Teaching

Being a junior teacher for 28% of my contract time, I stand in front of many classes. These classes sometimes are filled with first-year students on their first day, other times with experienced Master’s students learning the details of a certain technique, and many levels of students in between. During my work at Utrecht University, I have grown from practical assistant to coordinator of my own Master’s course. In my teaching practice, I find it important that academic students experience and execute a certain experiment or technique rather than just reading about it. University is explicitly a place where students should be embeded in research practice, especially in the later stage of their academic education. While gaining practical experience, I support students in maintaining oversight over what and why they are doing what they are doing. For those who are interested, a draft of my application for the University Teaching Qualification (UTQ) or BKO in Dutch, is available here. This document is written in Dutch completely.

Finally, perhaps also have a look at my outreach projects

Teaching a class of (very young) biologists about the basics of plant breeding.

Assisting teacher

Experience as an assistant teacher in courses such as ‘systems biology’ (1st year BSc), ‘plant physiology’ and ‘molecular genetic research techniques’ (2nd year BSc).

Teacher

Experience as a teacher in courses ‘biology of the bio-based economy’ (3rd year BSc) and ‘introduction to bioinformatics for life sciences’ (1st Year MSc).

Course coordinator

After being a teacher for several editions, I took it upon myself to coordinate the entire ‘introduction to bioinformatics for life sciences’ course. As coordinator, I manage and organise a team of experts from various local institutions with whom I build one consistent course. Students are introduced to many subfields of bioinformatics by absolute experts. I guide and supervise the students during the whole course and the many hands-on exercises. As coordinator, I guard cohesion between the many parts and people involved.

metagenomics practical

One section of the intro-to-bioinformatics course is completely of my own design and I chose the share this publicly on github: a hands-on session for learning metagenomics. Read more about this on the practical home page. Alternatively, browse the course materials on github.com/lauralwd/metagenomicspractical

Nitrogen metabolism of microbes in the Azolla filiculoides metagenome. This is one of the final results of the metagenomics practical.

Explore the practical home page

Tutor

Being employed as a part-time teacher, I also tutor students. First, I tutor Bachelor’s students from their first day of university until they finish their Bachelor’s. Second, I tutor and guide students during their internships in our Azolla lab at Utrecht University. These students can be bachelor students, experienced Master’s students, or non-academic students.

List of course experience

• 1st year BSc
  • Tutoring 1st year bachelor students
  • Systems biology (working groups)
• 2nd year BSc
  • Molecular genetic research techniques (practicals)
  • Plant physiology (working groups)
• 3rd year BSc
  • Several BSc thesis projects
  • Biology of the biobased economy (teacher)
• MSc
  • Introduction to Bioinformatics (teacher, then coordinator)
  • Several MSc thesis projects