Teaching
I love to teach science and math to anyone who is interested! I served as a teaching assistant (TA) for a number of courses during my undergraduate and loved the experience of teaching. This led me to volunteer to teach at a number of schools in underprivileged areas around my undergraduate institute (IISc, Bangalore, India).
I realized my passion for teaching more after taking a couple of teaching courses from UMD and decided to hone my skills further. This led me to join the University Teaching and Learning Program (UTLP) at scholar level, in the Teaching and Learning Transformation Center (TLTC) at the University of Maryland. As a part of the program, we are exposed to latest techniques in education and teaching through classes and workshops. Through the methods that I learnt at these events, I try to bring in active learning techniques to improve the interactions among students in university classes and their ability to grasp important facts and concepts.
Below are few of my favorite teaching experiences:
1. Mathematics for Life Sciences
I served as a TA for a number of different courses in mathematics for Life science students over a span of two and half years. The major conclusion that I got after the first day of class was that most students in life sciences are afraid of doing mathematics and think unconditionally that it is a difficult subject - beyond their grasp. I taught primarily in three courses: MATH130 (Calculus for Life Science I), MATH131 (Calculus for Life Science II), and MATH135 (Discrete Mathematics for Life Sciences).
I took it upon me, as a challenge, to change the outlook of the students about mathematics and help them understand the subject better through active learning methods. This led me to conduct an IRB-approved research on my students to better understand how they grasp mathematical concepts (with immense help from Prof Gili Marbach-Ad from TLTC). I designed interactive worksheets that employed different methods to improve the critical thinking skills of students and help them understand the concepts better. It was a fun time teaching these courses, and if you want to know more about the study and the worksheets - please do not hesitate to contact me.
2. Principles of Ecology
An interesting and challenging course that I served as a TA for a couple of times is BSCI361 (Principles of Ecology). It was challenging because it was completely online and was mediated through online discussions and electronic activities, in addition to traditional exams and worksheets, which were submitted through an online medium.
During the course, I wanted understand how the use of online platform creates a difference in student interactions as compared to a traditional class-based ecology course. We conduct an IRB-approved research on the students to understand their interactions among themselves on the online forum and with the course content (with immense again help from Prof Gili Marbach-Ad from TLTC and Dr Marcia Shofner, the instructor of the course). If you want to know more about the study and the worksheets - please do not hesitate to contact me.
3. Workshop on Statistical and Machine Learning
Many of my peers in biology are afraid of advanced statistical analysis thinking that it is beyond their understanding. Moreover, many of them think they do not possess enough programming literacy to deploy these models. This led a few of us to design a workshop, where the participants learnt the basics of Statistical Modeling and Machine learning, which are integral to many areas of quantitative research.
The skillset, often taught exclusively in statistics classrooms was presented by me and a few fellow graduate students in a peer-to-peer workshop open to all graduate students and postdocs to introduce them to the basic concepts. Students from across multiple disciplines were introduced to the foundation of statistical modeling in context of performing data-driven research. This hands-on peer-to-peer workshop featured two short lectures and two interactive coding sessions, all using real-world data.
More than 160 students registered in the event and more information about it can be found here, including slides and ready-to-use code that was provided to the participants.
4. Odia translation of 'Complexity Explained'
'Complexity Explained' is a website started by a few fellow Complexity scientists to explain the basic concepts of the subject to each and everyone.
They also came up with a booklet in different languages to reach a wider audience with the contents of the website and more.
I have translated the contents of the booklet into Odia and the PDF of the booklet can be found here.