Overview
Dr. Chris Terman teaches 6.004 Computation Structures, a hands-on introduction to digital systems architecture with an emphasis on structural principals shared by a wide range of technologies.

Educational Challenge
Students come to Chris Terman’s class with varied backgrounds. Some have programming experience and an understanding of internal computer structures. Others are completely uninformed on the elements of an operating system or the hardware components of a computer.

Solution
In order to handle diverse backgrounds and preparations, Terman makes available a large range of materials.

Buffet
He thinks of it as a huge buffet with many dishes. Depending on one’s level of skill and preparation, one can start at the beginning of the buffet and pick up whatever needed background is required, or skip the first few courses and dive in somewhere in the middle. The buffet is useful not only for different backgrounds, but also for different learning styles.

MITx
Terman creates short sound bites and video bites where a single concept/skill is introduced. These segments are posted to MITx. The MITx platform works well at letting the instructor construct and organize learning sequences. In order to test comprehension, Terman uses MITx to give the students check-yourself questions. In addition to self-testing, Terman uses retrieval learning throughout the semester to help students better solidify what they’ve learned and slowly transfer knowledge from short-term to long-term memory.

Teaching Tips
Terman has several techniques for combatting mind-wandering among students in class. He finds it helpful to deliberately introduce disfluency: he’ll interrupt the flow with something unexpected such as walking out from behind the table or lectern, or telling a joke or brief story. Prof Terman’s teaching team is a layered tier of lecturers and guest lecturers, graduate teaching assistants, and undergraduate lab assistants. Often the students find it least intimidating to ask questions to the LAs who not only did well in the course but took it recently and have it fresh in their minds.

The class’s online forum provides a 24/7 resource for students with questions. When Terman answers a question on the forum, he helps all students with the question, instead of having to answer it individually during office hours. TAs and fellow students are often available and connected to the forum during the hours when students are actually doing the work, outside the typical 9 to 5 workday, thus answers are available more quickly than otherwise.

In helping students de-bug projects Terman focuses, through hints and questions, on getting the student to figure out how to make it work, instead of giving the student the answer. Even more important than making one’s project work is the importance for students to understand the underlying design principals informing their projects and determining whether their principals are sound. Terman’s overall is goal is to help the students become less answered-focused and instead more process-focused.

Take away
Chris Terman’s teaching approach accommodates diverse levels of preparations accomplished through the use of MITx. In addition, he uses techniques in class to encourage student attention, to get student questions answered quickly, and to focus on understanding the underlying principals of design and structure.

Watch the OCW video interview with Sarah Hansen and learn more about Dr Terman's teaching innovations. Learn more about 6.004 Computation Structures.