“We need to stimulate curiosity and nurture a culture of observation”

Do you remember your days as a university freshman?

I have to admit, I failed my first year because I skipped class. To me the overly academic learning was a drag on my curiosity. Owing to that experience, I now try to design my classes in a way that keeps students’ attention and piques their curiosity.

Between the ages of seven and nine, I went to a school that used the methods developed by Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori. We did a lot of hands-on exercises where the focus was on developing our creativity, independence and sense of responsibility. I learned by doing; by getting my hands dirty and discovering things – it was really exciting and motivating. That’s what I hope to impart to my students today.

How do you see the role of a teacher?

I believe that teaching means engaging in dialogue with students and sharing knowledge and skills that are constantly evolving. And achieving that requires an interactive approach. I see myself as a coach who gives his all and is always looking for ways to improve. For instance, I pay close attention to my class evaluations and have grown as a teacher thanks to students’ feedback. Many countries in southern Europe use a top-down educational system that’s based on a strict hierarchy between teachers and students, but I think we should work together. My children went to school for a while in the US, and there, the classroom dynamic is more like a team with lots of student-teacher interaction. I’m also a big fan of learning from failure. It’s important to take risks, including the risk of failure, as part of the learning process.

How can we give students a taste for science?

Science is above all the art of observation. And to observe things, we have to take the time to really watch what’s going on all around us. We need to nurture this culture of observation, which leads to asking questions and finally performing analyses to find answers that are intellectually satisfying. As children we’re naturally curious about the world around us. We should keep that as adults. Also, those of us who teach math and physics, for example, need to keep our lectures grounded in reality and make the connection with students’ daily lives.

What do you feel is important when providing an education in science and engineering?

The first thing we need to do is think about what our goal is – what are we trying to achieve? At EPFL for instance, we want to train several different types of engineers: some who have excellent technical skills, some who are very creative at problem solving, and others who are particularly talented in management and operations. Our goal is to foster this diversity, which means we might also need to reconsider how we select people – that is, how we evaluate their skills and design our exams.

What exactly do you think we should reconsider?

For now, our educational system – from grade school to high school and university – is focused more on evaluating a student’s knowledge at a given point in time than on assessing the learning process. So I think one step could be to strike a better balance between the weight given to the final exam grade versus that given to the grades obtained along the way. As teachers we sometimes want to teach students too many things at once. Perhaps we’d be better off selecting the most essential concepts and digging deeper into them. Students need to have a solid foundation on which they can develop. In terms of fostering the diversity I mentioned earlier, one option could be to introduce differentiated instruction, such as by offering exercise sessions to students who need them the most.

When it comes to differentiated instruction, artificial intelligence is opening up new opportunities – how can we best take advantage of them?

EPFL’s Center for Digital Education is working on a generative AI program that can provide support to students during their exercise sessions. These sessions at EPFL are given by teaching assistants – this program isn’t intended to replace them but to provide personalized feedback that improves the learning process.

Looking further out, we could structure degree programs based on groups of modules at different levels, thus giving students greater flexibility. That could seem complicated in terms of administration and logistics, but that’s where AI could help. AI-driven technology could also make it easier for students to grasp certain concepts by linking the theory to actual experiments. For instance, as a physics professor, I could use augmented reality to display things that are invisible to the naked eye, such as force, speed and acceleration vectors. Paradoxically, the same technology that sometimes disconnects us from the real world can also help us better understand it.

How should students prepare for EPFL?

First, they need to have solid technical skills. Statistics have shown that students who go through the physics and applied math track in high school are more likely to do well at EPFL. But even students who don’t do that track can succeed if they’re highly motivated. The Cours de mise à niveau (MAN) is highly effective for students encountering difficulties during the first semester. EPFL also offers a preparatory year program (CMS) that’s oriented towards mathematics. Incoming students can take two online courses – Warm-Up and Apprendre à étudier – designed to help smooth the transition from high school. EPFL also holds a free week-long preparatory program on its Lausanne campus, called Students4Students, that’s run by student assistants. Once the school year begins, I encourage students to ask questions of both their peers and their teachers. And when they face a particularly challenging exercise, I suggest they view it as a puzzle or riddle. They’ll always find the right answer with enough perseverance.

What are the biggest challenges in making the transition from high school to university?

There are several challenges. For some students, going to university means leaving home, so they have to get accustomed to living on their own. But even without that, students must learn to be responsible, manage their own time and set priorities. EPFL students study many different subjects, resulting in a heavy workload with numerous exercises to complete. And then there are the many extra-curricular activities on offer. It’s easy to feel pulled in several directions. What’s more, it can be stressful studying at a world-class university – students tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves and maybe feel like they aren’t up to par. That’s why our role is to create a warm, understanding climate at our School and build up students’ confidence in their capabilities. We’ve seen this is especially important for women and students whose parents didn’t attend university.

In order to support students through this transition, it’s also important for us at EPFL to keep close ties with high schools, as we can learn from each other. This includes promoting gateway programs and encouraging students from different backgrounds to apply to EPFL. Our university is highly international yet has strong local roots – we should take advantage of this unique combination.

We often hear that students’ skill levels are declining – is that true?

We’re going to run a study here at EPFL to collect data on that topic. We’ll analyze several years of exams and exam grades, factoring in grade curves. I gave my first general physics exam 15 years ago, and my impression is that both the exam difficulty and the pass rates are pretty much the same. However, what I have seen in recent years is a decline in students’ attention span. That could be due to the use of connected devices and the various types of stimuli they create. But a defining feature of human beings is our ability to adapt, so our brains will probably get used to doing several things at once. That said, it’s very important for students to have free time. Having time when your mind is clear of other thoughts gives you the space to observe, ask questions, think outside the box and eventually dream up innovative ways of making the world a better place. That’s what I sincerely wish for the students.