Overview of my teaching background

Teaching

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. ― Richard P. Feynman

Overview


My teaching background comprises lectures given on the Master of Meteorology at the University of Reading, and previous experience as Teacher Assistant and Assistant Professor at the University Autonoma of Madrid (UAM) together with specific formation on Didactic of Physics and Chemistry by the University of Granada. At UAM I taught Experimental Physics on Laboratories to Bachelor students of Biology and Environmental Sciences, Computer Science and Physics. Concerning PhD Students, I was supporting doctorate candidates thorough discussions about the main topics of their PhD Thesis at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, while in the field of my PhD Thesis I helped other students providing technicalsupport with Numerical and Computational problems.

Thinking about Teaching, my perspective

The teacher should have a solid knowledge of the subject that he is teaching. Besides that the learning process is also important and for these reasons I would like remark some points that I consider relevant on my didactic approach,

  • I like to begin the course with an informal dialogue with the students, in this session I try to evaluate the previous ideas about the subject and the general perspectives and motivations of the students. The previous ideas means the previous knowledge about the topics covered on course, because they may help to the students but commonly the inconsistencies on the background means difficulties when the course advances. The motivations and perspectives will help me to design better applications of the concepts and more focused exercises, but also I may correct wrong perspectives of the students about the actual scope of the subject.
  • For motivated students collaborative small projects are one the best approach, therefore I motivate to the scholars to discuss between them alternative explanation of the material and innovative solutions to the problems. This point is of particular interest on the context of Global Change, where a transversal objective of the current education programs is explain to the society about the role of human activities on the Climatic System. Finally, the collaborative small project enhances the communicative skills.

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