Teaching Philosophy
My teaching approach draws from Joan Tronto’s ethics of care, with emphasis on attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness. I derive my instructional goals from the Teaching Goals Inventory by Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross, and create pedagogical strategies, class activities, assignments, and assessment criteria to hone higher order thinking skills, personal development, and real-world professional skills in my students. I am also inspired by bell hooks' engaged and transformative pedagogy mentioned in Teaching to Transgress (1994), which recognizes the value of each individual and ensures that no student remains invisible in the classroom. As a UX researcher and advocate of inclusive pedagogy, I highly value centering the learner’s needs, lived experiences, and goals, and aim to create a space where students feel motivated to share their voice. A combination of these teaching approaches and goals comprises the core of my teaching philosophy.
Photo caption: My students, Chloe Vainrib (left) and Cat Collins, won the Best Technical Writing Project Award from the Department of English in 2023.
Keywords in Student Evaluations
Student Comments
Advanced College Rhetoric: "Ms. Das is an excellent professor. It is evident by her methods that she is invested in her students and genuinely cares about their success. She gives detailed, clear instruction. She seeks feedback from her students to make sure they are comprehending instructions, tools, expectations, etc… She has given me more thoughtful feedback than I have ever received in a writing course. Ms. Das handled the COVID-19 crisis and changes exceptionally. She was kind, considerate, and understanding."
Introduction to Technical Writing: "Ms. Das was an incredible teacher. Super sweet and very caring towards her students. When she is teaching you can tell that it is something that she is very passionate about and she wants her students to excel and learn new skills as much as possible, especially when it comes to professional writing. Her class has actually helped me a lot and I have gained a lot of new knowledge when it comes to writing professional documents and she made the class super easy."
Designing for the Web: “I loved this class. The text was a great guide and made the beginning coding part of the class easy to follow. I made a web page! It felt good that I was able to perform the task and have a finished product. Her feedback was really helpful. Very rewarding class and Professor Das is a great teacher.”
Courses Taught
I teach various first-year writing and technical writing courses at Texas Tech, and I was honored to receive the Outstanding Instructor Award twice from the Department of English. I taught the following six undergraduate courses August 2019 onwards as Instructor of Record. These classes were delivered in various formats; I taught seven sections in person, seven online synchronously, and three online asynchronously.
ENGL 3368: Designing for the Web
This course provides an overview of practical and theoretical aspects of designing effective websites and online content by focusing on planning, content development, site structure, visual design, interface design, usability, and accessibility.
ENGL 2311: Introduction to Technical Writing
This course introduces students to types of writing used in business, industry, and technology, and teaches them to communicate by using strategies linked to the workplace.
ENGL 1302: Advanced College Rhetoric
This course teaches composition using various sources, multimodal platforms, and research methods.
ENGL 1302: Advanced College Rhetoric: Writing in Engineering
This special section of ENGL 1302 introduces students to the writing, genre, and research conventions practiced in engineering fields.
ENGL 1301: Essentials of Rhetoric
This course acquaints students with writing and rhetorical practices that help them formulate research questions, practice various writing genres, and engage in civic discourse.
NCBO 0304: Non-Course Based Literacy
In this course, students learn how to approach college writing and reading comprehension before taking advanced first-year writing classes.