Thoughts on teaching

Teaching is an interesting enterprise. Giving a lecture has a fair bit in common with giving a presentation and yet it's not really the same thing at all. In both you present some information to a group of people with the aim of providing them with something that will be useful or at least interesting. When teaching a course, the main advantage is that you get to present to the same audience over a period of time. This fact hopefully means that you get the chance to learn how to direct what you say in an appropriate way. Of course there's also the chance of ending up with the challenge of repeatedly speaking to an audience that is difficult for you to figure out. The main challenge though is preparation. There is at most days not weeks available to prepare for each interaction with students. My hats off to new teachers in primary and secondary schools who teach full days worth of content at a time.

I am currently co-teaching a combined later year undergraduate / post-graduate course here at ANU. Recently, we split the course and I am taking the undergraduates through a group project.

Comp3900/Comp4710/Comp6390 Students

My office hours are Weds. 2-3 and Thurs. 10-11.

Course information can be found on the comp3900 and comp6390 webct course sites. link to webct

My first teaching experience was as a teaching assistant (t.a.) at the the University of British Columbia during my MSc degree. I was doing my own course work and had six tutorials to lead a week. The previous t.a. for the course had been doing it for years and had left me with lots of materials :-). During the week, I would presented the same material to each tutorial section. Yet each one was completely different from the others. So I learned that each class of students is it's own little bundle of joy.