Teaching

Phi­los­o­phy

I am pas­sion­ate about expe­ri­en­tial, active learn­ing that is problem-based,  social, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary, quan­ti­ta­tive and lever­ages tech­nol­ogy.    Though  poet­i­cally argued by such influ­en­tial thinkers such as Pro­fes­sor Eric Mazur and Sir Ken Robin­son; and well sub­stan­ti­ated by research: the value of col­lab­o­ra­tive problem-solving in sci­ence edu­ca­tion (http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1096022), the immense evi­dence for active learn­ing, (http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/003465430298563) the road-map for quan­ti­ta­tive, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and research dri­ven biol­ogy train­ing (http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1095480); it is a posi­tion also borne of my own expe­ri­ence.  I am par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in tech­niques that scale, and believe tools and approaches such as social media(http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365–2729.2010.00387.x) and peer instruc­tion can bring some of the ben­e­fits of small classes to into large lectures.

Expe­ri­ence

I have been an instruc­tor at the Bodega Phy­lo­ge­net­ics Work­shop (2011), an inten­sive 1-week course that draws about 40 stu­dents from around the world to learn the lat­est meth­ods in phy­lo­ge­net­ics. I teach a sec­tion on com­par­a­tive meth­ods and basic pro­gram­ming. I taught upper-division under­grad­u­ate stu­dents in biol­ogy, math­e­mat­ics and com­put­ers sci­ence through the NSF train­ing ini­tia­tive  CLIMB (Col­lab­o­ra­tive Learn­ing at the Inter­face of Math­e­mat­ics and Biol­ogy) pro­gram at UC Davis in spring and sum­mer of 2008.  A  diverse group of eight stu­dents designed and con­ducted a research project into meta-population dynam­ics of avian influenza and orga­nized a con­fer­ence of aca­d­e­mics, state epi­demi­ol­o­gists, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from chicken indus­try to present and dis­cuss their find­ings.   I have been a teach­ing assis­tant for intro­duc­tory biol­ogy (1B), a lab-driven course intro­duc­ing stu­dents to fun­da­men­tals of zoology.

I have been involved in out­door edu­ca­tion for eight years, where I have gained expe­ri­ence in group dynam­ics and facil­i­ta­tion, lead­er­ship the­ory and active learn­ing.  On cam­pus I have helped lead the Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Teach­ing Com­mu­nity, where grad­u­ate stu­dents and post-doctoral fel­lows can dis­cuss and prac­tice new teach­ing strate­gies.  I’m a mem­ber of the Cen­ter for Learn­ing and Excel­lence at UC Davis.

I also enjoy edu­ca­tional out­reach, par­tic­u­larly where it com­bines active learn­ing, tech­nol­ogy and biol­ogy.  I’ve worked with mid­dle school teach­ers on how to use sim­ple com­puter sim­u­la­tion soft­ware (net­l­ogo) to pro­vide an exploratory approach to teach­ing ecol­ogy and evo­lu­tion in the SIRC pro­gram, and have given guest lec­ture on eco­log­i­cal dynam­ics at Uni­ver­sity of the Pacific.  I’m a mem­ber of the National Lab Net­work and I keep an open teach­ing note­book where I reflect on my experiences.

Edu­ca­tion Research

While teach­ing with CLIMB I had the chance to work along­side a grad­u­ate stu­dent from the UC Davis depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion who was writ­ing her the­sis on the pro­gram, and first intro­duced me to some of the recent research in effec­tive edu­ca­tion.  Davis has sev­eral excel­lent research pro­grams in higher edu­ca­tion,  within the edu­ca­tion depart­ment and beyond, such as the physics edu­ca­tion research track and the highly suc­cess­ful Physics 7 pro­gram, as well as the CLIMB pro­gram. I am quite inter­ested edu­ca­tional research and  a sci­en­tific approach to edu­ca­tion, and as such try to fol­low a bit of what is going on in the edu­ca­tional lit­er­a­ture.  The papers men­tioned above pro­vide some of the foun­da­tional phi­los­o­phy towards edu­ca­tion.  I main­tain a Mende­ley read­ing list of arti­cles I encounter that may be of inter­est to oth­ers want­ing to know more about edu­ca­tional research.  Recent addi­tions appear here; or join the Mende­ley group or fol­low the rss feed.


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Bib­li­og­ra­phy