is the best as it allows me to employ students’ suggestions as early as possible in that semester. I also take two other such feedback one in the middle and another at the end of the semester.
Making ‘job-ready’ students
Whenever my lecture starts for a semester, I consider the fact that my current students will graduate only after two years. So, when they look for employment, the job market should reflect the skills that my students possess. Keeping this in mind, I change my content every semester, incorporating the state-of-the-art techniques that are used in the industry. I take students on field trips often to educate them about the job environment and its skills-in-demand. At times, I branch out slightly away from the syllabus, especially if it's near to being redundant. I strongly believe in arranging my lectures and practice sessions that focus on the future job market.
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Finally, these are the personal beliefs and practices I have gained from my years of experimentation and its results. According to the feedback from my students, colleagues and students’ parents, I am confident that I am traveling in the right direction. I am aware that this is a continuous process and I will be always in search of new methods to achieve maximum learning and student satisfaction throughout my career.
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