Teaching Activities for Brian Kokensparger

Teaching Philosophy

As Creighton University's Mission Statement asserts, "Creighton exists for students and learning," and so do I. One of the reasons I originally came to Creighton University as a student, and the reason that I remain as a tenure track faculty member, is due to this emphasis on student learning.

Teaching at Creighton University for me is not a job, it's a vocation, and therefore I look upon it as a sacred contract with my students. Although teaching introductory-level courses (like CSC 121 and CSC 221) is a lot of work (due to the large enrollments and multitude of quizzes, labs, tests, and programming assignments), I enjoy teaching these courses because they provide a foundation for my students (many of whom become CS majors), and allow those with little or no background in CS to develop a passion for the field. As a first-generation student (I was the first one in my family tree to go to college), I remember being nervous during my first days in college courses, and I am committed to putting all students at ease from the first day on.

I have rebuilt the syllabi for the upper-level courses that I teach, and conducted research in educational teaching methods and assessment to guide the choices I made when developing these courses. When developing a course, I begin at the end - with the outcomes the students must learn in the course - then determine ways to assess those outcomes, and work backwards from there to choose appropriate experiences for the students (employing diverse modalities) to help them learn the material (and consequently, to do well in the course assessments).

Courses I Regularly Teach at Creighton

Programming for Beginners and Non-Majors (CSC 121)
Programming for the Digital Humanities (CSC 221)
Computer Organization/Hardware (CSC 414)
Web Programming (CSC 551)
Database Design (CSC 542)
Software Engineering (CSC 548)
Data Of/By/For the People (CSC 450)
Mobile App Development (CSC 581)