Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Blogging about teaching: the miniseries

I talk about teaching on this blog from time to time, but I don't think I've ever talked about how I teach in any great detail. Putting the review packet together meant that I had to think quite a bit about teaching, though, and on a deeper level than I normally do. And this inspired me to share some of my thoughts with the blog-world.

Over the course of the next week, I'm going to blog about my teaching. I'm going to concentrate on teaching undergrads because, well, that's where my interests seem to lie right now. I'll start with a post or two about intro courses, then move on to the "middle-tier" courses (lower-level electives and required courses) and end with a post or two on upper-level electives.

Why am I doing this? Well, for one, there seem to be quite a few readers of this blog that are from non-techie disciplines, and so this is my way of demystifying what it is I do in the classroom. But I'd also like to use this to start a dialog of sorts: what makes a CS education good, bad, or indifferent? For those of you who teach CS (or the sciences), what have your experiences been? How is teaching CS the same as, or different from, teaching in other disciplines?

So I hope you enjoy reading my disjointed thoughts about teaching, and I hope that you chime in in the comments too!

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3 comments:

post-doc said...

What a good idea! I'm looking forward to reading what you have to say.

Ianqui said...

Wow, I don't think I have to write anything about my teaching for my 3rd year review. I think there's a classroom visit or something, but someone else writes that. I guess that's the difference between XU and schools that actually care about teaching.

review said...

Yes. It is good idea.