Owls Count

This week is another where I am teaching. This time I am just teaching the practicals, so I am only busy in the afternoons and not all day as last time. Though, at the moment, I have not done that much. There are only two students for this module. On Monday the students were busy finishing off the coursework for another module and on Tuesday the lecturer decided to use the afternoon for extra lecture time.

Teaching again has reminded me that I am meant to be going through the lecture notes for this module and suggesting edits. Also I must have to write an exam for the earlier module. Tomorrow will be a good time for both of these, I feel.

My research group runs two MSc courses in the area of network and collaborative computing. One of these includes the possibility to take several mathematics modules. These courses are taught with one week intensive modules on a subject. This meant that I spent the past week teaching the first Linear Algebra module. This module covers direct and indirect methods for solving systems of linear algebraic equations.

In my previous entry I mentioned that I was still suffering the after effects of flu - meaning I started the week with a sore throat. Not the best way to start when one is lecturing 10+ hours and when one has to be available to answer questions during 10+ hours of practical sessions.

This is the first time I have lectured this course - before I had only taught the practical sessions. Overall it went fairly well - though I was really struggling to speak by the end of the week. I taught it from an old set of lecture notes, produced by previous lecturers of this course - which at least meant that the preparation time was not too great.