Teaching statement

My past industrial experience and current academic experience are one of the primary
stimuli that motivate me to pursue my career as both teacher and researcher. No doubt,
interacting and mentoring students is very a rewarding and enjoyable job. My experience
and expertise make me well suited for teaching numerous technical courses, few of them
are listed below:

1. Assembly language programming,

2. C language programming,
3. Microprocessor architecture, programming, and applications,
4. Discrete Math,
5. Introduction to IS & IT,
6. Computer Organization,
7. Operating Systems,
8. Introduction to Databases, and
9. Research methods.

After graduating in 1998, I immediately joined an industrial sector (Electronic

Development Centre, Small Industries Development Board, Khyber Pukhtunkhwa,
Pakistan). It was primarily developed to assist the local industry in terms of training the
work force, providing electronics solutions, and running short diploma programs. Here, I
have had to perform all these activities and enjoyed this stage a lot, because it was my
first job’s experience. Here, we have had to prepare our community as the work force to
serve the local industry, provided electronic solutions to local industry on demand basis,
and carry out the R&D activities in electronics as well. Importantly, here I learnt a lesson
that it is necessary to provide a conducive environment to students if productive outocme
is desired.

In Sept. 2003, I said goodbye to the industrial sector and joined the COMSATS
Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan, as a Lecturer. I did so to
interact with students of diverse disciplines and get exposure at the university level. At
this position, I served the Department of Physics (BS Electronics program) till 2009.
During this period, I taught numerous technical courses as listed above to the students of
Computer engineering, Electronic engineering, Computer Science, BS Electronics, and
BS Physics programs. Here, I learnt many things; for example, I practically involved
myself with students while conducting the lab sessions of 4 credit hour courses, instead
just relying on Teacher Assistant only. I observed that if a teacher stays polite and
friendly with students, then they feel easy to ask questions about things which are not
clear to them in theory sessions. In 2009, I was promoted as Assistant Professor at the
same organization and continued almost the same duties till 1st Jan 2015. Following that,

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I joined the College of Computing & Informatics, Saudi Electronic University,
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as Assistant Professor and served it till 23 rd June 2016. Here,
I also taught various IT courses to the undergrad students. It was really a nice experience
for me to interact with the international students for the first time in my academic career.
In addition to teaching activities, I also enjoyed the cultural values and traditional things
with the students and relevant community. By 24th June 2016, I again resumed my duties
at COMSATS IIT as Assistant Professor. Since then, I have been serving COMSATS in
terms of teaching, supervising final year degree awarding student projects, conducting
research in image processing, and reviewing research articles for numerous journals of
the international repute. Now, I do many good things while training students, e.g.,: giving
office hours, providing tasks in groups, creating competitive environment amongst
different groups, monitoring students work progress frequently, exposing students to
advances and development in the relevant subject, and among others.

I strongly believe that good faculty always do more than simply convey information
in an easy to understand and reliable way. They contest to actively spark the curiosity of
students and inspire them for exploring material outside the classroom as well. To cope
with the real world challenges, I always focus my utmost energy on providing best hands-
on experience to students in various technical disciplines, e.g., embedded systems,
computer interfacing, analog and digital designing, robotics, and among others. While
teaching 4 credit courses, I always hand over home assignments to students and follow
them regularly so that they can understand what the course and aims are about. Such
activities highly encourage our students and clarify them in theory. I always listen and
struggle to reply to the students’ questions in the most appropriate and confortable way.

A biggest challenge that most instructors generally face is getting students to think
independently and to articulate exactly what it is that they don’t understand when they
have a question. To be honest, students are generally concerned with only the answer and
not the process involved in solving the problem. In this concern, I generally opt for two
approaches: i) one-on-one setting; in this case, I call students in office hour and ask them
to work the problem out on a whiteboard. I found that with guiding questions, the
students often pinpoint their own mistakes or catch the exact issue they are having trouble
with. ii) In second approach, like a lecture setting in-group fashion, I like to give out
example problems for the class to solve together. Notably, it is not enough that a student
just get right answer. I take more interest in case where a student can explain as to how
he or she reached the answer, so everyone can share and learn from their thought process.
The principles of group collaboration, characteristic of students working together to solve
an in-class example, are fundamental to my own teaching and research style. Group
collaboration is an essential component of the learning process and the key to future
success of students outside the classroom. Each student has their own set of strengths and
weaknesses, interests and disinterests. Group projects are an effective learning and
motivational tool to encourage students to communicate and discover overlap between
related research areas. Group projects instill a sense of pride and accomplishment in
students, allowing them to display their individual strengths while contributing jointly to
the overall effort.

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