Kevin Karplus –Teaching Statement 2003-04
Professor in Biomolecular Engineering

This is the second time I've been nominated for a teaching
award---some students must like me, even though I am a strict (some
would say harsh) grader, I don't prepare and deliver polished
lectures, my handwriting on the blackboard is hard to read, and I
can't even remember people's names, much less details of their
personal lives. Conventional wisdom would make me the least likely
candidate.

Is it the courses I teach?

In my almost eighteen years at UCSC, I have created several
courses on various topics (including technical writing, integrated
circuit design and layout, digital typesetting, digital synthesis
of music, bicycle transportation engineering, bioinformatics,
protein-structure prediction, and resource-efficient programming)
and have taught several courses designed by others (applied
discrete math, computer architecture, and hardware logic design).
None of these topics are ones that large numbers of students seek
out for fun---the courses are tough technical classes, many of
them required class for the major.

Is it my lecture notes?

I usually use a traditional lecture format, but I do not prepare
detailed lecture notes. Most days, I go into the classroom with just a few
keywords on topics I'd like to cover and ten or twenty minutes
thought about what would constitute a good approach to the topics.
My best lectures are ones that are driven by student questions,
often about topics that I had not planned to cover that day at
all.

One student recently reminded me of a time when, in response to a
request for a copy of my lecture notes, I showed the class a 1" x
1" post-it note that held my notes. It took me three lectures to
cover everything on the post-it.

Is it my teaching style?

Except for a few particularly complex topics in my graduate
bioinformatics course, I do derivations and examples
on-the-fly---I refer to this approach as "live-action math". I
believe that the students benefit from seeing problem-solving
techniques being used on problems, rather than just seeing canned
solutions, and I can usually avoid running down too many blind
alleys.

Live-action math is very demanding, as I need to simultaneously
solve a tricky math problem (students always ask about the hardest
problems), present general problem-solving methods, and make sure
I cover the important concepts for the week. I can't do
live-action math at 8 in the morning, so class scheduling is
important for me.

In one freshman course (Applied Discrete Math), I experimented
with having my lectures entirely driven by student questions about
the examples or exercises in their textbook. The first two times
I tried this, it was not very successful---I covered all the
material, but many freshmen were upset by the lack of organization
and offended that I expected them to read the book and try the
problems before coming to class. In fact, some were so pointed in
their criticism of this approach to teaching that I was once
denied a promotion based on their teaching evaluations.
Nevertheless, I tried the approach once again, this time in a
self-selected "honors" version of the class. Although the
students were not significantly different from the regular section
of the class (based on their test scores on a common final exam),
they seemed to enjoy the different teaching style, and I got good
ratings that quarter.

What do I bring to the classroom?

For all the courses, I bring thorough knowledge of the material
I'm trying to teach, a passionate desire for the students to learn
as much of it as they can, high expectations of the students, a
willingness to answer questions, and time for the students.

Students often rise to expectations, and so I treat them as
colleagues. I expect students to be able to work both
independently and collaboratively, to present what they have done
clearly, and to ask for clarification when confused. In return, I
try to pay close attention to their work and to make suggestions
for improvement.

For example, in Winter 2002, I taught a graduate course in
bioinformatics (which was also the required capstone course for
the BS in Bioinformatics). In this course, each student was
required to do a quarter-long project which is 50% or more of the
evaluation. I scheduled half-an-hour a week with each student to
discuss the project, provide missing background, help debug
programs, suggest papers to read, and provide feedback on the
required weekly draft of the final report. One undergrad
commented to me that this was the first time at UCSC that he felt
that a professor had actually read his work---feedback in earlier
classes had not been very detailed.

Obviously, I can't provide this much time to every student in
every class, but I do keep my office door open and am usually
willing to meet students even outside scheduled office hours. I
usually have 2 or 3 grad students and 2 or 3 undergrads working on
research projects that I meet with individually once a week.

How does my teaching philosophy affect my courses?

I try to make my courses project-driven, rather than exam-driven,
as I mainly want students to develop design and analysis skills
that are not easily testable in a 3-hour format. I have no desire
for students to memorize facts---it is far more useful for them to
develop skill at finding information when they need it. For an
example of training students in finding information, see the
library puzzle homework assignment in the tech-writing course:
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus/185/w03/reader/9_Library_Puzzle.html

I've never given a multiple-choice test, as multiple choice is
useless for testing these skills. When I do give a timed test, it
is likely to involve mathematical proofs, state-machine design, or
logic circuit design---questions for which there is more than one
correct answer, so grading relies on the grader being able to
check the correctness of the proposed solution, not just matching
the solution to a pre-computed "right answer". This means I end
up doing much of the grading myself, or at least assisting the
graders on the non-standard solutions.

Can my ideas be adopted by other faculty?

I have often been disappointed by the statements written by
winners of teaching awards---to adopt the methods that those
teachers said worked for them, I would have to change completely
who I am and what I teach. Are the things that worked for me
similarly idiosyncratic? Perhaps---not many of our faculty would
be comfortable doing live-action math, as the risk of embarrassing
mistakes is high. Also, because of increasing teaching, research,
and administrative demands on our time, very few of us have the
time to spend half an hour a week with each student in a class. I
can do that only one quarter every couple of years, and I
sacrifice nearly everything else that quarter to do it.

What worked best for me was to figure out what my strengths were
and to try to modify my teaching style to make maximum use of them
and minimize the effect of my weaknesses. I teach best
one-on-one, responding to questions, so I have adapted my teaching
style to come as close to this as resources permit.