The quotation comes from the American theologian and author of quotations, Tryon Edwards (1809-1894).
Open University
For the past three years I have been an Associate Lecturer with the Open University. I am a tutor on the introductory maths course MU120 Open Mathematics. This work involves helping students by phone or by e-mail, marking and giving feedback on assignments, and holding face-to-face tutorials.
I have also done a little work on the successor course to MU120.
Glasgow School of Art
I do studio teaching on the Product Design Engineering degree course at Glasgow School of Art. The course combines traditional engineering (taught at Glasgow University) and design, taught at GSA. The students' work at GSA is always in the form of design projects.
This is the continuation of a collaboration that started when I worked at at Glasgow Science Centre, when the first-year students did a project in which their task was to design and prototype hands-on science exhibits. This is the sixth year that I have been involved with this course. The first-year project has now changed, but my involvement continues, and now extends to first-, second-, and third-year students, and includes assessment as well as teaching.
The picture on the right shows part of a model of a "giant hand" exhibit made by a group of first-year students. The fingers are operated by users pulling the black "tendons". The students envisaged that the real thing would be about 4 metres high.
Stirling University
Between 1991 and 1998 I was Lecturer in the Psychology department at Stirling University. My main teaching role was the development and delivery of the undergraduate unit in Perception. I took the course over from another lecturer, but decided to develop the course again completely from scratch. I taught this course for 5 years until I left Stirling. After I had left (while I was doing my MSc) I was contracted by the department to teach my Perception course one final time.
I also lectured on the MSc in Neural Computing, and did various other first-year lectures, tutorials, etc. Of these, the job I enjoyed most was four first-year lectures on statistics. Unfortunately I left after delivering these lectures only once.
I was on the department's Teaching Committee.