Before Bryan came to teach at Radboud University, he was a teaching assistant in addition to his postdoc and once taught in Brazil. This is now the first time Bryan has been fully responsible for a course, designing it from scratch. Bryan: "I love it! I think I've been preparing for this my whole life; I love teaching and explaining things." Some 280 students took his courses which made it immediately challenging. "When you have so many students, it is sometimes difficult to design the material to meet everyone's needs. After all, each student has a different way of learning. In addition, it shouldn't just be a course to get a grade, the focus should be on learning something new. I try to make students understand the content and get them excited."
"When you have so many students, it is sometimes difficult to design the material to meet everyone's needs. After all, each student has a different way of learning."
The course was restructured with the help of Olivia Guest and Iris van Rooij, other teachers from the AI department, from a perspective of diversity, equity and inclusion. The idea was to make the course more accessible for students with no prior experience in programming, as an introductory course should be. In addition to that, the goal was to accommodate the diversity of enrolled students, reducing, for example, the gender and ethnic gap commonly present in STEM courses. After the changes, the feedback given by students was mostly positive, with a few complaints that the course was somewhat slow for some, which Bryan takes as a compliment. "That means I didn't leave anyone behind and students who are completely new to programming were also given the time to get started with it." Bryan was also helped in the restructuring by the Teaching Information Point (TIP). "They are very approachable so should you need advice, be sure to stop by!"
"The Teaching Information Point is very approachable so should you need advice, be sure to stop by!"
In addition to lectures, Bryan's courses also include working groups and with that large number of students, that is a difficult task. "I obviously can't be present at all the work lectures, which is why I have fourteen teaching assistants, which are mostly second or third-year students. With them I hold a meeting every week because they have to be prepared for the interaction in the working groups. In addition, they write me a reflection every week, and based on those fourteen reflections, I want to make another kind of manual for the teaching assistants and see further points of improvement in the courses."
Bryan gets a lot of energy from teaching. "It's very satisfying when you see that someone understands what I've explained. It's a liberating way of teaching where students become independent. I teach students something, while the students teach me things."