From Harvard Gazette [link]

When Lončar began teaching Introduction to Electrical Engineering five years ago, 19 students were enrolled. The course has since exploded in popularity, growing to 220 students representing a variety of concentrations.

What was behind the transformation?

“Over the years, I made the course more hands-on,” Lončar explained. “We replaced final exams with projects. We also incorporated more robotics into the labs. It’s so rewarding to watch students design and program robotic systems in a final project who knew nothing about them at the beginning of the semester.”

Lončar didn’t hit his hands-on learning stride immediately, though.

“Early in my career, I took sort of a fire-hose approach to education: I thought it was my responsibility to communicate everything I knew,” he said. “But I’ve since taken a more modular approach to make the material more accessible. It’s more focused on how things work without hiding behind lots of math.”