EPFLx: Teaching Science and Engineering

Some people think that teaching is simply a matter of knowing the content material and having the right kind of personality and experience. In fact, research evidence suggests that people can become effective teachers if they learn:

• the content of their discipline
• the different ways students learn this content and the problems they face with it
• how to manage learning in practice in a classroom.

This MOOC focuses on the second and third of these elements.

The ways in which students learn in science and engineering programs, and the problems they typically face, have been the subject of a great deal of research in the last two decades. We have based this MOOC on that research evidence, with a focus on the ways in that teaching assistants can help students to maximise their learning in university-level programmes.

Teaching is a hands-on activity and to learn how to teach you will need practical experience. Alongside such practical experience, this MOOC will help you understand what strategies are likely to be appropriate and why, and will also give you some guidance on when and where to use them. While classroom experience is valuable, this MOOC can equip you with the knowledge to plan and evaluate your own teaching and to make good decisions in the classroom.

In this MOOC we have tried to practice what we preach. You will find, therefore, that in addition to watching videos you will be encouraged to take notes, to sometimes stop the video and complete thinking tasks, and to test your own recall and understanding of the material with quiz questions and forum prompts. We would encourage you to use these opportunities to learn but also to reflect upon them and to ask yourself if you could do something similar in your own teaching.

This MOOC runs for 8 weeks and is designed to have an activity to submit each week. This weekly approach will allow you to benefit most from opportunities to interact with other participants, however you can complete the activities in a time frame that suits you.