Teaching Philosophy
Teaching Philosophy
I believe that meaningful learning arises from the processes of doing, reflecting, and integrating new knowledge with prior experience. My experience in mentoring and teaching students, my Ph.D. dissertation research, and my formal training in the Fundamentals of Scientific Teaching and Pedagogy at WPI have all influenced my teaching philosophy.
I emphasize the development of students’ skills in identifying meaningful problems, setting personal goals, and making steady progress towards the goals. These activities are critical for motivating students to develop the technical and creative skills that lead to their success. When I co-led the summer program at MassDigi, I scheduled individual meetings with each student at the beginning, middle, and end of the program to define learning goals, offer tailored advice on achieving them, and assess their progress. Students can often accurately assess whether they are on track and what support they need; however, when they are unaware of problems or don’t seek help, I would reach out and check if they need any assistance.
I think all developers should consider the persuasive power of these media. Games and interactive media provide a medium for asynchronous conversation between designers and players. In practice, this means designers can create a meaningful narrative for addressing social issues and raise social awareness. I mentored a student team on WPI’s Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP), an interdisciplinary requirement that asks students to address a problem linking science and technology to societal needs. The students chose to develop an engaging arcade game that prompts players to reflect on consumerism and environmental influences. I guide students through an iterative process for developing a game by establishing a sprint structure, milestone meetings, and weekly check-ins. I asked, “What should players feel or realize?” to guide the design considerations, and “What design constraints does an arcade game have?” to prompt students to consider technical aspects. The final game Adsense invites players to reflect on consumerism and environmental impact through a currency-based choice: players can spend earned money to remove intrusive ads, which gains them a small personal benefit (e.g., improving their avatar’s appearance) while triggering visible environmental degradation in the game world (greens decay and buildings crumble). To fit arcade constraints, they implemented the project as a roguelite endless runner with procedurally generated challenges each round.
I believe technical interventions are situated, iterative contributions rather than definitive solutions or advancements. I ask my students to engage with the social, technological, and cultural contexts, and in practice, this involves engaging the community and stakeholders in the design and development process. In a collaborative project in which students were asked to develop a virtual reality wheelchair training simulator, I asked the engineering-minded students to participate in end-user interviews. These interviews and meetings extended beyond evaluating the usability or experience of the training simulators and helped identify gaps that had been neglected by technical solutions – such as accessibility to training caused by differences in insurance policies, and different levels of mobility require different control modality. This can further extend to framing games as a speculative design approach – rather than as providing a solution, it questions the norm and raises new questions. I would teach students to view games and interactive media through experimental and creative lenses.
I encourage my students to acquire new technical skills during the development through experimenting, tinkering, and practicing in a safe and supportive project-based learning environment. Teachers and mentors have greater experience and knowledge, and it is our duty to help students recognize alternative approaches, overcome the challenge of taking the first step in learning a new skill, and build confidence through practice. In a summer project I oversaw, an art-focused student said that he had never used laser cutting and found it too complicated to learn. I encouraged and guided him in identifying workshops and resources at the makerspace and shared learning materials on image processing and graphic design optimization. Later, that student said that, with these skills, they could make engraved keychains and other technical-creative pieces they had not previously considered.
In creative technology, I think it is essential to both stay current with emerging trends and cultivate a growth mindset regarding tools and practices by drawing on the historical trajectories of relevant inventions. Understanding current standards and the research landscape helps identify where the field is headed. I support this in my guest lectures by connecting state-of-the-art research with historical context. For example, when I teach olfactory displays in Novel Interface and Game Design, I discuss early scent-releasing systems in film and live theater, as well as mid-20th-century experiments such as Smell-O-Vision and AromaRama. I then draw on recent human-computer interaction research on controlled scent release and design guidelines for olfactory displays. Pairing this history with current efforts to digitize scent-based interaction helps interactive media students understand both the technical constraints and design opportunities.
My Ph.D. research on game development practices shows that peer-to-peer learning within and across disciplines can have a lasting impact on projects beyond the classroom. I’m committed to building a peer-to-peer learning community. In my lectures, in addition to whole-class discussions, I often use small, randomly assigned discussion groups. I found this approach can help shy or soft-spoken students gain confidence, practice giving and receiving feedback, and eventually become more confident in public speaking. Some of the most meaningful learning also happens informally. As a graduate student at WPI, I co-developed an open-source arcade machine system. It was absolutely beloved by students in a game development program. More experienced students began helping newer students with troubleshooting builds and optimizing workflows. Some students went beyond the curriculum and built plugins and documentation to support Godot and native web technologies. I would like to support students through post-curricular activities that create space for collaboration, peer mentorship, and project momentum beyond the classroom.
Ultimately, I aim to help students identify and cultivate their deeper motivations for learning and career success. Education is not confined to the classroom; creative thinking, problem solving, public speaking, and critical analysis are lifelong skills. I believe that learning should be a fulfilling journey, where every step brings joy and growth.