Profile

I am a Teaching Fellow which is like a Lecturer but a bit different.  A Lecturer teaches students and carries out research into a particular area of science.  A Teaching Fellow also teaches students but the research they carry out is into the science of teaching (the proper phrase is “pedagogic research”).  I am quite new to my job so I have not got any research up and running yet but I hope to look into ways to make sure that marking is consistent when lots of different people are marking one set of work (this is essential when you have four people marking work from 150+ students for example!) and new ways of doing on-line assessment.

Before my current job, I worked in research labs for 10 years looking at how bacteria respond to changes in their environment

There is no such thing as a typical day.  Every day really is different.

I spend a lot of my time teaching microbiology which can be in lectures, tutorials or practical classes.  If I am not actually teaching, I might be preparing or updating teaching materials.  Another large part of my time is spent marking and giving students feedback on their work.  This is really important as students need to know how they are doing and how they can improve.

I supervise students who are doing research projects in the lab so I might go and catch up with them to see how their work is going.

I am doing a qualification in teaching in higher education so I might spend some time working on this or thinking of new ideas for teaching in the future.

I like to keep up to date with new work that is being done in microbiology or teaching so I go to conferences and seminars.  I also attend outreach events to get science out in to the community.