Budding educator
October 20, 2022Year 4 Life Sciences student Darren TEO, who is also a mentor in the Special Programme in Science (SPS), is considering teaching as a potential career pathway in the future. He therefore decided to sign up as a mentor under the inaugural Undergraduate Teaching Opportunities Programme by Science (UTOS), where participants acquire teaching skills under the supervision of experienced teachers.
He says, “I joined UTOS because I wanted to hone my teaching skills, explore my personal teaching styles and strengthen my interpersonal skills.”
Taking on the challenge of teaching Python (or coding in general), which students tend to shy away from, Darren wanted to bring Python to students in a more engaging way so that they feel less intimidated by the subject.
He helped to develop teaching materials for the SPS module – Working on Interdisciplinary Science, Pythonically. To address the challenges of teaching Python, Darren drew on insights gleaned from a UTOS workshop – namely, identifying learning outcomes clearly and thereafter, crafting simple lecture exercises and pre-lecture videos. He also graded some assignments, gave project consultation sessions for students and taught one of the lectures.
On his takeaways, Darren names a few: learning how to give good feedback to guide students when they do not grasp concepts correctly and gaining ‘behind the scenes’ insights into how lecturers work.
“Students affirming that they benefitted from this module was very fulfilling,” he adds.