MY FIRST DAY OF CLASS

About
Finite Element Methods I am teaching this course from past four years. This
course is in the sixth semester of B.Tech Undergraduate program. This course
is one of the important course in Mechanical Engineering, to understand this
course students are supposed to have prerequisite knowledge in
Mathematics, Mechanics of solids and Heat Transfer. Its really a challenge to
teach subject like this.
1. Positive first impression:
I believe first impression is a best impression and I used my first class
effectively for this course. First few minutes are very important as they
observe your body language and our interest and passion about this course. I
entered in to the class with big smile on my face with lot of positive energy
and asked them what they are doing and how last semester went. Then I
started introducing the course by initiating discussion on How to test huge
structure like airplane really we crush it and test its strength. Slowly I
introduced my course FEA, its applications in real life problems
2. Introduce yourself effectively:
I am lucky for the reason students know about me and my style of teaching. I
took one course for them in their First Year Engineering Drawing Practice, it
went very well. I told them about my expertise in this course. For me this
course as become really a challenge for the reason they have high
expectations on me, I need to meet their expectations.

3. Clarify learning objectives and your expectation:

I explained them how I will be teaching this course and discussed the behavior
I expect from them like they can interrupt in between my lecture to ask any
doubt they have on it. I shared my contact and mail id, I told them about an
open-door policy in which students are able to come to consult me in my
room everyday and any time. The students come into my office either
singly or with their peers to ask me questions. In that way, they appear
very relaxed to accommodate the things I discuss with them.
4. Help students learn about each other:
As I am going for sixth semester, I dont think this activity is required as
students know about all students in the class pity well. Ideas given in literature
Provitera McGlynn (2001) are very good, I will definitely try one of this when I
take course for the first year next year.
5. Collect base line data on students knowledge and motivation
I interacted with the students and found how good they are at required Pre /
Co-Requisites by conducting small quiz. By preparing a set of objective
questions related to the fundamentals learned in their previous semesters in
concern to the present course. Depending on their score, base line data is set
on the scale of (1-5) depending on baseline data score I took one session on
mechanics of solids course and provided some important handouts to read.
6.When students appetites for course content:
(To explain the concept that FEM gives approximate solutions not exact
solutions) I asked them to calculate perimeter of the circle and compare with
inscribing no of polygon in the circle and adding the sides of the polygon to
get perimeter and finding the error.
G.Sreeram Reddy
Professor

Dept. of Mechanical