Kirill Krinkin
Teach creative critical engineering thinking

As an educator, I have had a rich and extensive teaching career, primarily focusing on computer science, software engineering, and STEM. I had the opportunity to teach a wide variety of students, ranging from middle school students to doctoral students.

For over 25 years, I have taught Computer Architecture, Operating Systems, Computer Networking, Mobile Application Development, Storage Systems, Programming Autonomous Systems, Programming in the Linux kernel, and Introduction to Co-evolutionary Hybrid Intelligence.

Chaordic Learning

My approach to education has always been to put the practical problem or challenge to be solved before the theoretical study, enabling students to develop creative, critical, and engineering thinking -- we (I and my colleagues) call this Сhaordic learning.

The general idea is the following. Software engineering is an interactive, collaborative and creative activity that cannot be entirely planned. Inspection and adaption are required to cope with changes during the development process. Software (and nowadays, Intelligence) engineering education requires practical application of knowledge, but it is challenging and time consuming for instructors to evaluate the creation of innovative solutions to problems.

Current higher education practices lead to a multitude of rules, guidelines and order. Instructors see deviations of students as failures and limit the creative thinking processes of students. The chaordic learning is a self-organizing, adaptive and nonlinear learning approach, to stimulate the creative thinking of students. In this approach Instructors provide structure and guidance, but also integrate freedom for self-organization and self-guided learning and embrace innovation and creativity. Deviations are seen as opportunities and failures as possibilities for students to learn and improve.

We introduced chaordic learning into many university courses and international schools and describe the chaordic process of these courses as case studies. Students in these courses report about an increased intrinsic motivation, a higher level of self-organization and more room for creativity leading to an improved learning experience and more fun.

You can find more detailed information about it in my research papers: Chaordic Learning: A Case Study (pdf); Global Software Engineering in a Global Classroom (pdf);

International Schools

Over the years, I have organized many STEM schools around the world. The most famous of these schools is the international Joint Advanced Student School (JASS), which annually brings together undergraduate and graduate students from different countries for a two-week intensive devoted to the development and research of breakthrough technologies.

JASS History

JASS school in modern meaning was founded in 2012 (we had a predecessor, yes). The main idea was to create a very challenging and interesting environment for students instead of regular lectures and talks. Of course, lectures are essential, but we wanted to create an environment where students can learn from each other in real time. Here are the JASS schools we organized so far:

Education Materials and links

Open lectures