Teaching

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

• Operating Systems, Principles and Practice, Iowa State University, Fall 2004, Spring 2005, Fall 2008. Graded assignments and projects, helped students in office hours, assisted in preparing and grading exams, gave several lectures, instructed and assisted in lab sessions.
• Computer Network Forensics, Iowa State University, 2007 Fall and 2008 Fall. Designed course projects and lectured a set of classes on using computer forensic tools, including EnCase, Forensic Tool Kit (FTK), The Sleuth Kit (TSK), and etc. Directed students on their course projects with programming in RPC, RMI and Java CORBA.
• Distributed Systems & Middleware, Iowa State University, 2006 Fall. Gave lectures, led discussion sessions and designed course projects.  
• Mentored three master students with their research work in cognitive radio, RFID system, and worm detection scheme.

TEACHING INTERESTS

Giving my solid education and teaching experience and many unique insights, I am well qualified to teach a large spectrum of undergraduate and graduate level courses in computer science and engineering. For undergraduate class, I am ready to teach both introductory and advances courses, such as Computer Sciences Survey, Discrete Mathematics, Programming Language, Data Structures, Signal Processing, Database Principles, Operating Systems, and etc. For graduate class, I am interested in teaching courses such as Algorithms Design and Analysis, Applied Cryptography, Computer Security, Distributed Systems and Networking.

In addition, I am interested in developing two graduate courses closely related to my research. One is Computer Forensics, which applies computer investigation and analysis techniques to gather evidence for legal processes. The course will focus on forensics duplication and analysis, network surveillance, incident response and cyber law. I believe such course is in urgent need, considering the fast growing cyber crimes. The other course is an advanced seminar course Wireless Security, which will focus on applied cryptography, key management, data authentication, privacy and other security issues in wireless networks. Both courses will be based on recently published papers, and will include class discussions, presentations and course projects. At the end of the course, students are required to submit term papers that either survey the state-of-the-art research or propose their own ideas/solutions to related topics.

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

My passion about teaching can be traced back to my high school studying. Thanks to my math and physics teachers, I had the opportunity to assist them in teaching my fellow classmates. I soon started to enjoy teaching especially in those moments when my peers went ''Ah-hah! I got it.'' When I was studying at Tsinghua University, I volunteered to prepare tutorial and exam review materials, and organized many study groups in different dormitories. My friends' positive feedbacks made me even more confident about my potential to be a teacher.

I further discovered my enthusiasm and capability in teaching after I came to Iowa State University. I have been a teaching assistant for a large undergraduate course Modern Operating System (about 90 students) for three semesters and a graduate course Computer Forensic for two semesters. Besides assuming such responsibilities as grading assignments, maintaining class websites, and holding office hours, I actively participated in teaching process by independently giving lectures in class, instructing lab sessions on a weekly basis, and designing all course projects. My teaching performance has always been positively evaluated by both students and instructors. In addition, I have been invited to teach other graduate courses, e.g., Middleware and Distributed System and Network Coding, as well as give presentations in many seminars and conferences. As a Ph.D. candidate, I have also mentored three other graduate students through advising them to identify research problems, discuss possible solutions and evaluate results.

In retrospect to my teaching experience, I know my love of teaching and being with students can never be extinguished. I desire to become an excellent teacher who is capable of guiding students' learning process and steering them toward their maximum potentials. My teaching goal can be described in one succinct sentence: Students can learn happily, effectively, and deeply.   

Q: How can students learn happily?

A: Give interesting lectures and have sufficient interactions.

Albert Einstein said, ''Love is a better teacher than duty.'' My goal is to immerse students in a motivating and delightful learning environment where their curiosity and excitement to learn can be stimulated. To achieve this goal, I first considered delivering impressive and effective lectures as the foremost thing, as lecturing is still the most common method to transfer information.

In my lectures, I conveyed my enthusiasm about the course subject to my students by showing them connections between real-world applications and the underlying techniques. I carefully selected examples and demonstrated them on the whiteboard, so the students could actively follow me through hand-on exercises. To help them understand difficult concepts, I broke down each concept into smaller and easy-to-understand components and used a variety of instructional technologies to explain each component. 

In order to further polish my presentation skills, I joined the Toastmaster International Organization. I have learned many useful presentation tips such as eye contacts and voice varieties, and have been practicing them frequently by giving speeches in the club. One particular encouraging moment was in the 27th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems in Toronto, where I presented my research paper. All of the audiences showed strong interests throughout my presentation.

Later, I realized that lecturing alone is not sufficient to engage students in the entire class. For instance, during the second half of one class, I noticed some students were distracted by their laptop screens and were seemingly not listening to the lecture. I began to realize human's attention span is very short and interactive activity is a must to achieve active learning. Since then, I tried to break up such long lecture into three to four chunks, and in-between I introduced various interactive activities. That is, I gave my students immediate practices based on instructional materials, challenged them appropriately and welcomed their free expression of the thoughts, or asked for questions and directed the questions to other students to start small-scale in-class discussions. The difference was obvious: I lectured two different classes of a graduate course in two semesters. The contents were the same but the second class had more in-class interactions. As I expected, the students in the second class submitted more comprehensive reports for their next project.

Q: How can students learn effectively?

A: Consider different backgrounds and learning styles.

As a student and a teacher, I deeply feel that matching a student's learning style, background, and ability with appropriate instructional techniques contributes to more effective learning.

I once taught a graduate course Computer Forensic, in which the students had very diverse backgrounds (graduate students, software engineers and government staff). To make the instructions as relevant to them as possible, I divided the lectures or homework into three parts: the first part was aimed to help non-technical students pick up the preliminaries; the second part provided practices about the main techniques and key concepts; the last part was more advanced and could assist students with strong technical background to pursue in-depth study.

I found the difference in learning styles was even more obvious when I interacted with individual student. Among the graduate students I mentored, one preferred to learn by frequent discussions and theoretical analyses, while another student favored to do hands-on experiments and hardware implementations. So I purposely guided them toward a project which preserved their enthusiasm and emphasized their capabilities. Both of them became my co-authors on paper submissions and have successfully passed their master defenses.   

Q: How can students learn deeply?

A: Integrate basic knowledge and advanced research.

Since superficial learning does not promote understanding or long-term retention of knowledge, we should teach in a way that encourages students to adopt deep learning approach. To achieve this goal, the integration of basic knowledge and advanced research is necessary.

To avoid students' frustrations during their exposure to advanced research problems, I think students must first have a good grasp of the basic principles. After they had a solid knowledge foundation, I would intentionally introduce to them latest research and technologies, link the new ideas with already-known concepts, and encourage them to discuss in groups and answer questions with critical analysis. Meanwhile, instead of using short questions that only encourage surface learning, in the exams I preferred to require students to answer more open questions without black-or-white answers, for example, what drawbacks are in the existing solutions and how to make improvements. These questions not only help them become more familiar with the rapid developing field of computer science and engineering, but also promote a deep understanding of conceptual knowledge.

In summary, I would put into practice the teaching philosophies and methodologies described in this statement, while ensuring strong integration with the department's curriculum. I am deeply attracted to the academic environment and enjoy teaching and mentoring students. Most importantly, I am ready to embrace any challenge to reach my goal of becoming an outstanding faculty member in the field.