我一直喜欢逻辑和谜题. 我记得我很喜欢数学课上的练习题，你必须根据他们衬衫的颜色和他们养的宠物来找出谁住在哪个房子里. 在上完中学的莎士比亚课后，我开始着迷于写十四行诗，因为我喜欢这种挑战，想知道如何在抑扬格五音步的规则下表达自己的想法. 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. 我在1990年的第一个人工智能研究项目是关于自动定理证明的——如何构建能够接受数学猜想并得出正确答案的系统, 它的正式证明. 我读研究生的时候一直在这个领域工作, 最终将语言生成添加到混合中，并查看句子和整个论点结构背后的逻辑规则. 能够从语言学等其他学科汲取知识是从事计算机科学工作的乐趣之一. 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, 几年后，这个系成立了，作为一个实验，它想要创建一个独特的文科计算项目，而不一定要遵循传统的计算机科学课程. 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, 因此，学生们可以放心，他们将学到宝贵的技能，他们可以直接应用到他们想要解决的问题上. 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. 利用来自其他学科的问题和项目，让班上所有的学生都有机会在他们正在做的工作的不同部分成为专家和新手.

体验式学习在计算机科学课堂上非常重要. 越来越多的文献表明，计算机教育的重大创新正朝着跨学科计算和体验式学习的澳门新葡新京官方发展. 我相信这些教学法在任何领域都是有价值的, 但是，计算机科学的世界变化如此之快，以至于学生在大学里学习的特定事实或内容将不再是最重要的，而是解决问题和独立学习的技能. Experiential learning is also effective at supporting a diverse student population with different backgrounds, 利益, 和目标. 将一门课程建立在要解决的实际问题上，为我们学习的东西为什么值得了解提供了背景和动力. 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.

我喜欢做的一件事就是找到让学生自主定义他们正在研究的问题的方法. 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. 我围绕一个学期的项目来组织课程，每个学生选择一个他们想要深入研究的安全领域. 学生们想出的各种各样的项目是惊人的. 一名对成为软件工程师感兴趣的学生开发了一组代码，展示了他们在求职时可以使用的安全编程技术. 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, 它的目的是揭开人工智能的神秘面纱，让学生成为有文化的消费者，了解有关人工智能的说法, 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. 他们获得的关于人工智能的新知识只是他们在已有经验的主题上添加的新内容. 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.

回首往事，我可以认识到，在澳门新葡新京官方的经历塑造了我对有效教学的看法，甚至在我意识到自己将成为一名教育家之前. 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.知道她认为我们每个人都是不同的学习者，并计划如何专门为我们建立一个课程，这让我更容易相信，最终一切都会变得有意义. 我从她那里借用了这个技巧——我上周在编程课上说过类似的话，然后介绍了理解特定编码结构的不同方法. 我记得和Mr. Walker和维护一个练习的笔记本，我们可以根据需要修改和重新提交很多次，以得到正确的答案——我想有一些9月份的练习，当4月份来临的时候，我还在努力做对. 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, 几年前，我甚至写过一篇关于在计算机科学课程中有机会复习的积极影响的论文. As I’ve become involved in computer science education as a research field, 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, 然后，作为一名学生，你可以利用这一点，在你学习的任何主题中寻找你认为有意义的东西. 对我来说，体验式学习成功的一个标志是，当一个学生说他们忘记了他们正在做的事情会被评分. 我看到学生们肩负着如此多的责任，他们很容易把课堂作业当作清单上的一项，以便尽可能高效地完成. 我明确地告诉我的人工智能和安全学生, 当我介绍我上面描述的项目时:我们将花整个学期的时间在这上面，所以在学期开始之前花点时间找到一个你真正关心的话题是值得的. 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!