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\title{Teaching Philosophy}
\date{\today}
\author{W.~Trevor King}

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\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.

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