Erik Lascaris

Erik Lascaris

Physics PhD, computer simulation expert
Department of Physics, Boston University

From all the challenging problems in Physics, I think that teaching Physics is one of my favorites. It is one thing to solve a problem, but quite another to help a student in such a way that he/she learns from the experience.

I have been tutoring and teaching science since an early age, starting from helping my classmates with their homework, to being a Teaching Fellow at Boston University during my first years in grad school. It has always been a pleasant experience, and I have learned a lot about teaching.

One thing I am very excited about is the Teaching As Research program that I am currently participating in. In combination with that I am also taking an online course (a MOOC) titled "An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching". I highly recommend it by anyone interested in teaching science. In the past I've tried to "condense" my teaching powers into a set of small PDF's. A few of those are available below, at the summaries section.

Teaching As Research (TAR)

The Teaching As Research project consists of two semesters. During the first semester (Fall 2015) I will develop a research question and find ways to collect and analyze relevant data. During the second semester it is time to do the actual research.

I am very interested in online homework and how it can be improved. My TAR project will therefore be focused on that topic.

(More info soon!)


Physics summaries

After teaching the same things over and over again, I started to get a feeling of what is (in my opinion) the best way of teaching a certain set of problems, certain "modules". Repetition is a valuable tool in learning, but I think it is more effective to focus on a few super good problems that explain everything to the student. Below are a few of those "modules", small dense pieces of physics knowledge.