Teaching
I am passionate about teaching and mentoring. I have taught at the undergraduate (genetics, evolution, statistics, computer science) and post-graduate (conservation genetics) level. I have also pursued extracurricular pedagogical activities in computer programming as a volunteer Software Carpentry instructor.
I have also been involved in designing teaching-learning activities, which are detailed below.
I have also been involved in designing teaching-learning activities, which are detailed below.
EvolGenModules [presently, not publicly available]
Developing an understanding of evolutionary genetic concepts can be particularly challenging for students. In my experience, this stems from two learning challenges students face: (1) Coming to terms with what genetic variation is and understanding how this is inherited and affected by evolutionary forces. (2) The sheer fact that evolutionary genetics in general is quite an abstract topic.
In 2018, I was fortunate enough to be funded as part of the University of Queensland's Students as Partners Program. With guidance from A/prof. Cynthia Riginos, I collaborated with her and other academics in the School of Biological Sciences to develop a core set of interactive apps in R's Shiny environment to illustrate how genetic drift, mutation, gene flow, and selection affect genetic variation. These apps can be easily incorporated into lesson plans and teaching activities, providing visual and kinesthetic components of teaching. They facilitate students' exploration of how demographic parameters influence change in genetic variation and allow them to test their intuition and cognizance of evolutionary genetic processes. Currently, these apps teach very simple, fundamental concepts. In the future, I intend to expand them to incorporate more complex processes and statistical measures. EvolGenModules are being implemented in undergraduate genetics courses at the University of Queensland, check it out: |