Breadcrumb
Lorena Barba's Teaching page
For up-to-date contact information, please see my faculty profile.
During the academic year 2007-8, I am teaching a brand new applied mathematics course:
This course aims to give students a sense of the importance of mathematics in the world, and show how an applied mathematician can help answer some big questions that humanity needs answered.
Students note: all course material is distributed via the Blackboard course.
Last year, I taught Ordinary Differential Equations, to second year mathematics and joint degree students.
Rising Star Teaching Award, January 2008
The University selects one recipient of the Rising Star teaching award per faculty, recognizing the quality of reflection, analysis and practice in the individual's teaching. Dr Barba receives the Faculty of Science Rising Star teaching award during the Learning and Teaching Exhibition, held 8 January 2008.
Teaching Portfolio
In 2007, I completed the University of Bristol's Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Programme. One of the four modules of this programme consists in the preparation of a Teaching Portfolio, which I present below, as a series of PDF files. (Not everything has been added at this time, as it is a bit time consuming to convert all evidence to PDF. I will add the rest soon!)
Part 1: File of Evidence
| Module 1 — Teaching Includes peer observation exercise, external examiner comments, student-staff consultative committe feedback, mid-semester questionnaire summary (Nov. 2004). |
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| Module 1 — Teaching (continued) End-of-course student questionnaires, 2005-6 academic year (Ordinary Differential Equations). Part 1, 1.5 MB. |
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| Module 1 — Teaching (continued) End-of-course student questionnaires, 2005-6 academic year (Ordinary Differential Equations). Part 2, 1.2 MB |
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| Module 1 — Teaching (continued) Informal feedback from students, posted in Blackboard's discussion forum, or emailed. |
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| Module 2 — Learning Materials developed by myself for the ODE course 2005-6: course handouts [2.1 MB]. |
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| Module 2 — Learning (continued) Screenshots of the Blackboard learning environment ODE course, including samples of the "screencasts" developed in 2006-7, i.e. embedded Quick Time videos of the lectures captured on active whiteboard [3.7 MB]. |
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Part 2: Reflective Account
| Module 1 — Teaching Date attended module: 12 January 2005. Includes description of the pilot for lecture screencast production. |
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| Module 2 — Learning Date attended module: 13 May 2005. Analysis of student's focus on assessment. |
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| Module 3 — Assessment and evaluation Date attended module: 9 June 2005. Evaluating an element of the course. |
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| Module 4 — Course design Date attended module:: 27 June 2005. |
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ODE Screencasts
Last year, I ran a pilot experimenting with technology to capture lectures as a screencast. The writings on the whiteboard are captured to a laptop during class, and simultaneously projected onto a large screen and recorded into a video. All videos of the lectures were uploaded to Blackboard, as well as a PDF file of the screen shots of each full board.
Screencast - active whiteboard capture [40 MB]
This is Lecture 8, covering the pitchfork bifurcation and introduction to systems. Writings on the whiteboard captured actively on the laptop are used to generate this video.
Screencast - computer demonstration [27 MB]
This is a demonstration session using Maple, during Problems Class 2. Shows the Maple DE lessons available in Blackboard, and demonstrates the use of DEplots for direction fields, and adding solution curves.