Teaching

You are viewing my teaching portfolio. This webpage offers a narrative of how I view teaching and mentorship, and how my pedagogical growth has been shaped through my experiences as a student and instructor.

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant for Research Science Institute (RSI). Summer 2014.
Teaching Assistant for Bellarmine University Summer Youth Camps. Summer 2012, Summer 2013.

Teaching Philosophy

I draw on students' existing experiences to help them develop an aptitude for problem solving and scientific inquiry. Applying creativity and analysis to real-world, data-sparse, ambiguous observations forms the essence of engineering. The dominant STEM curricula focus on teaching analytical and design techniques through lecture-based instruction, which is very effective for teaching how to build things from first principles. But in a world where adapting existing systems to new problems is becoming increasingly accessible, such as with rapid prototyping and generative AI tools, it becomes even more important to understand how to discern how a complex system interacts with the world by probing its inputs and outputs (particularly when adapting things built by others to apply them in new contexts). I am motivated to implement emerging best practices for active learning^[1,2] as an integral part of teaching engineering concepts. To teach engineering intuition, or determining which variables are most likely to be important based on observations, I think about these pedagogical ideas:

Effective learning is powered by students having ample and low-stakes opportunities for self-driven exploration and reflection.

What is needed to cultivate a supportive learning environment that enables students to develop a troubleshooting mindset through building confidence in their own observations?

Where can interactive learning opportunities supplement traditional teaching methods, and can existing methods be (re)structured to democratize the curriculum for a wider range of learner experiences?

Beyond teaching and engineering, I think developing a learning environment from these ideas (for myself as well as for students) offers a toolbox for general life. How do I distill a complex problem into testable building blocks? What can I bring in from other disciplines, and how can I communicate what I'm working on in a way that is more accessible to others? When speaking about creativity, Ira Glass said that the process for closing the gap between how our current prototype performs, versus how we wanted it to perform, relies on developing taste by going through a volume of hard work^[3]. I believe that the volume of hard work is this cycle of exploration, reflection, troubleshooting; this can only be cultivated in a learning environment that supports repeated and low-stakes evaluation.

Teaching Development

My pedagogical outlook is informed by my experiences teaching at a range of scales. I have assisted intro classes for graduate students and undergraduates, and have also run demos and lab tours for elementary and middle schoolers. I have conducted teaching observations and have had my lectures observed, and have also participated in giving and receving live feedback during peer practice workshops. As a Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) Fellow, I co-developed educational resources for graduate students both within Columbia and for the cross-university CIRTL network. Many of these training opportunities, as well as teaching-focused workshops and journal clubs, were made possible by Columbia's Center for Teaching and Learning. (See details above in Teaching Experience.)

Mentorship Style

Applying robotics concepts to the design of systems that interact with real people and creatures is a highly interdisciplinary endeavor; this motivates many team-based projects as well as individual projects that can be tailored to a variety of students' technical backgrounds, interests, and longer-term goals. My approach to structuring research projects is to identify a well-defined "core" research question that has achievable short-term milestones along with many possible spin-off extension ideas. The goal is to have students exit the research experience with a completed design-build-test portfolio project, while also enabling flexibility within the research topic to hone engineering expertise or explore new technical interests.

I believe flexibility is also the key to building accessible learning experiences and supporting students, especially MS and undergraduate students who are juggling research alongside coursework and career development. Research is about tackling difficult, non-obvious problems; where and when extensive troubleshooting or design tweaks are needed is difficult to predict at the start. So although I am most comfortable teaching mechatronics concepts, the most valuable skill students can take away from a research experience with me is learning how to discern the quickest and easiest way to probe how a proposed design or concept might fail first. For me, the mentorship role in research supervision and in classroom practice are two representations of the same idea. I have also taken a similar approach in the past when advising undergraduates, either through formal programs such as Women in Science at Columbia or through informal conversations, who are exploring whether {mechanical engineering, mechatronics, rehab robotics} is right for them—the best way to test whether a topic is a good fit is to work on a project in that field and see what is or isn't enjoyable.

Feedback on my Teaching

Student course evaluations, TA for Columbia MECE E4602: Intro to Robotics.
Teaching Observation, facilitator for CIRTL Wowza! Discussion Series: Supporting Teaching as Scholarship.

Selected Testimonials on Research Mentorship

"I think what made my experience valuable is that Ava was great at striking the balance between giving me the freedom to explore what I am interested in, while also providing enough guidance and support when I was lost. Ava was also very good at giving me feedback, and I appreciated her investment in finding ways to align my interests with the priorities of the lab."
"On her own initiative, Ava developed research project plans for all mentees, guided their work, [...] she is willing to back her convictions by putting in the time and effort needed for real progress, and this will continue throughout her career."

Sample Materials

Research expectations document that I developed for onboarding new project students in ROAM Lab under my supervision.
Slidedeck from "Supporting Teaching as Scholarship", a workshop run online on March 22, 2024 for the CIRTL Network as part of the Columbia CIRTL Fellows' "Wowza! Discussion Series" on pedagogical practices in STEM. (see feedback from teaching observation)

[1] Miller, Cynthia J., and Michael J. Metz. "A comparison of professional-level faculty and student perceptions of active learning: its current use, effectiveness, and barriers." Advances in Physiology Education (2014). ↩
[2] Theobald, Elli J., et al. "Active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). ↩
[3] Glass, Ira. On Storytelling" (part 3). Interview conducted by Current TV, 11 Jul 2009. ↩