Teaching Philosophy

In teaching content, my goals are to help students clearly understand intuitions and formal mathematical models and be able to comfortably move back and forth between them. For this reason, I like to emphasize definitions and relationships between concepts to ensure students have an accurate vocabularly to understand problems and talk about difficulties before getting into specific proofs or algorithms. I also like emphasize organizing principles and the evaluative norms that allow students to understand various approaches to a problem such as sorting or search in an organizing framework. Given a good understanding of the important dimensions, students can always look up the details of specific approaches and be ready to understand new approaches in the context of a broad framework. Finally, I try to give a perspective on content that emphasizes its usefulness while acknowledging its true nature: a product of human beings, imperfect, idiosyncratic and evolving.

While content is the primary goal in teaching, it is also important to address student character, as students need good habits and a clear understanding of where they are going as computer scientists. I keep these goals in mind as I plan lessons and talk to students. First off, its important to keep classes in perspective. I encourage students to attend research talks, go to career workshops and participate in student groups so that they see their coursework in the context of a larger picture. I also encourage reading of lighter articles such as AI magazine pieces to promote a broader understanding and to give students the opportunity to encounter computer science in a more relaxed popular format. Norms are also part of perspective. We often talk of professional norms such as a committment to safe and correct code, or the careful consideration of copyright issues in the use of libraries, but personal norms are also important: it is helpful to let students know how much time assignments are likely to take; that a paper will require several drafts to get right; that you may need to read something several times and play with the ideas in order to understand it; and that when professionals are stuck, they ask someone who does understand to explain it to them. I like to encourage students to reflect on their experiences with past assignments, tests or lectures and be open to insights they might have about getting more out of them and also to be aware of the habit bound nature of humanity and how we can use rehearsal, creativity and external committments to change our habits. I try to demonstrate character by being prepared, attempting to meet each student briefly but sincerely over the term and treating students respectably if not always agreeably!

Often, a lecture is the best way to present new material - it need not be overly formal. Once the content is prepared, I like to preplan a number of questions at various points to indirectly get feedback on understanding. I also try to plan some variety in the lecture if possible, often incorporating one apsection, near the middle, requiring extensive interaction from students to fill in details or walk through steps of an algorithm. There are also considerable supplemental materials available to enrich the learning experience including animations of algorithms, application specific packages and on-line tutorials and these can now easily be incorporated through projection technologies. While I don't explicitly draw attention to gender, age, orientation and culture issues, I try to avoid anecdotes with biased assumptions and attempt to promote fairness in class discussion. Of course, the type and degree of interaction will vary somewhat from a first-year ``introduction to programming'' to a graduate seminar on an advanced topic and to some degree with the nature of the students in the class. Finally, I regularly ask myself why am I teaching this material and make sure I have an answer ready if someone asks: why are we learning this?

Of course, lectures are only part of the learning experience. There is no surer way to test your understanding than to apply it. Regular assignments are invaluable in this respect. A web-page based project can be a useful cooperative project which students take seriously knowing it will be publicly viewed. In between lectures and assignments, we have tutorials. In tutorials, I try to emphasize more hands-on activities and group-problem solving. I discovered the technique some years back of having students work on problems in small groups and receive credit for effort. I find it useful to interact with students while they are problem solving to find out where their thinking is. In a tutorial context, one can then reflect this back to the group. Social problem solving can play an important part in course work, but does require the instructor to clearly indicate when co-operation is appropriate and when it is not.

Advising Philosophy

Professional Experience and Development