I spent a lot of time preparing for the course before the summer began. In particular, I scheduled the lectures, homeworks, and projects so that the students would be able to complete the assignments; I talked to previous instructors and teaching assistants to learn what pitfalls to expect; and I completely put together and practiced the first two weeks of lecture. I was in debt to Ruth Anderson in particular, who let me use her slides and whose style of teaching I followed closely (lecture punctuated with multiple opportunities for working through examples in small groups). But all the prep work in the world still can't match the experience of actually teaching. I learned a lot over the course of the summer about what I do well, what I do poorly, and how I can improve my teaching.
I got high marks on my student evaluations for caring about what my students learned,
encouraging questions in class, and overall relevance and usefulness of course content.
The last was unusually high even for the same course taught by other instructors.
The first two directly relate to my experience as a tutor, a role I am very comfortable in.
The third was due to the work I put in ahead of time, and also to the way I motivated the
material throughout the quarter with relevant examples.
I scored low in almost every category having to do with explanations: ability to present
alternate explanations when needed, use of examples and illustrations, and explanations in
general. This is something I need to work on. In the future, when preparing for lecture
I will come up with multiple ways of explaining the same thing, either through my own
creativity or by searching out alternatives. I also plan to come up with more useful
examples and illustrations.
I believe one reason for my low scores in the explanation categories is my use of slides. Slides have many positives. They allowed me to prepare ahead of time, and to use other teacher's successful explanations; I posted them on the internet for the students that couldn't attend class; I handed them out in class so that students had paper in front of them and examples to follow; and some algorithms are easier to show in a visual, step-by-step way. But these positives are outweighed by my own negatives. First of all, I move through slides much too quickly. Second of all, using other people's explanations is probably one reason I had such a hard time coming up with my own alternatives, especially on the spot. And finally, the few lectures in which I didn't use slides but instead used the whiteboard (the theory lectures) were by far my most successful. I was able to move through the material at the right pace, and to draw out different illustrations of the concepts. The written student comments confirm my view, stating that the math discussions and special algorithms sections were the best part of the course. Thus, in the future I plan to teach my classes as much as possible on the whiteboard.