Teaching Philosophy
CJ Chung

• Knowledge is only part of understanding. Genuine understanding comes from hands on experience. The best way to learn is by doing. (Dr. S. Papert, MIT Robotics Lab) The only way not to succeed is not to try. (Edward Teller) I am always motivating students to do in various ways such as developing real-world projects, publishing research papers, and participating in various public demonstrations and competitions.
• In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; But in practice, there is. In my classes, I am always trying to put theory into practice by developing systems with real users. Theory and Practice *not* in theory!
• Education is not the filling of the vessel. It is the lighting of the flame. (Dr. Reid) I try to motivate and challenge students.
• Teaching for longterm retention and transfer.
• Lectures ought to be short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the essentials.
• In many cases, we learn easily by examples. Many real-world examples, which are brief, will be introduced in class.
• One real-world practical project with actual users is better than ten small homeworks to be thrown away after the class.
• Encourage students to be creative and innovative so that they can start their own venture businesses.
• Research turns money into knowledge; Innovation turns knowledge into money.
• A prototype system is worth a binder of planning documents.
• There are three ways of developing systems: decomposition, abstraction, and projection. I prefer an incremental approach based on projection.