Teaching as Perspective Building

My aim in teaching is to help students develop an approach to thinking about the problems of the field, through the process of understanding and engaging with the specific examples in the course material. Science is not a static set of techniques; it is an evolving, ever-improving cycle of discovery.

In my particular subfield, natural language processing (NLP), the last few years have brought sweeping progress. Techniques that we teach one semester may be outdated by the next! In such fast-moving times, it's especially important to understand the current methods in the context of the broader development of the field: what types of problems are interesting? When are each of the solutions to a problem appropriate? Where do current methods excel, and where do they still offer unsatisfying answers? In engaging with these questions, I hope that students will build the analytical perspective that they need to adapt to the many evolving methods they will encounter over their career. This intuition about the problem space is also crucial for the research work that will build the next generation of methods in NLP.

It has been a delight to engage in these questions with such thoughtful and inquisitive students. I'm honored to receive this award and grateful to the instructors, TAs, and students I have worked with over the last several years, who have taught me so much. I'd especially like to thank the rest of the 11-664/763 teaching team – Graham Neubig, Clara Na, Vashish Tiwari, and Xinran Zhao – for their work in co-developing that course.