WE INTERVIEWED OUR INSTRUCTORS AND ASKED THEM WHY THEY LOVED TEACHING INSPIRIT AI’S STUDENTS. UNSURPRISINGLY, THEIR RESPONSES WERE INCREDIBLY PASSIONATE!
Rebecca Zuo (Brown University) worked with her students on a project integrating medical imaging and Artificial Intelligence. “My students came each week with a lot of curiosity and asked many questions. They also had a lot of fun looking at patient X-rays, and even pointed out one image that looked like an outlier.” For Rebecca, the most exciting part was seeing her students’ interest in the project grow with their understanding.
The highlight of John Heyer’s (MIT) teaching experience was “those little "aha!" moments [...] during which I know a student has begun to understand how a particular AI algorithm works.” It always made John’s day to see a student ask a question because it showed they truly wanted to understand the concepts and were curious to learn.
Peter Washington (Stanford University) was amazed by how quickly his students were able to learn the many advanced concepts he taught in such a short amount of time. “I am also impressed with all of the insightful questions that students come up with - I always learn something new from finding out the answers to student questions every time I teach!”
Nabib Ahmed’s (Harvard University) teaching experience highlight was meeting his wonderful students, who were all curious, passionate, and extremely bright! “I'm taken back by the dedication and tenacity they've shown and the immense amount of material they've absorbed. I'm truly humbled to have been an instructor and fuel their growth.”
Rozy Eastaugh (Stanford University) loves watching her students grow over the session, both in their understanding of the concepts and their relationships with each other. “I love watching students help each other with bugs in their code, bond and laugh at the end of a class session, and share with each other what intellectually and personally motivates them.” She is able to learn so much from her students’ insights, curiosity, and optimism.
As the saying goes, teaching is the best way to learn and this was the case for Sriram Hathwar (Princeton University). While he has done numerous projects in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, it was through explaining the motivation and bigger picture behind certain algorithms and asking students questions that he was able to learn more about those concepts himself! “I would say that the highlight of my teaching experience was to expose young people interested in AI to actually walk through an entire project by the end of one week! I'm glad that my students took on the challenge to take on something new to them, and I learned something in the process as well!”
Connection was the highlight of Sophia Barton’s (Stanford University) teaching experience. She was able to form relationships with her co-instructors (some of which she knew from Stanford University, but got to know better through Inspirit AI) and her students. Sophia also loved being able to keep in touch with her students. “I have been mentoring a few students who were in my previous cohorts, helping provide them with guidance on projects they are pursuing and other questions they have about college.” Inspirit AI’s online instruction this summer has also allowed her and other students and teachers to connect with each other all over the world.
