Our winter school was very successful. Dr Rock-Star, the primary speaker, was absolutely delighted to see a large number of enthusiastic students for his lectures.
The topic on which he was lecturing is a very important topic in my field, and the available literature on this subject follows a certain approach. However, he chose to convey the subject matter using a very different approach, which is elegant and more easily comprehensible to students. He had not previously communicated much to me about his lectures and I realized on the first day that the problem sets that had been previously prepared (following the traditional approach) for tutorials would not match his lectures. So, every morning before his lectures, Dr R-S and I would sit together and prepare new problem sets. I have to admit- he was the brain behind the problems while I mostly typed them out and solved them. I think I enjoyed this part of the winter school the most. This new approach to the topic has also generated some interesting research problems and has been a valuable addition to my research programme.
The tutors played a very important role in the whole school. They have not had any previous experience in teaching and took on this responsibility with a very positive attitude. The material presented in the lectures was also very new to them. They would take the problem sets from me just after Dr R-S's lecture everyday, work on them during the lunch hour and tutor the students in the afternoon. According to the feedback forms that we later received, the students highly appreciated the effort put in by these tutors. I wish them a successful academic career ahead!
Our participants, as I mentioned before, were a healthy mix of students from IIX institutes as well as colleges and universities. From the feedback received from them, it seems that most IIX students saw this winter school as yet another opportunity to do something exciting in the winter vacation. Many of them applied to it because they were encouraged by the faculty at their institutes who were aware of Dr R-S's contribution to this field. On the other hand, most of our university student participants had not heard of Dr R-S before and their primary motivation in applying was simply to experience the scientific atmosphere at a research institute. The students unanimously felt that they got much more out of the lectures than they had anticipated. This is possibly because instead of just attending lectures, they worked out the material in the lectures by themselves in the tutorials. Another interesting feedback we received was that university students found faculty at N1 much more friendly and easy-going than those at their universities. They probably would have had the same impression at most IIX and research institutes.
Dr R-S's visit and the winter school has been a great boost to our baby department.
Many students from N1, who attended these lectures, have now decided to major in my STEM field. Even those students who have not done so have benefited from these lectures and have now become regular visitors to our department seminar.
Dr R-S enjoyed the visit very much and will be visiting us again in the coming winter.
Last, but not the least, my colleague from the last post, has now overcome his health problems. Although his primary research interests are different from mine or Dr R-S's, he attended the lectures and enjoyed them. He is very excited about the positive impact of such visits to N1 by senior scientists and we are both planning more workshops/winter schools in the coming years with external funding. I hope that more colleagues will catch on to the spirit and join our efforts to make our department at N1 active and vibrant.
The topic on which he was lecturing is a very important topic in my field, and the available literature on this subject follows a certain approach. However, he chose to convey the subject matter using a very different approach, which is elegant and more easily comprehensible to students. He had not previously communicated much to me about his lectures and I realized on the first day that the problem sets that had been previously prepared (following the traditional approach) for tutorials would not match his lectures. So, every morning before his lectures, Dr R-S and I would sit together and prepare new problem sets. I have to admit- he was the brain behind the problems while I mostly typed them out and solved them. I think I enjoyed this part of the winter school the most. This new approach to the topic has also generated some interesting research problems and has been a valuable addition to my research programme.
The tutors played a very important role in the whole school. They have not had any previous experience in teaching and took on this responsibility with a very positive attitude. The material presented in the lectures was also very new to them. They would take the problem sets from me just after Dr R-S's lecture everyday, work on them during the lunch hour and tutor the students in the afternoon. According to the feedback forms that we later received, the students highly appreciated the effort put in by these tutors. I wish them a successful academic career ahead!
Our participants, as I mentioned before, were a healthy mix of students from IIX institutes as well as colleges and universities. From the feedback received from them, it seems that most IIX students saw this winter school as yet another opportunity to do something exciting in the winter vacation. Many of them applied to it because they were encouraged by the faculty at their institutes who were aware of Dr R-S's contribution to this field. On the other hand, most of our university student participants had not heard of Dr R-S before and their primary motivation in applying was simply to experience the scientific atmosphere at a research institute. The students unanimously felt that they got much more out of the lectures than they had anticipated. This is possibly because instead of just attending lectures, they worked out the material in the lectures by themselves in the tutorials. Another interesting feedback we received was that university students found faculty at N1 much more friendly and easy-going than those at their universities. They probably would have had the same impression at most IIX and research institutes.
Dr R-S's visit and the winter school has been a great boost to our baby department.
Many students from N1, who attended these lectures, have now decided to major in my STEM field. Even those students who have not done so have benefited from these lectures and have now become regular visitors to our department seminar.
Dr R-S enjoyed the visit very much and will be visiting us again in the coming winter.
Last, but not the least, my colleague from the last post, has now overcome his health problems. Although his primary research interests are different from mine or Dr R-S's, he attended the lectures and enjoyed them. He is very excited about the positive impact of such visits to N1 by senior scientists and we are both planning more workshops/winter schools in the coming years with external funding. I hope that more colleagues will catch on to the spirit and join our efforts to make our department at N1 active and vibrant.
5 comments:
Your writing is engaging and interesting. However you've got to make it more readable. Spaces between paragraphs would help.
Thank you for the useful suggestion. I will definitely keep this in mind for the next post.
"From the feedback received from them, it seems that most IIX students saw this winter school as yet another opportunity to do something exciting in the winter vacation"
Well...probably true. I have been guilty of (a lot) of similar things as a student. To some extent, I am still guilty of analogous wrongs even today.
The bad part is that I didn't realise until now conference/school organisers were aware of such behaviours. Makes sense, though.
Hi TTE, I did not mean to imply that there is anything wrong in this.
I was only contrasting the different ways in which university students and IIX students perceived this event. From the point of view of the organizers, both categories made for a very good audience!
My own experience as a student in a leading Tamilnadu university few years back is that Indian students certainly make good audience if teaching is elegant.
In my first year CS course our batch scored exceptionally better than other batches (GPA is comparable as all batches were considered as one class to calculate GPA.) That was purely because of teacher as otherwise students in each batch are made up of students from all streams put together in random fashion. We even asked him to take extra classes when he finished his syllabus soon and a threat of another subject teacher taking up his free classes emerged. :)
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