My philosophy of teaching is mirroring my understanding of how learning occurs,
and consequently how I think I can intervene in the student learning process.
At the root of my reasoning is a simple observation that does not - surprisingly - come
from my background in cognitive science but from personal experience: there are
contents that students won’t understand, learn and memorize on their own a sunny
Sunday afternoon while recovering from their Saturday evening! Signal processing,
advanced algorithmics and software engineering, mathematics and artificial intelligence, or more generally any dense and formal theoretical material is what students need a professor for. It has always been my policy to prioritize the
transmission of these contents for which the student autonomy is not sufficient.
On the reverse, there are skills and abstract notions that are hardly transmissible in a traditional academic
way: creativity, aesthetic qualities, originality, etc. Therefore, all knowledge and skills cannot be
taught the same way and it is important to teach in a methodical, dry but clear manner
what needs to be presented that way and to have a more dramatic, metaphorical way of
transmitting less palpable knowledge or skills when appropriate. Making use of different
forms of media, formats and a range of styles is crucial to supplement traditional
classroom lecture format. Surely, teaching at the School for Interactive Art and Technology
imply taking advantage of the variety of technologies that are now available for
supporting knowledge and know-how transmission and acquisition.
More prosaically, teaching involves having appropriate goals for the students. One key
factor here is to differentiate students according to courses and levels. One can not teach
a first year freshman with the same methods as a doctoral candidate. In the first case, while
university students are all adults, the main goal behind the mere transmission of solid, stable
knowledge is to teach them what it means to learn in an academic context. In the later
case, this autonomy being (hopefully) already acquired, the focus has to be on pushing the research
and innovation skills of the student to their limits. Also, as the student matures (e.g. at the
Ph.D. level) the role of the professor progressively shades into the one of a mentor.
These conceptualizations of learning and teaching are the main ingredients for implementing
my philosophy of teaching by defining goals for students’ development at the intellectual
and practical levels. To know whether this is taking place depends upon the teacher’s
good judgment, sensivity to students, prior preparation and a certain faith in the process.
