Ana Aguiar's Homepage
Teaching Philosophy
Engineering and Cooking (coming soon)Statement from the Ethics Committee of the University of Porto on plagiarism and cheating, May 2010 (pdf, in Portuguese)
"Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random
Assignment of Students to Professors", S. E. Carrell, J.
E. West, Journal of Political Economy, Volume 118, No. 3,
409-432, June 2010 (pdf
of original article) (the
Washington Post article about it)
You must not always be able to assess the utility of what you learn, at the time that you learn it. Watch Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, on his speech at Stanford's Commencement 2005.
Evaluation Criteria
My intention with this list is to inform students about what will be valued in their evaluation. I believe that aiming at meeting these criteria will create good habits in future engineering professionals. Hence, valuing these issues is a means to make students aware of these issues and to motivate them to embed them in their daily life.
- Knowledge-based reasoning
- Logical argumentation
- Structured presentation of reasoning
- Clear presentation of results
- Presentation of results in their simplest form
- Critical interpretation/ analysis of own results
- Correct use of formal mathematical language
- Clear expression and use of adequate vocabulary
These evaluation criteria are applied throughout my teaching activities with more or less expression, depending on the level and subject of the course. They have a quantitative expression in the classification of written exams, articles, reports, presentations, etc.
Courses
2011/2012
- Network Services and Architectures (graduate course)
- Download
MAP-Tele seminar slides from 02-02-2012
- Communication Services (undergraduate course)
- Computer Networks (undergraduate course)
- Numeric Methods (undergraduate course)
2010/2011
- Communication Services (undergraduate course)
- Numeric Methods (undergraduate course)
- Information and Communication (undergraduate course)
- Network Service Architectures (graduate course, 2nd semester)
- Advanced Computer Networks (ACN), MAP-i doctoral programme: Advanced Transport Issues, Nov. 22nd 2010
2009/2010
- Algebra (undergraduate course)
- Network and System Security (undergraduate course)
- Numeric Methods (undergraduate course)
- Communication Services (undergraduate course)
- Networks Service Architetures (graduate course)
2006/2007
- Computer Networks, Recitation, TU Berlin
2002/2003
- Computer Networks, Recitations, TU Berlin
Interests Related to Teaching
The Algebra and Numeric Methods courses are taught to first and second year undergraduate students. I would like to gain insight into innovative ways of motivating young students to learn subjects that they are not very interested in and often find difficult to follow.I am also interested in developing and trying out new ways to teach complex subjects like communication networks (and related matters) so that students understand the big picture and the relationships between different components, without being overwhelmed by the complexity of the subject. I believe that a stronger use of demonstration/example-based teaching together with well-designed laboratory experiments could be helpful.
I am interested in how these matters are addressed at other universities and would like to try out new teaching methods and activities aimed at improving the motivation and learning results.
Contacts
Email: ana . aguiar at fe . up . pt
LinkedIn: Ana Aguiar