Teaching

"Education is the great conversion process under which abstract knowledge becomes useful and productive activity."

--- Gordon B. Hinckley in Standing For Something

I've been teaching for 12 years, and have taught CS143 (Introduction to Computer Architecture), CS 252 (Theory), CS 324 (Computer Architecture) (previously known as CS380), CS 470 (Artificial Intelligence), CS 670 (Multi-Agent Systems), and CS770R (Advanced Topics in Multi-Agent Systems). Links to each of these pages, with unique links for each semester, can be found from the CS department website.
For the past several years, I've been teaching only theory, AI, and multi-agent systems.

For those who are interested, my teaching goals are:

Genuinely care about the students in my classes
Make classes both intellectually stimulating and challenging, but maintain a respect for how busy students are.
Facilitate learning by

Engaging student attention in lectures
Employing peer tutoring via group projects, class participation, and in-class problems
Expecting students to be prepared before class, and reinforcing this expectation when necessary

Establish criteria for expected class competencies/concepts, and grade according to these competancies
Recognize that empirical evidence suggests that most students forget most of what they learn in a class within a year after completing it. Identify those concepts that I want students to retain beyond one year, and teach so as to make these concepts stick.
Make a personal contact with every student who fails an exam or fails to turn in a project, and see if I can help them.