Ravi has taught a wide range of courses, from the General Education to departmental major areas, to advanced graduate seminars. Students praise his practice of making his own extremely detailed course notes available to them. In 1995-96 he created a World Wide Web home page that also provides information to students taking each of his courses. In 1996 he restructured the required "Data Structures" course so that discussion sections would be replaced by laboratory sections using the department's new UNIX Educational Computing Laboratory workstations.

In both 1984-85 and 1992, he played an important role in re-creating the department curriculum — including introducing a new senior level course — in a way that ensured accreditation and reaccreditation by the Computer Science Accreditation Board. He worked with the School of Business to develop a new five-year combined program in computer science and business administration, and has developed a proposal for an undergraduate honors program.

Ravi's pride in the department and his meticulous caring for his students has guaranteed that his courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level consistently have large enrollments. He believes that a good teacher is a good listener, and so is also recognized as an excellent advisor and sensitive mentor in his department.

The care he takes in preparation of lectures and presentations is matched by his efforts to keep abreast of technological developments in his field, and to participate in its progress. He has published 23 refereed research papers, with seven papers under review for publication. He was the principal investigator on two NSF grants and a contributor to a third, serves as a referee for several journals, and is a reviewer for professional conferences, publishers, and NSF.