Teaching Portfolio

Teaching was a mystery to me. I saw it through the eyes of a student and did not second guess what went into being a teacher. As a new entry in the teaching side of academia, I’ve been able to look back and analyze what techniques my favorite professors have done that have helped get to this point. My goal as a professor is to not only lower the barrier of entry to computer science and make it accessible to students, but to also enable the students to challenge themselves and see the limitless potential of computer science.

For the first part of my objective, I would accomplish this by having my classes be in an active learning style, with elements of a flipped classroom. Students working in groups help each other and explain concepts in ways that are better for their understanding, and I can guide them through the learning experience. It encourages a cooperative environment, where everyone helps each other to improve their understanding and to work effectively. As an instructor, this means that every student will be on similar levels in terms of understanding of the material, and cases where students have problems can be fixed individually due to the nature of the groups.

The flipped classroom style will also help in moving the attention away from the professor and focusing on the student’s learning. I will fulfill this requirement by providing good tools and alternate sources for learning material, as there are very good open-source material on the internet to help understand and reinforce what is given in class. This will also serve the additional purpose of introducing the students to open-source and doing research on their own.

As for the second objective, the active learning method will help in engaging the students to work on solving problems. Groups help individuals see how others would go about solving a problem, intuitively demonstrating that a programming problem can be solved in multiple ways. Groups can show what they created, and others can see how their classmates did it differently. After every presentation, a class peer review can be done, analyzing which methods are more effective, which ones could be used for other problems, and thus encouraging students to be creative in their problem solving.

Finally, as a professor that needs to provide the best learning environment, I believe in continuous growth. I will seek out and consult with others in the field and my peers in the university to learn how to better my teaching. I will strive to find effective methods of not only helping students be better students, but to also handle the unexpected problems that can arise with the help of my colleagues.

By pursuing a future that is not a “professor stuck in his old ways”, but learning and improving my skills, I can encourage students as an example of keeping the curiosity of learning even outside of the classroom. Through the challenges, I want to become a better professor, and help students enjoy their college experience.