Having Fun With Teaching

I taught my first class back in 2009. I have taught many classes since. I think something I quickly learned was everybody had a better experience when I was enjoying myself. So I did things that made the class more fun for me. Things like explaining cryptography through Shakespeare, use case diagrams via method of art critique, for loops through ransomware were some of the more fun I had over the years.

When learning switched to remote, I had a small problem. I relied on the reaction of the audience. In online format there is no reaction. The jokes you want to make in class fall flat in video. It was an adjustment. One of the things that came out is many of my lecture videos have one frame inserts of Tyler Durden.

This is one of those big data analytics courses, when you learn that time series is supposed to be stationary, and that means you need to check unit root. In the third video just after you plotted the unit circle, and have checked the roots, there’s the flash of Tyler Durden…

No student ever commented although I left dozens of these in each of my courses. Still, to this day it still gives me as much pleasure as the time I snuck copyleft into my dissertation copyright page under the watchful eye of the format check.