Teaching

Teaching Samples

• Course Syllabus For INFSCI 0020
• Lesson Plan
• CAT1
• CAT2
• Sample Slides: 051IS2000 Introduction to OS

Teaching Statement

Teaching Philosophy

Teaching is an art as well as a science. It is always full of excitement in creativity and significant challenges in exploring and researching new approaches and new technologies. To be a good and dedicated teacher is not easy at all. Instead of being static in his/her pedagogy, a good teacher should be highly responsible, open-minded, and well-equipped with new ideas and approaches to teach old topics. The followings are main points of my teaching philosophy.

Be responsible and be able to stimulate thinking, encourage enthusiasm and question-asking, and challenge to excel. A good teacher plays a key role in delivering knowledge and developing young minds as well.

Respect students and their capabilities. Meanwhile, always be available when students need help.

Be a good listener and an active learner. A good teacher welcomes all kinds of feedbacks and delights in acquiring new knowledge.

Always intends to use special technologies that could facilitate both teaching and learning.

Teaching Experience

Teaching has been an indispensable experience during my graduate study and work life. I like speaking while standing on the platform and interacting with students during lectures. Teaching offers me a great opportunity to deliver my knowledge to others and constantly improve my thinking, learning and problem solving skills as well. I greatly enjoy the teaching experience I have had.

As early as 10 years ago when I was a graduate student at CUMT, I co-instructed two undergraduate courses, i.e., "Multimedia Technology" and "Windows Application Programming", supervised by a senior instructor from the department. My responsibility includes giving lectures, advising, and designing homework assignment and exam questions. My instruction was very clear since the first class. My supervisor commented jokingly that I seemed to be a born teacher. But I knew there is no myth of the “natural” teacher. Teaching is acquired through a mixture of training, motivation, dedication, experience, innovation, and mostly “hard work”. In fact, even single hour of student-teacher interaction may require ten times hours of preparation. For example, to help students easily understand the rationale of pointer operation, I spent a whole afternoon to make a flash picture to show students the processes happen inside the computer’s CPU and memory though the flash itself lasted less than a minute. However it gratified me to hear positive feedback from students that they liked my PowerPoint slides very much. The teaching experience at CUMT brings me practical teaching skills and lets me know the criteria that I will always follow to be a good teacher in my rest life.

During my PhD study at University of Pittsburgh, I worked as a teaching assistant for both graduate and undergraduate courses for 3 years. My responsibility varied from occasionally instructing lectures, holding recitation and lab session, organizing discussion session, to grading homework assignment and quiz. Working closely with students during these years, I recognize that students have diverse backgrounds with different learning pursuits. Sometimes a student’s educational experience has nurtured and developed thus desire and began to produce a virtuous intellectual cycle; other times, past experiences have quashed intellectual curiosity. Because students possess different learning styles and attitudes, what constitutes an inspirational challenge to one student may overwhelm or discourage another. Therefore, when I conduct a course, I always vary my teaching style and use different educational methods based on a diverse set of strategies and techniques. For example, when I severed as a teaching assistant occasionally giving lectures in the class of graduate course "INFSCI2000 Introduction to Information Sciences" in 2004 Fall, I prepared some discussion questions for students who prefer to learn from having a dialogue with their teacher and each other, made them available before assigned reading, and then asked for in-class student responses. Meanwhile, I asked students who prefer to learn best by explaining material to other students to choose to either prepare a presentation or write summary on specific readings during the semester. Though regular small group discussion usually facilitates communicative learning style, sometimes writing is more comfortable for some, speaking for others. By offering a choice of assignments, I aimed to accommodate both styles.

In addition to adjusting teaching strategies to students' learning preferences and curves, I usually explain difficult concepts with illustrative examples and provide both graphics modules and detailed notes in my lectures. For example, most students find concrete and real life examples helpful in understanding complex ideas. Therefore when I was teaching "interrupts in single tasking system", I gave them an example that tied my explanations and questions to our everyday lives. I said, "Assuming that I am a single tasking system, the single task I am doing is teaching. That is talking. Now, some students is leaving the classroom coz’ they feel boring, that’s a kind of interrupt. But, since it has a low level priority for me, I will ignore it. At the same time, another student raises his/her hand and wants to ask a question. For me, this kind of interrupt has a high level priority. So, I will stop and let him/her ask the question and try to answer it. For the first kind of interrupt, it’s mask-able, but for the second one, it’s unmask." After this example, I saw most students nodded and it seemed they got the key.

My teaching experience is not limited in the classroom, I have teaching experience in the meeting room as well. From 9/2000 to 4/2002, I acted as a lecture instructor at CEEC training center and gave talks on CEEC technical colloquium for software professionals. Additionally I have many experiences to give presentations in related international conferences and graduate seminars. All these opportunities make me capable and comfortable to give lecture to professionals in the area of computer science and very large audiences.

Sample slides of my lecture, course syllabus, lesson plans, CATs, homework assignments, and exam questions are available here. Videotapes and students evaluation are available upon request.

Teaching Interests

Given my teaching experience and my strong background in Information and Computer Sciences, I believe that I am well qualified to teach undergraduate courses in Object-Oriented Programming and Design, Data Structure and Algorithm, Networks and Distributed Programming, Web Technologies and Applications, and Software Engineering. I would also be especially interested in developing and teaching advanced courses and seminars in Semantic Web Technologies, Information Retrieval, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence.

Teaching Activities

Teaching Assistant: University of Pittsburgh, 2003 - 2006.

Responsibility: Instructed lectures (occasionally), held recitation and lab session, organized discussion about course materials, and graded homework for both graduate and undergraduate courses.

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