When I was a high school senior, statistics was not as popular and well-known as a discipline as it is today. Only a few universities offered statistics as a major, and hence, not many high school students consider being a statistician as their career goal. My high school AP statistics teacher opened the door to this interesting new world in front me. When I was a college junior major in statistics, I couldn’t make up my mind about what to do after my bachelor degree. A teaching professor who knew me well encouraged me to pursue a PhD degree in statistics. I followed her advice, and always feel indebted to her. Being influenced by two great teachers, teaching is more than a merely job to me.

Statistics is a relatively practical subject compared to mathematics. Students who are required to take introductory level statistics course have wide-ranging backgrounds. Some of them do not have solid mathematical training before. When I was a teaching assistant for intro-level probability theory, I explained abstract concepts with easy-to-grasp real life stories. For example, I used coin tossing to demonstrate what p-value means. Illustration with graphs also helps. Students who lack passion for learning statistics could be motivated by hearing about how statistical tools can be useful for their own disciplines. In the era of big data, a lot of jobs and research fields require basic statistical knowledge and data analyst skills.

Active thinking helps students learn better. When leading discussion sessions for a graduate level course in machine learning, I always give the whole class several minutes to read and try the problems on their own. Even though discussion materials are posted before class, students may not be aware of it or do not have time nor incentive to try it. Giving the students thinking time in class “force” them to get familiar with the question due to peer pressure. Students are encouraged to read out the questions voluntarily, and share their thoughts, no matter right or wrong. Active thinking and engagement allow students to learn the concepts more thoroughly than passively taking down what I write on board.

Students with various personality and learning habits should be given equal attention and opportunities from the instructors. In each course, there are passionate students who like to speak out as well as quiet ones not comfortable with sharing their opinions. In traditional classroom setting, instructors can tell students’ thinking process from their facial expression and eye contact. Unfortunately, in online learning, it is impossible to look at the students because some of them have their camera turned-off. It takes more effort to engage the whole class in virtual classroom. When I lead discussion sessions on Zoom, I try to check every 5 to 10 minutes with the class to see if everything is clear and whether they have any questions or not. I also try my best to monitor questions posted in chat channel by those who prefer typing than speaking.

Through my teaching experiences at Duke University in both traditional face-to-face classroom and online setting, I have learned a lot about how to communicate with students and gotten aware of several effective teaching strategies. In the future, I will keep improving my teaching skills and employ various methods to engage the students in my class.