Sunday, February 23, 2020

Philosophy behind the video lectures

It has been a while since I last blogged. Since I am way too busy right now with creating my next Udemy course, I haven't had time to blog about code. So I thought I would blog about the video series that I have been now consistently adding to on a weekly basis. In case you haven't seen any of them, this is the YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxVbKNK18A_a9Ohd0Kb7kNA

The idea for this came from listening to a few podcasts. Initially, I thought of creating a podcast for power electronics, but then realized that I wouldn't be able to convey much just through audio as I usually like to code along. So, I decided with a weekly video on some topic in power electronics. Initially, I used to spend a lot of time preparing them, and for that reason, could only create a new video once in several weeks. But then, I watered it down a bit, and just recorded myself as I casually simulated and now am able to keep my weekly routine.

The main reason for these lectures was to provide a consistent flow of content for someone who wants to learn power electronics but is too busy. The target audience is someone who works as an electrical engineer, would like to level up with their skills to move on to being a design engineer but just can't find the time and due to financial and/or family constraints can't take a few years off to go back and do another degree.

For this reason, these lectures have a bit of theory but the main aspect is that someone who is interested can just code along. All software are free and open source and you could install every software in any operating system that you use. So, the idea is that a student could learn more than just equations from these video lectures.

A part of my philosophy behind creating these videos is similar to Richard Feynman's philosophy of teaching. Pick a topic. Teach it as if you were teaching it to a child who was hearing about it for the first time. Look for where your message didn't go through. Go back and simplify it further.

I have taken many courses on Udemy. One of the problems with adult education is that adults already have responsibilities. The traditional approach to giving homework and expecting them to work on it on their own time will not have much effect as time is what is lacking. So now that I have launched my own courses, I realize the need to make things explicit. And this goes back to Feynman's approach to teaching.

Making these videos has given me to opportunity to get better gradually. And I am enjoying creating videos as it also helps me to relearn what I might have conveniently forgotten.

No comments:

Post a Comment