‘DIY’ –Individual Teaching Strategy

By attending many meetings and workshops at my daughter’s school, I got inspired toward the teaching field and thought it would be great working with students. I still remember my first day at UID in October 2014. Through the six years of my teaching tenure, my confidence and experience have refined; from dealing firstly, with two classes of 45 to nine classes of 450 students at present. My passion for teaching boomed and took me from being an assistant teacher to becoming a Lead Professor .Every individual design student has a different capability, different understanding and different grasping power. It is not the standard formula of understanding as in Mathematics.  A slow-learner, or a slow thinker or not too good with hand sketching- each student has his or her own strengths and weakness. Thus, the approach of teaching was made as a ‘DIY’ teaching strategy.

Being an architect by profession, drawings had always been the back-bone for my ideas/concepts. This was an important point, to be made clear to the generation-z, where there concentration capacity fluctuates often with the booming social media distractions all around!  The task is getting more complicated as diverse knowledge is now accessible on one’s fingertips, thanks to the internet. But with more coming in and going away as easily, what one should take and what one should avoid is a nut which needs to be cracked for these aspiring designers.

For a student of design, drawing plays a big and key role in their development. It can help them to learn, to write and to think creatively. It develops hand-eye co-ordination, analytic skills, increases self-confidence and helps in effective communication of concepts and ideas. By sketching one can develop their ability to focus and pay attention, a skill that can be very useful throughout their lives, professional and personal. Finally as a teacher, my goal is to know my students better as individuals and help them to improve their skills necessary for their future professional career. I realized that methods and stages practiced at UID can yield productive results provided that they take into consideration individual differences of students. Here I have had the opportunity to put this into practice and my students’ response over these six years has taught me a lot about what it truly means to be a teacher.

Author:
Viraj Wadia, Assistant Professor, School of Interior Design, Unitedworld Institute of Design (UID)

Disclaimer: The opinions / views expressed in this article are solely of the author in his / her individual capacity. They do not purport to reflect the opinions and/or views of the College and/or University or its members.