Teaching Portfolio:  H. Chad Lane

Teaching Philosophy


Nothing is more compelling to me than the mind of a learner.  I am particularly interested in understanding how misconceptions are formed and what we as teachers can do about it.  When lucky enough to hear a student explain to me how a particular lecture or reading assignment was understood, I am almost always surprised at what I hear.  Beginning with my tutoring experiences in high school and through teaching duties in graduate school, these surprises (and others like them) have never ceased to fascinate me.  I view the problems of education as some of the most important facing our world, and my professional aim is to focus on them both as a teacher and researcher.

Fundamentally, I believe that learning has most to do with a student's active role in the process.  I seek to maximize the responsibility felt by students for knowledge being acquired by maintaining a student-centered view of learning all aspects of my teaching.  I ask questions, elicit ideas, promote the value of intuition, and encourage students to draw on themselves for answers whenever possible.  Following constructivist tradition, I do not believe listening and reading alone is sufficient for deep and meaningful learning:  students must be engaged and active.  As a teacher, I view it as my responsibility to draw students into this process and keep them there.

Towards this end, I have found that students need accessible entry points from which to base their learning.  A continuous goal for me when interacting with students is therefore to establish connections with what students either already know or can relate to.  For example, I tell stories about being picked on by my older brother (asking first for similar stories from students in the class).  The search for analogies and examples that students can relate to and understand never ends.  One of my favorites for introducing functions is the calculation of girth and classification of a package (I play Brian Regan clips to introduce the problem:  1, 2, 3).  By establishing these connections (and having some fun while doing it), I believe students are in a better position to learn about more challenging material as well as to reconstruct their understanding in the future.

Besides engagement and connection, I also maintain the simple belief that running a course is a two-way street.  What I expect of my students I also expect of myself.  If I expect students to be enthusiastic, I must also be.  If I want students to care, I must care--and make it obvious that I do.  It is this aspect of my teaching philosophy that drives me to understand the difficulties my students are having and respond to them.  Through humor, availability, and attention, I strive to establish a comfortable and open learning situation for my students.  I do truly view teaching as a collaborative effort and can only hope students choose to adopt this perspective as well.

The final piece of the teaching puzzle in my view is the goal of  challenging students.  I strive to challenge students' creativity as well as their ability to process and apply technical information.  I view this issue as the most important for recruiting new faces into computer science as a career.  Helping students to see this ``sexy" side of computer science is one way I do this.  The field is replete with powerful ideas and interesting problems deserving of attention. As a teacher I can only hope my excitement for what we do is obvious... and contagious.


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