Students come from different cultural, economic, educational backgrounds with different levels of understanding about various topics. Their learning abilities depend not only on their multifaceted intelligence but also on the resources they had access to in the past, their motivation to learn, their cultural biases, whether they have experienced environment conducive to learning in their home, community and places of education and so on. My focus as an educator is to work with students to identify their strengths and weaknesses and help them learn the topic effectively. I also believe in learning through more hands-on approach rather than one way relay of information from teacher-to-students. My classes are more interactive involving class discussions, quizzes, complimentary in-class exercises, presentations, debates and fun games. In my experience students learn better through active participation.
I have taught full courses on behavioural ecology, evolution, ecology and evolutionary biology, Research methodology & Scientific Communication and part course on Statistical Methods in Biology at UCSC as well as Abasaheb Garware College, Pune at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
It is a great experience introducing students to the fascinating world of animal behavior and evolution, debunking the myths and romantic ideas about "harmonious world of animals" and watching them slowly enter the world of scientific inquiry!
I got to learn some non-conventional ways of "teaching", the importance of hands-on experience in learning and the skill to engage students' attention enough so that they actually want to learn!