I want students to walk out the door after class with their neurons firing about something that we talked about in class," Owen Astrachan wrote in his teaching statement. "I want them to call home and talk about how illuminating computer science is."
In nominating Astrachan for the Richard K. Lublin Teaching Award for 2001-2002, faculty colleagues were quick to note how well this professor of the practice of computer science has met that goal.
"I am in awe of Owen's teaching ability," noted Susan Rodger, an associate professor of the practice of computer science. "He is the most energetic, enthusiastic, challenging and fun speaker I have ever seen."
"Statements such as 'best teacher in the country' and 'highlight of my academic experience at Duke' are comments students often express on evaluation forms," wrote Alan Biermann, the Computer Science department's current chairman.
"Owen has a long list of ideas on how to make theoretical material interesting," Biermann added. One famous example is a rubbery, sticky rope that goes by the trade name "Icky Poo," which Astrachan hurls into space to nab distant objects and yank them right into his hands.
Demonstrating with tossed pieces of paper, Astrachan described how he uses this Spiderman-like stage prop to illustrate the computer programming concept of "pointers," which serve to link information that gets shifted from location to location.
"It turns out in programming this is a key concept, and it is also one that is a kind of sticking point for students," he said in an interview. That gummy idea worked so well in class that Astrachan wrote it up in an academic paper, then attempted to deliver a 20-minute talk on it at a conference.
But his audience, already having read the paper, just wanted him to cut to the demonstration, Astrachan recalled: "They were chanting the whole time: 'Icky Poo! Icky Poo! Icky Poo!'"
Astrachan believes that fun should be a component of introductory courses. He was inspired by his own student experiences at Dartmouth, where one gifted professor connected with him by teaching French drama "as an event, not as the passive reading of great works."
That professor "would stage things to happen that you wouldn't expect," he recalled. "All of a sudden your class would be interrupted by a student coming in dressed in scuba gear with a giant squirt gun."
|
He is quick to point out that "I'm not sacrificing intellectual and technical rigor. That doesn't mean we can't have an interesting and fun time thinking of good metaphors and ways of illustrating those topics."
Another idea he's decided was less successful had students mirroring the designs found in good computer programs before learning how to write their own, similar to the way fine arts students learn technique by copying masterworks hanging in museums.
The "art museum" model "kind of worked, but kind of didn't. One of the reasons it kind of didn't was that Duke students are really good at mimicking without understanding."
He now instructs students to just go ahead and try writing a program. "And if you do it badly, that's fine; just get it done," he said. "Then, afterwards, let's look at why it's bad. I'll show you a good one and why it's good and why it might be better.
"I remember coming to grips myself with these programing concepts. Maybe it was because I did it late, learning about programming after having finished college and having taught high school, it was a little bit of a struggle and I remember that."
Sitting in his office, which features dual monitors and keyboards for interacting with students who are visiting, Astrachan described how he majored in mathematics at Dartmouth, then went to Duke to get a master's degree in education and teacher certification.
His first year of high school teaching, in Jacksonville, N.C., was terrible, he acknowledged. "My class just ran all over me." But the second year in Jacksonville went better. "I think part of it is the longer you do it, the more self-assured you are," he said.
Five years after moving on to the Durham Academy, he went back to Duke to get a Ph.D. in computer science. "When I was finishing, it just so happened that Duke was deciding to have professors of the practice in academic disciplines," he added..
"I knew I wanted to teach, that I was going to be a better teacher than I was a researcher. I liked it much better than teaching in high school. One of the reasons to go to a top school was you get better students.
"It turned out I was pretty successful."
|
