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Thoughts on Education, Part 1

September 1, 2017 · Arvind

The last blog post ended on a slightly depressing note, so I thought I’d share something more positive.

(Warning: This article may contain rants about the Indian education system and coaching institutes.)

Even though I had been into programming and game design for the better part of my life, a part of me had always felt that I could be a good teacher if I wanted to. When I realized I needed a break from Pyrodactyl, I thought the time was right for me to dive into this new line of work and see what I could contribute.

I’m very lucky that I got a faculty position at a university that allowed me freedom to experiment with the curriculum. So far, this has been a surprise in a very pleasant way.

What I learned by teaching (so far)

Adaptive Curriculum
My biggest peeve with my education was that it was 100%, Ambuja Cement style rigid. The curriculum was decided in advance and nothing you (or the teacher) could do would change that.I’ve been trying a more flexible curriculum that changes based on the strengths and weaknesses of the students, and while it is very early to definitively tell, I think it is having positive results. (More on these findings as the semester progresses).

Showing (not just telling) students how they will use this knowledge in the future helps a ton.
In my case, first I got freshman students to analyze their own favorite games, and then I slowly explained how the games in question use the game design techniques that I taught them. While I am still figuring out how to improve my speech and ability to explain things, I think most of them became very interested when they realized they could learn how their favorite games worked – even though I was conducting a dry flowcharts and game states lecture.

Subject (and self) Discovery
I’m learning a lot more about my subjects and myself as I give more classes. Even the games that I made appear in a different light with some of the things that I learned while researching my topics.This is exciting – like Eat Pray Love except someone pays me a salary to do it.

I hope this different style of article is cool with the usual readers of Pyrodactyl. I’ll share more as I finish my first semester of teaching!

If there’s any teachers out there in the comments, what did you learn when you started teaching? Any tips to help out a new guy? 🙂

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2 Comments

  1. Rahul

    September 2, 2017 at 10:06 am ·

    I usually find that a 50-50 ratio works well. I spend one hour teaching them and one hour making them implement what they just learned.

    1. Arvind Author

      September 2, 2017 at 10:47 am ·

      Yep, I try to use a similar ratio. Usually 60-40 but the idea is to get them to immediately execute whatever it is they learned.

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