Teaching Practices

Constructive and authentic practicals

When developing my courses, I aim to give my students an authentic learning experience. I chose to align teaching and assessment with the course objectives by combining teaching resources, problem solving and assessment together into practicals. Below I show a pdf of one of the Honours practicals which aims to develop understanding of Monte Carlo methods, used extensively in many physics research fields. Resources are provided as required with questions based on those resources. Students also receive problems that help them develop their programming skills, critical thinking and physics problem solving. During class, I will demonstrate example problems and assist students while they work on the practicals. Students are encouraged to help each other and discuss the problems, after attempting them on their own. This leads to a congenial and collaborative work environment during the practical sessions. The assessment aspect of these practicals is further discussed in Assessment Practices.