Teaching and Mentoring
Teaching and Mentoring
“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself” - John Dewey
John Dewey's constructivist thinking informs my teaching philosophy. I am a strong believer and practitioner of lifelong learning. Learning does not stop with the conclusion of formal education. In fact, formal education serves as a vehicle for the curiosity that drives learning. People learn through life experiences, by observing others, through one's own successes and failures, and through reflection in- and on-action. Thus, my teaching leverages inquiry based and experiential learning techniques to fuel learners' curiosity. Good role models serve as inspiration for learners to aim higher and strive for excellence. I thus believe in presenting good examples of work by modeling skills, practices, behaviors, and ethical decision making through my teaching and mentoring.
I enjoy sharing my experiences and struggles with learners so they may make informed decisions about the path that they wish to take. In my experience of teaching and mentoring graduate students and facilitating workshops for in-service K-12 teachers and higher education faculty members, I have realized that learning impacts behavioral intentions, actions, and beliefs among learners. While this change is slow to come, watching learners make that transition is what gives me immense pleasure in teaching and mentoring.
A graduate level hybrid synchronous and asynchronous online course in the Learning Design and Technology program that explores narrative strategies, digital technologies, and educational approaches, to provide a deeper understanding of the power of digital storytelling as an instructional tool. It focuses on theories, techniques, and methods to successfully integrate digital storytelling in a variety of educational settings. Students develop their own digital short stories (films) as part of this course.
An interdisciplinary face-to-face course in the Computer Science department open to all undergraduate and graduate level students. This course focuses on providing a first-hand experience at designing, developing, and evaluating a software product that introduces K-12 students to ideas and concepts in Artificial Intelligence. It introduces students to the Five Big Ideas in AI for K-12 and encourages a collaborative team effort to develop educational software to teach AI concepts in K-12 settings.
I am a co-instructor for EDCI 591 - Publishing Research in Learning Design and Technology, which is a hybrid course . As a co-instructor I was involved in
Planning for face-to-face classes
Developing instruction material and activities for some classes
Leading class facilitation several times in the semester
Providing feedback on student assignments
Planned and facilitated four gamified synchronous online teacher trainings to address the below-listed learning needs of K-12 teachers from 15 schools in India. Across the 4 trainings, I have trained approximately 80-90 teachers through my professional development facilitation.
Conceptual understanding and practice in computational thinking (CT) skills
Technological and pedagogical knowledge
Self-evaluation and Peer evaluation of CT instructional content development for their classroom teaching
Classroom Implementation of CT
Co-designed and co-facilitated faculty workshops on competency-based education with Dr. Marisa Exter. This was done as part of the NSF funded grant project (DEAP) to help the pilot implementation teams to prepare for a change in their computing programs. Computing faculty from University of Alabama and Tuskegee University participated in these workshops. The workshops involved the following topics:
What are competencies and what is competency-based education?
Competency-based curriculum development approaches
Pedagogical and Assessment strategies for competency-based education
Hands-on course-level mapping of competencies
As a research assistant on the NSF-funded DEAP project, I have been co-mentoring junior PhD students who have just joined the project team. This involves:
Helping plan delegation of work to new students
Providing guidance on literature review and data analysis techniques
Advising on writing conference proposals
Providing feedback on work done by students
Observing and noting learning needs and struggles of each student