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-\title{Teaching Philosophy}
-\date{\today}
-\author{W.~Trevor King}
-
-\begin{document}
-
-\maketitle
-
-In high school, I initially wanted to be a marine biologist. The goal
-lasted until my first physics course during my senior year, when Tom
-Hoch introduced me to the idea that the kinetic behavior of the world
-around us can be described with a handful of simple laws. How far
-will this trebuchet launch a baseball? What would you redesign to
-make it go farther? How should you build a wheel to win a race down a
-5 foot ramp? Besides the joy of attacking the problems themselves, I
-enjoyed arguing about them with my classmates. If you pull on a
-thread coming from underneath a spool sitting on the table, will the
-spool roll toward you or away from you? Physics gives you the feeling
-that you can figure out \emph{anything} (to a first approximation),
-and if you're not sure you're right, you can usually design and build
-a simple experiment to test your understanding. In no other
-discipline are the fundamentals of the scientific method so clearly
-laid out or so obviously powerful.
-
-Since that high school course, I have enjoyed honing my skills in
-physics and related disciplines, but no task has been as satisfying as
-introducing new students to the discipline and sharing my enthusiasm
-for the material and philosophy. I have been lucky to have almost a
-decade of teaching experience from a range of teaching assistant-ships
-covering the classic introductory courses (with recitations and labs
-of 20 students in classes of up to 700) as well as some more advanced
-numerical methods courses (with as few as five students). The range
-of formats allows me to experiment with a number of teaching styles,
-from modeling recitation problem solutions to more Socratic approaches
-for helping students design and troubleshoot software.
-
-While I have not yet been in a position to design my own courses, I
-have enjoyed building some supportive tools. Over the past several
-years, I have developed an open source
-\href{http://blog.tremily.us/posts/Course_website/}{course website
- framework} and
-\href{http://git.tremily.us/?p=course.git;a=tree;f=asymptote;hb=HEAD}{graphics
- libraries} for illustrating
-\href{http://blog.tremily.us/posts/Course_website/Mechanics-test.svg}{mechanics},
-\href{http://blog.tremily.us/posts/Course_website/ElectroMag-test.svg}{electricity
- and magnetism},
-\href{http://blog.tremily.us/posts/Course_website/Circ-test.svg}{circuits},
-and
-\href{http://blog.tremily.us/posts/Course_website/stickfigure-test.svg}{stick
- figures}. I've also designed the
-\href{https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pygrader}{pygrader} framework for
-collecting and grading homework assignments that students submit via
-email and the \href{https://pypi.python.org/pypi/quizzer}{quizzer}
-framework for managing online quizzes and surveys. These tools will
-make it easier for me to maintain class notes, homework, tests, and
-lecture material, which gives me more time to focus on engaging
-students directly. Downloadable class notes also give students more
-time to focus on the concepts and applications instead of focusing on
-transcription. I look forward to tying these pieces together and
-building cohesive courses to introduce new students to physics.
-
-Earlier attempts at instructional tooling\citep{christian01} have not
-kept up with the rapid pace of software development. Using flexible
-open source tools makes it possible to distribute maintenance costs
-across a community of teachers. This makes it easier for existing
-teachers to share ideas and for new teachers to pick up where previous
-teachers left off, instead of having to start by recreating earlier
-work. On the self-study side of this, Ben Crowell has already
-developed a number of open source
-textbooks\citep{crowell-light-and-matter,crowell-simple-nature,crowell-mechanics,crowell-conceptual-physics,crowell-calculus,crowell-general-relativity},
-which are freely available along with
-\href{git://lightandmatter.com/physics}{their source} under the
-\href{http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/}{CC BY-SA 3.0
- US} license. There is room for continued development along this
-front, as well as uncharted territory in open source laboratory
-materials and equipment. My Ph.D.\ thesis focused on developing open
-source software for controlling atomic force microscopes in
-biophysical applications\citep{wking13}, and I look forward to
-leveraging this experience to develop open source software and
-procedures for undergraduate labs. Besides making it easier for other
-teachers to collaborate on lab design, an open source platform
-(software and hardware) will enable on-the-fly student alterations. I
-expect that replacing the magic of ``black boxes'' with well
-documented, explorable tools will encourage students to see labs as
-chances to build their theoretical and practical familiarity with the
-physical world instead of arbitrary, cookbook-style recipes.
-
-As a scientist, I feel that teaching itself can be improved through
-the scientific method. By testing the effect of different classroom
-approaches---and by building on the research of my peers---I intend to
-gradually refine my teaching to improve student engagement, critical
-thinking, and content retention. I am especially excited to try
-active learning approaches\citep{hake98,crouch01,prince04}, especially
-thinking-aloud pair problem solving
-(TAPPS\citep{lochhead87,felder09}), which has been shown to increase
-student performance\citep{johnson99}. Besides improving teaching
-strategies, an experiment-based approach to teaching is a chance to
-practice what I preach, which should help convince students of the
-efficacy of the scientific method. Of course, not \emph{everything}
-can be measured with sufficient clarity to support this approach.
-Developing quantitative evaluations of student learning is tricky,
-but---at least at a basic level---it is possible. Mentioning these
-difficulties when discussing course organization with students will
-provide jumping-off points for discussing the limitations of the
-scientific approach and the flavor of scientific progress, while
-avoiding confusion about the well-understood fundamentals covered in
-the content of the course itself.
-
-I look forward to guiding students through the early stages of their
-exposure to physics, while at the same time engaging in higher level
-discussions about the practice and role of science in general. I hope
-that this experience is as transformative for my students as my early
-physics courses were for me, teaching them how to break down problems
-into manageable chunks and encouraging them to make use of analytical
-reasoning and evidenced-based inquiry in their chosen profession,
-regardless of whether it is directly related to physics.
-
-{\footnotesize\bibliography{ts}}
-
-\end{document}
projects / letter-of-interest.git / blobdiff