Teaching Statement

Jiaying Shen

Teaching has been a challenging but also rewarding experience for me. My early teaching experience was in high school where I tutored elementary school students and taught basic database theory and programming language courses. I have also presented linguistic theories in formal semantics classes, and led lab sections for an introductory computer literacy course for undergraduate students. Most recently, I was a guest lecturer for the graduate level Artificial Intelligence course, and I assisted my advisor in supervising a graduate student’s Master’s project. These experiences taught me that I love teaching and that I want to continue teaching for the rest of my life. They also gave me a healthy respect for the work that goes into being a good teacher and how much difference a good teacher can make.

I learned early on that understanding how people learn is one of the most crucial aspects of teaching. People with various backgrounds and maturity levels absorb knowledge differently. Most people understand new ideas best if they are introduced in a familiar setting. Therefore it is important to step into the students’ shoes, look at the material from their perspective, and present it in a way that can be most easily understood by them. For example, when I was preparing my lectures on Logic of Plurality to a group of linguistics students I realized that they are not familiar with advanced algebra concepts employed in this formal semantics theory such as lattice and group. However, they do know basic set theory, so I introduced the new concepts by comparing them to the more familiar concept of set. This extra step made the lectures go much more smoothly and the students understood the new theory much more easily, so much so that after the lectures I received personal thanks from several students.

I have taught a range of subjects to groups with various educational backgrounds in different teaching environments. This experience taught me that students in different settings have very different expectations of the teacher and require different teaching techniques. I was the guest lecturer for the Artificial Intelligence course in my department last year. It is an introductory AI course that is required for every graduate student, regardless of their individual research interests. The class consists largely of first year graduate students with little prior exposure to AI. They expect to get a broad overview of the area and a basic understanding of the various issues involved. As much as I wanted to stimulate creative thinking by presenting various exciting open research questions in the field, being overly zealous about it would only overwhelm the students and intimidate them away from the subject. Therefore I focused on teaching them the basic algorithms first and then encouraged them to think about their shortcomings and ways to improve them. Helping to supervise a graduate student’s Master thesis was an entirely different experience. One important job of an advisor is to recognize the students’ strengths and talents and encourage them to develop them to their full potential. It is very helpful to talk to them extensively and help them design projects and research directions that they are most interested in and good at. Being an advisor is not as much feeding existing knowledge to the students as inducing the students to think critically and creatively and to develop their own research agenda.

Computer science is an applied field where students constantly apply the fundamental concepts and theory learned, including other disciplines. One of my main teaching goals is to encourage independent thinking and analytical reasoning to develop their problem solving skills. I never stop at merely presenting a theorem or algorithm in class. Instead, I ask the students to think about what the implications of a theorem are, why an algorithm works, what its drawbacks are, and how to improve it. I get excited when a student asks a question that I have overlooked and encourage class discussion.  I also believe that one of the best ways to learn is to practice it. Many of my favorite courses involved designing and implementing a working system from the scratch. I still remember the excitement when I built my first multi-agent system, a contract net. Not only did I feel a great sense of accomplishment but also a much deeper understanding of all the theories we had learned in class and read in papers. Therefore, I think it is important to strive for a balance between lecturing and hands on projects. On one hand, it is important to learn the basics and theories thoroughly. On the other hand, the affinity introduced by projects is useful to bring out the finer points and help the students understand the subject better and more deeply.

One teaching ability that I have been working to improve on is making connections among different subjects and techniques. It is an invaluable skill for an advisor to be able to recognize the similarities between seemingly unrelated subjects and utilize existing research to solve new problems. I am fortunate to have had an advisor whose great insights in the field and ability to make connections have helped me tremendously in my research. I strive to possess similar skills as an advisor to my own students.

A good teacher should be totally involved with the class, dedicated to the students and prepared to devote time and energy to them. The enthusiasm of a motivated teacher conveys itself to the students and inspires their interest and desire to learn. I make sure that I understand the lecture well before I enter the classroom because I find that the confidence derived from good preparation in turn inspires confidence of the students in me and in their own ability to master the subject. I encourage students to ask questions in class and out of class so that I can get good feedback on how they are absorbing the new material and adjust my teaching speed accordingly. My students describe me as a lively teacher in the classroom and they enjoy the interactions I encourage. I also spend extra time thinking about better ways to help students understand the material and use it to facilitate their own research. For example, when I was presenting a new research paper at my lab meeting, I took the time to construct an example that illustrated the algorithm. This example was inspired by an ongoing research project in the lab and therefore excited my labmates and stimulated new research directions.

Developing personal relationships with the students can be beneficial to teaching, especially for an advisor. Advising a graduate student often means years of constant interaction. It is crucial to recognize the student’s strengths and weaknesses and work with them to develop a unique and promising research agenda. It is also important to understand their personal situations and give support when they need it. I always enjoy my weekly meetings with my advisor. We discuss research progress and have brainstorming sessions about future directions. This makes sure that I make steady and satisfactory progress. I appreciate the fact that my advisor is approachable and cares about me as a person with a life outside of the lab as well as his student. I have seen students quit graduate school not because they lack ability or interest but because of difficulty adjusting to the change from college.  It is important for an advisor to support their students and assist them in making that transition.

I firmly believe that the best way to learn is to teach. Every time after I teach, I inevitably find that I have a deeper understanding of the subject and often gain a new insight into the material, which in turn helps my own research. I have taught a range of subjects to students at different levels. My undergraduate and graduate studies have prepared me well to teach different courses. I am especially interested in teaching AI courses including introductory AI and reinforcement learning. I am prepared to teach theory courses such as algorithms and discrete mathematics, system courses such as operating systems, and basic programming courses. I am also excited about designing seminar courses to introduce students to commonly used techniques in the field and up-to-date research topics. Examples include graphical models in AI, where students learn about models such as Bayesian Networks and Markov Decision Processes, adversarial game playing, where students build agents to play games employing different machine learning and search algorithms.

Both of my parents have been teachers for their entire lives, and have won numerous awards for doing a splendid job. I have a wonderful advisor who not only supervises my research but also teaches me how to be a great advisor myself. My own teaching experience gives me an immense sense of accomplishment and motivates me to continue improving my teaching skills. I love teaching and it is one of the things that I will enjoy doing for the rest of my life.