I use BYU-Idaho's Learning Model as a framework for everything we do in class. The intent of the Learning Model is to promote inspired learning and teaching across campus.

Here are some other teaching philosophies that influence my teaching style:

• ". . . All of the great teachers of ancient times -- Confucius and Lao Tse of China, the Hebrew prophets and Jesus in Biblical times, Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato in ancient Greece, and Cicero, Evelid, and Qutillian in ancient Rome -- were all teachers of adults, not of children.  Because of their experience with adults, they developed a very different concept of the learning/teaching process from the one that later dominated formal education.  They perceived learning to be a process of inquiry, not passive reception of transmitted content." (Malcom Knowles)

• "None but the humble become good teachers of adults.  In an adult class the student's experience counts for as much as the teacher's knowledge. . . . Indeed, in some of the best adult classes it is sometimes difficult to discover who is learning most, the teacher or the students." (Eduard Lindeman)

• "Lectures must be replaced with class exercises in which there is a large share of student participation.  'Let the class do the work' should be the adopted motto." (Harold Fields)

• "We cannot teach another person directly; we can only facilitate his learning."  (Carl Rogers)

• "[Educators must] make efforts to create learning experiences in which adults are helped to make the transition from dependent to self directing learners."  (Malcom Knowles)

• "You only really learn a principle by using it, over and over again."  (Henry B. Eyring)

• "If you can't explain something in several independent ways, then you don't really understand it."  (Richard Feynman)

• "Only after I've attained a visual and gut-level understanding of something, only then is the math useful to me for refining it and adding all the details.  However, math alone is not a genuine explanation.  Math is just a tool . . . , and it certainly does not confer expert knowledge."  (William Beaty)

• "As students become more proficient at engineering, our approach should change from telling them what they should know, to helping them decide and discover it for themselves. Fostering this by creating a practical, real-world situation in which students can experience problems and explore their own solutions, is superior to using only the traditional [lecture] in a classroom setting."  (Rex Fisher, excerpt from full paper)

• People learn best by doing.  (unknown origin)

• "Turn some control over to the students. Amazing things can happen."  (Rex Fisher, excerpt from ASEE Paper)