我一直喜欢逻辑和谜题. I remember loving the worksheets we would get in math class where you have to figure out who lives in which house based on the color of their shirts and the pets they have. And I got minorly obsessed with writing sonnets in middle school after our Shakespeare unit because I liked the challenge of figuring out how to say what you want within the rules of iambic pentameter. 我的计划是在大学里学习数学或物理, but I took some programming courses because I figured it would be a useful tool to know, 我也很喜欢编程就像一个谜题. It was my first theoretical course in algorithms that won me over to computer science. The idea that there are truths you can prove about computational processes, 独立于任何特定的硬件或编程语言, 很具有启发性. It also really drove home to me that I enjoy the study of computing as a science, 而不是作为一个工程实践, 虽然我也开始欣赏它的另一面了.

I got started in 人工智能 because of my interest in logic also. My first AI research project back in 1990 was on automated theorem provers—how to build systems that could take a conjecture in mathematics and come up with a correct, 它的正式证明. 我读研究生的时候一直在这个领域工作, eventually adding language generation into the mix and looking at the logical rules behind the structure of sentences and of entire arguments. Being able to pull in knowledge from other disciplines like linguistics is one of the fun things about working in computer science. 你可以建立很多联系, 我能够不断学习和尝试新事物.

我从W开始&J在2004年, a couple of years after the department was formed as an experiment in what it would look like to create a distinctly liberal arts computing program that didn’t necessarily have to follow the traditional curriculum of computer science. 我们采用高度跨学科的方法进行计算机教育. 对于我们的专业, 即使是专注于数据科学的学生也会学习一些视觉设计, 平面设计专业的学生也会做一些编程. They encounter problems drawn from different disciplines in their courses and project work, 从入门关卡一直到顶点阶段.

对于部门来说, this means we think our role in educating students across the campus is as important as our role in educating our majors. 我们有一个愿景声明，每个W&学生应该能够参加CIS项目的课程, 在一个活跃的, 实践的方式, that is relevant to and enhances their major course of study and furthers their academic goals.

We’ve developed a broad set of introductory courses that complement other majors on campus, 比如数据库开发, 数字视频, 游戏设计, 数据挖掘, 信息可视化, 以及网络开发. 重要的是, 这些课程和我们CIS专业的学生一样, so students can be assured they will be learning valuable skills that they can apply directly to problems they want to solve. 作为教师, we think carefully about how we structure our classes to support the range of students we are teaching. One way we do that is by using project- and problem-based learning in all of our classes. Taking advantage of problems and projects drawn from other disciplines gives all of the students in the class the chance to be experts and novices at different portions of the work they are doing.

体验式学习在计算机科学课堂上非常重要. There’s a growing literature showing that the big innovations in computing education are moving towards more interdisciplinary computing and more experiential learning. 我相信这些教学法在任何领域都是有价值的, but the world of computer science is changing so quickly that it isn’t the particular facts or content students learn in college that are going to be most important—it’s the problem solving and independent learning skills. Experiential learning is also effective at supporting a diverse student population with different backgrounds, 利益, 和目标. Grounding a course in real problems to be solved gives context and motivation for why the things we are learning are worth knowing. There can be a tendency to teach a course assuming students naturally find the topic interesting, and part of an instructor’s job is to help all students find a reason to care about the topic. 这也意味着学生可以更深入地学习. They aren’t just solving homework problems where they can find the solution and then the work is done. With real-world problems, there’s always messy edges and next steps they can consider.

One of the things I like to do is find ways to let students take ownership over defining the problems they are working on. 当我教信息安全的时候, I get students in the class who are there for a lot of different reasons—some want a job in 安全, 有些人对这个话题很好奇, 有些人只需要高级选修课. I structure the course around a semester-long project where each student chooses an area of 安全 that they want to dig deeply into. 学生们想出的各种各样的项目是惊人的. One student interested in becoming a software engineer developed a portfolio of code demonstrating secure programming techniques they can use when applying for jobs. Another created a 游戏设计ed to teach other college students how to protect themselves from identity theft. All of them have to connect their project back to the fundamental concepts in the course, but they all get to show how they’ve learned that content in different ways. And they all finish the course with meaningful project work for their own 利益 or career paths.

我在我的人工智能入门课程中也做了类似的事情, which is designed to demystify 人工智能 and allow students to become literate consumers of claims about AI, 区分现实和炒作. 大多数学生不是CIS专业的, so I have them work on projects about the applications of AI into their field of study. So they’re all learning about how the output of an AI is dependent on the type of data you use to train it, but they’re studying how that manifests in systems for mental health diagnosis, 或者智能建筑能源优化, 或者自动化欺诈检测. 特别是这门课, the students are often nervous about how hard the course is going to be—computing sounds hard and AI sounds even harder. Bringing an experiential element into the course helps overcome that concern. The new knowledge they’re gaining about AI is just a new piece they’re adding on to a subject they already have experience with. 对于第一次接触计算机课程的学生, letting each student build on something they already know helps bridge the gap into the more unfamiliar content.

I can look back and recognize experiences at Ellis that shaped how I thought about effective teaching even before I realized I was going to become an educator. 我记得上微积分的时候. George telling us that she was going to present a new concept a few different ways, 能够叫出我们的名字，说“阿曼达”, 你可能不喜欢第一种思考方式, but just hang on because I’ll go through this the way you’ll want to see this next.” Knowing that she thought about each of us as distinct learners and planned how she’d build a class specifically for us made it easier to trust that it would all make sense in the end. I’ve borrowed that technique from her—I said something similar to my programming class last week before presenting different ways to understand a particular coding structure. 我记得和Mr. Walker and maintaining a notebook of exercises that we could revise and resubmit as many times as needed to get the right answer—I think there were some exercises from September I was still trying to get right when April rolled around. But it was clear that the goal was to give each of us the time needed to understand the material, 如果我们必须以不同的速度前进也没关系. 现在我不仅在很多课程中使用复习法, I even wrote a paper a few years ago about the positive effects of having opportunities for revision in computer science courses. 因为我已经把计算机科学教育作为一个研究领域, 我意识到我们的澳门新葡新京官方教育设计得有多好. It definitely set a high bar for what I expect from myself and others when it comes to teaching.

One of the best things you can do for your education is to cultivate a mindset of curiosity. If we know that students learn better when they understand why a particular piece of knowledge is useful or important, then as a student you can use that to your advantage by looking for what you find meaningful in any topic you’re studying. One of the signs that an experiential learning experience has been successful to me is when a student says they forgot they were going to be graded on what they’re doing. I see students juggling so many responsibilities and it is easy to treat classwork as an item on a checklist to get done as efficiently as possible. 我明确地告诉我的人工智能和安全学生, when I introduce the projects I described above: we’ll be spending all semester on this so it is worth it for you to take some time now before the semester gets busy to find a topic that you actually care about. Hopefully you are all having educational experiences where you’re being invited to take ownership of your learning. When that happens, accept the invitation thoughtfully and enthusiastically!