Teaching Statement

The teaching statement can be downloaded here.

Medical physics is a scientific discipline that integrates physics into the application of medicine. It is a young discipline with a relatively small community. Medical physics classes usually see groups of students ranging from several to around 20, which facilitates more active and thorough instructor-student interactions. It also enables the teaching to be more personally tailored to each student. During my graduate study, I have served as teaching assistants in two graduate-level courses. Based on my experience, students' learning can be effectively enhanced with a two-step strategy: first, teach the students why to learn; and second, teach the students how to learn.

First, 'why to learn'. When students try to absorb a new piece of knowledge, an instinctive processing strategy is to compare the piece of knowledge to the existing ones and sort them accordingly. To follow this natural process, before each of my class, I will summarize the materials covered in the previous class and raise a question remaining to be answered, to spark a short 3-min discussion among students. Afterwards, I will present the new class materials of the current class, which answer the raised question. At the end of this class, I will wrap up the new materials just covered, connect and compare them to those covered previously. For instance, this is an example of my TA's guide for the Nuclear Medicine class ( a graduate level course for both Ph.D. and master students, with a class size of 20 students). The three-step process forms a dynamic flow of learning, in an ‘unanswered question---answer---summary’ manner. Through this process, the students will approach the course materials from a bird’s eye view, understanding the whole course picture broadly and deeply.

To guide the students to think more about 'why to learn', reflective thinking is a teaching strategy I frequently use. Questions like ‘why is this dose calculation method better than the one we learned in the previous class?’ or ‘why do you think it is important to design such a collimator? What are the pros and cons as compared to the traditional design?” will be conferred to the students to spark in-class small-group discussions. This strategy is well-received by the students as ‘it clarifies the course syllabus and helps me to learn things from a broader and more critical perspective’, quoted from one student.

Second, 'how to learn'. When students approach me with questions, I usually find it a great opportunity to teach them how to learn independently and, more importantly, to build their confidence in self-learning. When asked a question during my office hours, the first thing often coming to my mind is what course material unfamiliarity or misunderstanding might lead to the question. I would trace back to the course materials and locate a chapter/section that the student might not understand well. Usually, I would first request the student to further review the selected chapter/section to look for the answer. It works well many times as the student can find the answer himself/herself and feels ‘self-realized’, quoted from one of the students. The ‘try-to-find-it-out-first-myself’ strategy is well accepted by students as it motivates them to solve problems independently and builds their confidence in self-learning. In other cases, the strategy may fail and students still have difficulties finding the answers. Owning to the small-class luxury of medical physics, I would arrange a time slot to sit down with each of the students, find the roots that lead to his/her confusion, and clarify potential mis-comprehensions of the course materials to consolidate his/her learning.

Another aspect of 'how to learn' is to connect the book materials with real-world practices. It is particularly important for medical physics, a practical discipline applying physics for medical applications. Providing students hands-on experience besides lectures and notes is critical to enhance their in-depth understandings of medical physics as a field and a profession. To enrich the students’ understandings of a practical topic in medical physics, I arranged multiple visiting tours throughout the Nuclear Medicine course. During the visiting tours, the students explored Duke Clinic to learn medical physics technologies in real-world clinical settings. I would prepare some questions in advance to spark discussions, like ‘You have learned PET in class already and now see it here. Could anyone tell me what is this component used for?’. ‘It helps me to understand the course materials better, from hands-on experience’, quoted from one student. ‘Seeing the real-world practices helps me to think the difference between the theory and the reality’, quoted from another student. These visiting tours help me to better explain the course materials to students. They also enable the students to better appreciate the effectiveness of learning through combining book materials with hands-on practices.

Besides, to be a more successful and reflective instructor, it is important to provide an un-biased and prompt evaluation of each student. For instance, some students are less proactive and tend to remain silent during class discussions or QA sessions. It is hard to evaluate their progress besides homework or exams. For these students, I will create more opportunities for them to answer questions, to lead group discussions and to summarize debates during the class. It helps me to track their performances promptly and to offer help when necessary. The evaluation can also be communal. I will also collect periodical short evaluations from the students regarding the overall comprehension of the course materials, the structures and formats of the classes, and solicit suggestions and ideas.

In general, the small class size of medical physics offers me a great opportunity to interact with each student closely to offer one-on-one help. Guided by the principles of 'why to learn' and 'how to learn', I believe knowledge can be learned by each student effectively with personalized teaching approaches. I have enrolled in the duke graduate school certificate in college teaching (CCT) program to receive more training and absorb various ideas in teaching. I have also completed two graduate level courses on teaching theory and practices (GS 750: Fundamentals of College Teaching and GS 760: College Teaching and Visual Communication). In the future, I will try more teaching strategies such as guest instructors or student communal teaching to further hone my teaching skills. I would also seek more teaching experience in courses covering different areas of medical physics, like fundamental radiation therapy, medical imaging and more.