Dr Atanda Raji was born to be an educator.
Lecturing for more than two decades across South Africa, for Raji there is no greater elation than unravelling the untapped potential of students and empowering and equipping them to make a success of their lives.
“My aim as an educator is to foster in each student a desire to learn, a desire to improve on weaknesses, and a desire to flourish. These are traditions that not only will make them prosperous students, but will also allow them to succeed throughout their lives,” he says.
A lecturer and leading researcher in the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, Raji was recently awarded the Departmental Excellence Teaching Award by the Faculty of Engineering.
The annual awards honour lecturers who go beyond the call of duty and who are making an immense change in the lives of those who enter their classrooms.
Raji’s success is based on his blended approach to teaching and learning.
“As a teacher, I distinguish the importance of creating a learning environment where students feel safe to contribute, relaxed to criticize, and self-confident enough to ask questions and engage in class discussion,” he says.
Raji’s lectures focus on open questions, prompting students to share impressions, interpretations and relevances to the subject matter. He also places a great emphasis on interactive projects, teamwork, and utilizes visual aids, laboratory demonstrations and multimedia animations. He also believes that teaching and learning cannot be confined to the classroom.
“People say engineering is abstract and complex. As a lecturer you have to take students out of the class and into the environment and show them examples that they can relate to,” he says.
“Excellent teaching captivates and involves the students.”
Raji says he cannot learn for the students, but as an educator must do his utmost to provide guidance and assistance that makes it easy for them to learn within an enabling learning environment and context.
Referring to one of his favourite quotes by Albert Einstein, Raji says: “Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.”
