Teaching

Teaching in higher education is much more than just lecturing in a classroom. This section includes formal courses, workshops and mentoring-related information along with teaching and learning strategies, including virtual environments.

Teaching in the academia entails interacting and promote learning in undergraduate and graduate students. In both contexts, I put the emphasis as much on the knowledge itself as on the method used to reach that knowledge. My approach is having the students at the center of the processes, they are the agents of their own learning. The teacher is the mediator that favors their acquisition of skills and knowledge, using all the resources available and adjusted to their background and level.

My teaching goals. - The first goal is providing the student with an interdisciplinary approach to the contents of the course (knowledge on the topic). I will use the course that I am currently teaching, Bilingualism as an example of how I reach these goal in a classroom. The organization of the class is as follows: 1) I expose a question in the field (e.g. is there a critical period for language learning?) and I associate it with a real-life situation (e.g., the difficulty they experienced in their Beginner Spanish course freshman year). This is important to engage the students, showing them the relevance of the topic and to help them relate it to their own experience of the world. 2) I then present different approaches to the question that may be complementary and/or contradictory. 3) The students reflect on the approaches in groups. 4) I explain research studies that support or disconfirm the theories. 4) There is a class discussion that integrates the views they had before and after the studies are explained. 5) Once I have covered different aspects of the topic in several classes, a model can emerge and 5) I wrap up with a summary of the content and students think of questions that current evidence has not yet answered.

The second goal is the acquisition of general skills by the students. As mentioned above, one such skill is having a method for reaching knowledge that can be applied to different disciplines. The organization of the class itself is intended to provide students with a system to question and (try to) answer how reality works. By means of this, I promote critical thinking and the use of evidence for argumentation, two skills that I seek to encourage through my teaching. Other general skills I hope my students achieve are the delivery of knowledge, either orally or in written form and, finally, teamwork.

In class, these goals are implemented through a set of activities that constitute the teaching strategies and build the dynamic of the class. The exposition of the problem at hand is introduced as simply as possible and supported by short multimedia material when available or an activity that exemplify a fact (e.g. students that speak more than one language volunteer to act as interpreter and everyone else reflect on the mental processes involved in such interpretation). The aim here is that students can grasp the general concept and feel engaged. The different theoretical accounts are discussed in small groups and shared with the class. There are also online discussions that will facilitate an objective assessment of this skill while giving the students the time to think and elaborate their ideas about a topic. These interactions aim to improve understanding of the problem, critical thinking, teamwork and cohesion. Evidence proves students’ own thoughts and the theories proposed, right or wrong and a summary integrates the contents. Methods of testing and finding evidence are more deeply explained through laboratory visits and a class focused on the system to answer theoretical questions, that is, the tasks used to test hypothesis, the measures and data interpretation.

Evaluation in my courses is continuous. There are periodical open-question quizzes (depending on the size of the group the frequency may change) for formative assessment. They include two sections, one regarding the content of the class and one related to the progression of the class. The first section aims for assimilation and integration of information and shows me the contents that remain unclear to my students. The second section offers feedback on the development and functioning of the class and allows to make adjustments and solve any problems that may arise. In addition, quizzes provide greater flexibility for distinct paces of knowledge assimilation across students. Depending on the topic of the course, students prepare a research proposal or write a review paper. This work requires communication abilities, integration of information, and reasoning. Finally, students are instructed to choose a topic not covered in the class lectures, but rather, something closely related. The goal of this is not only assessing the skill of delivery of information to the public, but also to engage the student by giving him/her the opportunity to relate the content of the class with a topic of his/her personal interest.

• Essentials for Online Teaching Certificate. The Pennsylvania State University, February 2017
• Acreditación Profesor Ayudante Doctor. Agencia Nacional de Evaluación de la Calidad y Acreditación. ANECA, 2011
• Acreditación Profesor Contratado Doctor. ANECA, 2011