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Seven Monash staff members have been awarded a 2008 Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning -- Monash University's most successful year ever, amongst the awardees was Dr Rajendran Parthiban, Lecturer from Engineering, Sunway campus in Malaysia.
Dr Parthiban received his citation for adopting a new teaching approach that has significantly improved the pass rate for a difficult engineering subject – Electromagnetics, which requires high level Mathematics and Physics knowledge.
Previously, tutorials in this unit were highly didactic: tutors solved the problems in front of the students who, in general, became passive listeners. Such passive participation is particularly risky for Electromagnetics. Last minute preparation leads to very high failure rates in the final exam. Dr Parthiban took a different approach and introduced a problem-based approach in tutorials to engage students. With this approach, students discuss among themselves on how to solve the problems in tutorials. Then, they explain to the class how they reached their solution.
He also allocated enough time for consultation so that students can clear their doubts on solving problems both before and after tutorials. The students were highly satisfied with the unit as a result of this new problem-based approach. It also helped to increase the pass rate significantly. |
