The time I committed sacrilege against a trinity!

I used to and still tend to have misplaced confidence in what I have to say. I genuinely believed that I was going to turn on the light bulb for everyone in the room. Little did I know the room would instead be set ablaze with me burning at the stake for committing engineering education sacrilege. The DD’s smile gave way swiftly, shaking his head violently, “No no no, that’s not how engineering is taught!” My audacity for suggesting lab should come before lecture…

When a failing engineering student, who went on to become a failure analysis (more like failed) engineer, had to teach circuit analysis and electronic circuits in an engineering school, it was always going to be comedy or tragedy or Shakespearean. Circuit Analysis combined bits of three NTU modules into one, of which I failed two. Electronic Circuits was a simplified version of Integrated Electronics—another module I had failed.

I went to university during the dinosaur age, I had to dial up NTU’s automated phone system to get my results. You know, the one where someone recorded the alphabet and numbers individually, then the computer strings them together. The phone rings, the robotic female voice greets me, then gives me the first result, “E-2-0-1 <pause> E as in Echo.” E201 was Network Analysis, one of the three modules that make up Circuit Analysis, and E was a fail grade. “E-2-0-4 <pause> F as in Fail.” @#$%^&! Who said academics or academic administrators do not have a sense of humour? I was not at all amused then. Nevertheless, 28 years on it makes for a funny story; Time is a great comedian.

August 2008 I left MOE and joined one of the polytechnics as an academic staff developer, leaving the classroom to work with teachers in this new phase of my journey ini education. However, it didn’t take long before I got sent back into classroom. My director insisted that polytechnic students are categorically different from secondary school students. Given that I had never taught in the polytechnic, I was severely lacking in credibility and would be unable to cajole lecturers to teach better. I didn’t buy that nonsense at all. These kids would have just left me before landing at the poly; if anything, I was the perfect bridge. Anyway, I couldn’t be bothered to argue and found myself shipped off to the engineering school in the new year.

First order of business was fishing my electronics textbook from the storeroom. I distinctly remember the evening I received my edict. Upon reaching home, I headed for the storeroom and opened the door, stuck my hand into a small gap between the junk, and reached out in the direction where I believe the textbook resided. Voila! First try and I fished the textbook out!

Over the next couple of weeks, as I prepared for class, something strange and miraculous happened: the subject started making sense, the calculations became crystal clear. I was understanding electronic circuits albeit 10 years too late. 1997 when I first studied this, everything seemed cluttered and an entangled mess. 2009, everything laid itself out so neatly and clearly. I wasn’t going to embarrass myself in front of some 300 students after all (yes, they gave me the full engineering suite - lecture, tutorial, and lab).

My students suffered the same brain cluttering that I did. I tried to calm them down with my newfound clarity, assuring them that I had suffered the same when I was studying the same shit. Just keep calm and do not over complicate the subject, it is not as scary as they were making it out to be. I cannot remember the passing rate of my classes. More than a few people were looking out for my students’ results - can the guy who is here to teach us how to teach able to teach any better? I do not think that I knocked it out of the park but I definitely did not disgrace myself either.

The same happened for the following semester teaching Circuit Analysis. By then I had better rhythm, otherwise it was pretty much the same as the preceding semester. Before long, two full semesters flew by and I had completed my engineering school sojourn. The deputy director asked if I had any suggestions for improving the teaching of engineering. I replied that indeed I have, and the change is very simple with no need to change existing materials. Boomz!

You see, engineering education orthodoxy is as follows: Lecture must come first because if the students are not first taught, they won’t be able to answer the tutorial questions. Tutorial follows for students to clarify any doubts they may have about what they have learned and for the tutor to go through the tutorial questions. Lastly, lab verifies what students have learned.

However, the notion of lab verification baffles me to this day. Has any student ever doubted Ohm's Law (V = IR) until seeing it verified in the lab? Of all the lab sessions that I was a part of, both as a student and lecturer, it is by far the most useless portion of the course, yet bears outsized significance in proving relevance of the course. This is because lab is where the promise to industry stakeholders, that students can do more than just pass exams, is fulfilled. Lab is where students get hands-on experience. We all know that reality cannot be further from this truism but removing this last vestige of relevance would be suicidal.

I tried to reassure the engineering school leadership that my suggestion had a sound theoretical foundation. It was grounded in Kolb's experiential learning cycle, which advocates beginning with concrete experience. In this approach, students actively participate in an activity—whether new or familiar—without preconceived notions. The emphasis is on pure immersion in the experience.

After the concrete experience, students reflect on what they have encountered and observed, considering the experience from various perspectives. This reflection leads to a crucial step in the learning process: students develop theories or concepts based on their reflections. They begin to recognise patterns which enable them to formulate generalisations and abstract ideas that can explain their observations. Having done all that, they then attend a lecture where the lecturer teaches the law, concept, or theory. The students compare their own theories against what the lecturer is teaching, analysing how closely they align or differ.

But my suggestion was swatted away.

The sacred lecture-tutorial-lab trinity remains untouched to this day. I checked.