James T. Rowan Jr.
Teaching Statement
Some of the most personally rewarding work I have ever done came from teaching at the
undergraduate level. I found myself teaching pre-algebra to poorly prepared (many had
never seen algebra), non-traditional students, most of whom would be the first members
of their family make it beyond high school. I found that I could make a difference in this
person’s life. And that they appreciated it. Years later these same people would stop me
on the street and thank me. So, teaching is important, rewarding work… but how do you
make it effective for the less motivated traditional undergraduates?
Drawing on educators Dewey, Vygotsky, Montessori and Alan Kay I believe that learning
occurs best when it happens in collaborative setting, is authentic, is personally engaging
and is supported through a carefully crafted scaffolding. While the details of these factors
vary from subject to subject, it presents a particularly interesting opportunity in the
teaching of computer science, especially in the first two years when the danger of
attrition is high. By presenting introductory material in a scaffold-supported, projectbased collaborative manner, students can benefit from the guidance provided by the
scaffold, the less experienced students can benefit from the guidance provided by the
more expert student and the more experienced students can benefit from the experience
of providing that guidance.
Clearly, to be successful, this approach must be supported through the careful creation of
a project scaffolding that allows students to go beyond what they could learn on their
own. Presenting students with a variety of partially constructed project solutions is an
important piece that jump-starts the learning process. Another important, almost
essential, piece is the integration of Mark Guzdial’s CoWeb into the student experience.
The CoWeb is a web server that allows anyone to create and modify web-based content
on-line from anywhere the web is accessible… without knowledge of HTML. The CoWeb
is important because it provides a low threshold web-based place where collaboration
can occur; a central place for all students in the class, a place where students can create
class project web pages, exchange ideas, post questions and view projects from past
classes. This low threshold is also important for supporting cross-disciplinary pursuits
(which in themselves are important for reasons of personal engagement) where the
students may not be as technically savvy . When a class uses and builds a CoWeb it
builds a history of itself in the process of being used. More importantly these class
project web sites become a permanent history of previous student work that, over time,
forms its own scaffolding for future classes. It sets the “bar” and tone of all future work in
addition to its providing a permanent public presence for student work and this public
presence is the audience for student work which makes the work authentic.
I have taught 2 sections of CS4750, Human-Computer Interface Design and Evaluation,
each with a mixture of Computer Science majors and Psychology majors. This course is a
tough class in terms of scope and volume of work for the students (and the instructor!)
because it covers an enormous amount of material that most of the students will not
have seen. We cover a range of issues including basic cognitive science, ethnographic
approaches to research as well as research evaluation techniques, data collection in the
real world, prototyping and presentation techniques. Students work in self-selected
teams on self-selected projects that involve research participants gathered from outside
of the College of Computing. To provide inspiration and to set the expected level of work,
projects from all previous semesters are available on the class CoWeb and the students
are reminded that their work will be available to future classes. Students develop their
projects through iterative design that includes regular group meetings, regular instructor
consultation and two open-to-the-public poster sessions. These poster sessions are
usually well attended by faculty and graduate students and act as a reality check for
reasonableness as well as scope. One group in my class was a Turner Broadcasting
employee and developed user software that the company actually adopted.
Mark Guzdial, a professor here at Georgia Tech whose research is in the area of
undergraduate computer science education, has developed and is testing a new approach
to computer science education. His educational philosophy parallels my own in that
authentic, meaningful work attracts and retains students. His approach is to develop an
introductory computer science class that draws on student’s interest in communication
through media. By developing media manipulation software for such media as audio,
video and images students learn about basic computer science concepts. His first couple
classes were for non-computer science majors and were well received. Students became
engaged in the material because of their interest in communication through media and
questions like “Why is my image routine so slow and Photoshop so fast?” naturally rose
and provided (among others) an authentically produced fore into discussions of
compilation vs. interpretation. Taking the next step Mark is developed a first class for
computer science majors that is also the second class for non-majors based on media.
To me this is the right approach if one wants to attract students to computer science, but
especially if one wants to increase retention among existing computer science students.
Student’s natural interest in communication through media provides the engagement
“hook” on which the concepts of computer science become not only visible, but
interesting and worth study. Combine this with use of the CoWeb to make the work
authentic and to set the expected level of future work and you have a winning
combination which not only produces amazing student work but also addresses retention
issues.