Director's Message

Published in the Research School of Physics Event Horizon
Vol45 Issue49 7–11 December 2020

JSC Teaching Teams 2020

Last Monday, two teams, led by Prof. Paul Francis and Dr. John Debs for Freestyle Physics and Prof. Joe Hope for Classical Mechanics 1, commenced two weeks of intensive teaching of a total of 460 students in the ANU-Shandong University Joint Science College (JSC).  This year, due to travel restrictions, the two courses had to be taught remotely via Microsoft Teams.  Freestyle Physics had a total of 300 JSC students in their first year, spread across Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics majors, while Classical Mechanics 1 had 160 second year students combined from Mathematics and Physics.  These courses will continue this week and conclude this Friday.

Freestyle Physics was run as two sessions: one morning and one afternoon with 150 students each. Teaching was divided into 3 tutor channels with each of the following tutors responsible for 10 virtual breakout tables of 5 students each in each session:

Dr. Mahyar Bokaeeyan (TP)

Ms. Rowena Yew (EME)

Ms. Huma Latif (LPC)

Ms. Xingshuo Huang (EME) and Ms. Dige Wang (LPC) then assisted as native speaking floaters between the 30 virtual tables during each session to provide language (and physics) support, in addition to Paul Francis and John Debs as the two main academics.

Classical Mechanics was run as a single session with four tutor channels, each responsible for 7 or 8 virtual breakout tables of 5 students each for a total of 30 virtual tables:

Mr. Zain Mehdi (DQS)

Mr. Alexander Ratcliffe (DQS)

Mr. Benjamin Slimming (DQS)

Ms. Rosemary Zielinski (UG)

Ms. Zhuoxian Ou (LPC) then assisted as a native speaking floater with Joe Hope as the main academic. Classical Mechanics is further supported by Mr. Hassan Iqbal (LPC) with organisation and IT, and Dr. Chathura Bandutunga (CGA) with computational content.

Pictured above is a mid-term R&R gathering of the two teams after a long hard week of teaching.  From left to right: Rosemary Zielinski (UG, CM1), Paul Francis (FP), Xingshuo Huang (EME, FP), Mahyar Bokaeeyan (TP, FP), Rowena Yew (EME, FP), John Debs (FP), Zain Mehdi (DQS, CM1), Zhuaxian Ou (LPC, CM1), Benjamin Slimming (DQS, CM1). [FP: Freestyle Physics; CM1: Classical Mechanics 1].