My Goals in Teaching

Anthony Hornof - 3/31/26

My goals in teaching include, but are not limited to, the activities discussed on this web page. This information is here entirely for your benefit. You do not need to know it. You will not be quizzed or tested on any of this content. But it perhaps helps to explain some of the things I do in the classroom that might be a little different than your other classes at UO. These are just some of my goals in teaching.

Help you Acquire Skills and Knowledge

My goal is to help you acquire skill and knowledge. This is perhaps best understood in the context of the computer metaphor of the mind, which is shown in Figure 1, and which is largely accepted by the fields of experimental and cognitive psychology. In this metaphor, the brain is perhaps best understood as an information processor, much like a computer. In this processor, light and sound enter as stimuli, get processed by various perceptual modules (such as seeing and hearing), and deposited into short-term working memory. The cognitive or decision processor uses strategies from long-term procedural memory, and facts from long-term declarative memory, to send commands to motor processors that act upon the world, generating responses.

Figure 1. The computer metaphor of the mind.

In order for this processor to be most effective in the world, it needs a lot of information in its two long term memories. The point of education in general, and my main goal in this class, is to help you to get useful and correct information stored into your long-term memories. It takes a lot of rehearsal in your phonological loop to get information stored in your long term memories. The phonological loop is activated when you say things that you need to learn, and hear yourself saying those things, either aloud or silently "in your head".

The skills that I want you to learn include the course content, but also many other things such as how to be a better reader, writer, scholar, and contributor to a positive learning environment. Please understand that I continually strive to improve my own performance in all of these things, and more.

Motivate Students to Think Creatively

My teaching supports UO’s mission to help students to act creatively. My teaching emphasizes interactive, group-based design exercises in which students propose, consider, and evaluate alternative solutions to a problem, and then select one to implement. For example, I use in-class exercises to motivate students to creatively engage in designing a software program using the Unified Modeling Language, or a paper prototype of a user interface.

Include All Students

I have developed and refined techniques to ensure that every student can fully participate, and that every student’s presence and participation is valued.

Examples include:

• Every student in my class is seen and known by all other students in the class. I provide every student with a “name tent” with their name printed as largely as possible on both sides.
• My classroom employs “cold calling with warmup” from Dallimore et al. (2006).
• Students show up, and everyone speaks. I have a clipboard in class. I know it is a little unusual. When a student speaks, they get a check mark. This goes towards their participation grade for the class. There are even some exercises in which we go around the room and every student makes one comment, such as one thing they learned from the in-class interview with a stranger.
• In my classrooms, I aim to amplify the quietest voice as loudly as all others. For example, I periodically offer an “ask me anything (about the course content)” lecture in which every student writes down a question on a piece of paper, and I answer every question.
  
• I select textbooks that are reputable sources of current knowledge but also affordable. For example, I assign the international editions of textbooks when possible because they are cheaper.

Engage Students with Course Content

I revise my content and pedagogy in real time. In F21 CS 443/543 User Interfaces, for example, it became evident that students did not understand a programming assignment, and so I walked them through the code that I provided, drawing and explaining a Unified Modeling Language sequence diagram on the whiteboard. Figure 2 shows the diagram that I drew. The spontaneous mini-lecture both answered their questions, and also modeled how to explain yourself in real time using established computer science abstractions. I made sure every student understood what I had drawn. I took a picture and used it in subsequent assignments.

Figure 2. The whiteboard from a spontaneous mini-lecture that
I provided in F21 CS 443/543 after realizing that students did
not understand a programming project that I had assigned.

I regularly revise course content, always to address student learning. During the review period, I added instruction and materials on the following topics to CS 422/522 Software Methodologies:

• S19: User and programmer documentation, and how the two differ:
  https://classes.cs.uoregon.edu/19S/cis422/sys_doc.html
• S20: Software Requirements Specification and Software Design Specification templates:
  https://classes.cs.uoregon.edu/20S/cis422/Templates.html
• S20. How to comment your code:
  https://classes.cs.uoregon.edu/20S/cis422/comment_your_code/
• W22. Technical writing, including some excellent chapters that I scanned for the students:
  https://classes.cs.uoregon.edu/22W/cis422/good_writing.html
• W22: How to skillfully read technical material such as the textbook:
  https://classes.cs.uoregon.edu/22W/cis422/How_to_Read_the_Textbook.html
• S22: How to present your projects, with a clear checklist to get full credit: https://classes.cs.uoregon.edu/22S/cis422/How_to_Present.html

Each revision carried forward to subsequent offerings of the course.

Conduct Valid Student Assessments of My Teaching

I monitor students impressions of my teaching. I developed a survey instrument derived from Boice (1992), with three open-ended questions along the lines of “What is going well?”, “What can be improved?”, and “Any other comments?” The survey is administered in every class, anonymously. Written comments are analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). I show the analysis to the students and discuss modifications that might be made, and the rational for things that cannot be changed.

My survey has high response rates, and is designed to capture open-ended impressions outside of the rigid framework imposed by UO’s Student Experience Survey. My survey captures a broad range and majority of student impressions.

I have made many modifications to my class based on my in-class survey. These include:

• A number of students did not appreciate me providing feedback or direction during the in-class presentations. They perceived it as interrupting and rude. I completely stopped doing this, but still provide students guidance on how to give effective presentations, by providing students with a checklist for presentations (https://classes.cs.uoregon.edu/22S/cis422/How_to_Present.html) and staying quiet when they present. The concern of interruptions during presentations disappeared.
• Several students requested that I incorporate more technologies learned in previous classes, such as CS 322, into my course requirements. I did so by in fact asking students to learn and use technologies such as docker and venv, as can be seen in the blue text at https://classes.cs.uoregon.edu/25S/cs422/P2/index.html
• Students find the open-ended projects that I assign to be a bit bewildering, and some of the tasks I ask them to do (such as to talk to strangers) to cause some anxiety. I try to spend more time explaining to students that these feelings are unavoidable if my teaching is to reflect the true nature of software engineering and user interface design, in which there will always be an open-ended elements to projects and evaluation of work, and the need to talk to real potential users of your systems. I spend more class time trying to directly address the anxiety, such as by showing students how to do design, and then have them repeat the process in groups, with live feedback and encouragement. And to do a real-time spontaneous interview of a stranger.

These are just some of the many, many things that I do to provide professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed teaching.

References

• Boice, R. (1992). The new faculty member: Supporting and fostering professional development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101.
• Dallimore, E. J., Hertenstein, J. H., & Platt, M. B. (2006). Nonvoluntary Class Participation in Graduate Discussion Courses: Effects of Grading and Cold Calling. Journal of Management Education, 30(2), 354-377.