Excellence in teaching

Lynn Kirkham is an Associate Lecturer in the School of Mechanical Engineering where he currently teaches in the area of analysis and design of mechanical components and systems. He has supervised Honours research students for more than twenty years in the areas of engineering dynamics, acoustics, mechatronics and mechanical design. For each of the last two years he has supervised some 11 final year students for their projects in the investigation, design and manufacture of the UWA Motorsport’s Formula SAE-A competition vehicle. Lynn received an Excellence in Teaching Award (Honours Research Supervision) in 2002.

I enjoy guiding students toward their achieving independence in learning. In the one-to-one relationship that is involved in Honours supervision this is most likely to happen and I find it very rewarding when it does. Over the more than twenty years that I have supervised Honours students I have worked with some extremely intelligent and capable people who have achieved very high standards of work and some less capable people who have not flown so high. I see it as my role as supervisor to encourage and guide each student to perform to his or her best level by my being committed to the student’s interests. I see Honours research as a partnership between student and supervisor; in the partnership the members have individual and mutual goals and recognising and acknowledging these allows a higher probability of all of them being achieved.

In all of my teaching I believe in challenging students to extend themselves, but while setting the challenge providing the support that can allow them to meet it. As an honours student supervisor this requires my development of a good, or at least sufficient, understanding of how each student “operates”. There is need for me to be aware at all times of each student’s understanding of his or her work, of what is each student’s capacity for advancing that understanding, of the size of steps for that advancement that can be attempted and whether the particular student responds best to challenge or encouragement, to direct instruction or to suggestion or to inference by related example. All of these require focus and commitment from me as supervisor for the whole period of the project and the preparedness to give of the regular time needed for student support. Accessibility is an absolute requirement for providing support to students who have been challenged to extend themselves. By the students being aware that I will be available to them on reasonable call they realise that I am committed to their support and I believe that they are much more likely to commit themselves to extending their abilities. There is much greater probability of a satisfactory outcome for both the student and myself if this mutual commitment is made.

Students’ capabilities and initial levels of scholarly development vary widely but all deserve the same attention in supervision. Some become more rapidly self sufficient than others and in those instances the focus of my attention to them turns to more deeply challenging and developing their abilities. Those students who develop less rapidly are not treated with any less attention or respect; in their cases the effort is to determine how best to bring about the development of which each student is capable. With all my students, to try to establish how best to work with them, I employ the technique of “active listening” whereby I will direct discussions with the student so as to gain insight into what is behind their own questions, comments or problems, be they technical or sometimes personal. From that I can usually see what is their current problem and level of understanding (or misunderstanding!) and devise a strategy to help them find, for themselves, a way past that point.

It has been my experience that independence in thinking and working by undergraduate students does not frequently occur spontaneously but needs initiating and developing. My main strategy in trying to develop this within students, particularly in the context of engineering investigation and creative design, is to challenge them to question for themselves what they have seen elsewhere, to not accept it as a solution to their particular problem. I challenge them to examine what is behind other solutions, what is fundamental to their problem and set of constraints and to recognise their own not insignificant abilities (they are Honours students after all!) to find their own solution path. There is great satisfaction and sense of achievement as a teacher to see that once a student begins to realise that he or she can make their own independent assessments and decisions, and have the confirmation of progressive success, they will rapidly do this more and more.