In October 2009, I began full time work as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Durham. My responsibilities include acting as tutor to forty first year undergraduates studying Physics, with whom I typically have one contact hour per week, split between five tutor groups. In the Michaelmas term, I was responsible for supervising laboratory groups of twenty-four second level students in their weekly laboratory project work (three afternoons per work), and also led a first year laboratory session (one afternoon per week). These laboratories covered a wide range of basic topics in physics, from cryogenics and ballistics to studies of the viscosity of water. In Hillary term, my laboratory duties will solely involve work with second year undergraduates working on their "long lab" experiments. A key part of such teaching is ongoing feedback, which I deliver in both written and verbal form over the course of the lab sessions.

Prior to my move to the University of Durham, I was employed for two years as an Associate Lecturer, working for the Open University on their second level Astronomy course. This role required me to teach, through distance learning, tutor groups numbering approximately twenty students. Since my face-to-face contact time with each student was limited to two face-to-face tutorials, one at the start and one at the end of each presentation of the course, this role required innovative use of other forms of communication. My students covered a wide range of ages (from teenagers to octagenarians) and previous levels of education, and many were studying in their free time while working full time in a variety of challenging roles. My main means of communication with most of my students came through written feedback I gave to their roughly bi-monthly Tutor-Marked Assignments. For every assignment, I sent each student a significant amount of detailed personalised feedback on the errors they had made, highlighting ways in which their work could be improved. Beyond this, it was important that I be continually available, either by phone or e-mail, to the students whenever they had questions. Although some students took greater advantage of this than others, I endeavoured to give each student as much time as they needed in order to be able to help them understand the course. As a result of this, I found it highly pleasing that almost all of my students followed the course through to a successful completion - a significantly higher fraction than the University's average module completion rate.

During my time at the Open University, I also worked as a tutor on the highly successful Astronomy residential school, in Mallorca, on which undergraduate students are taught to use research-grade astronomical equipment to make observations and carry out basic research. Over the course of a week, the students carry out a different project every night, and learn a great deal about astronomical imaging, data reduction, and also the physics behind the various kinds of objects they study. As part of my duties, I acted as supervisor and mentor to a new tutor on the course, and also presented research and teaching lectures to the students prior to their observing work. Whilst at the OU, I also acted as a critical reader on a new first-level course on Weather, and was heavily involved in the ongoing educational development of the graduate students within the Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space & Astronomical Research (CEPSAR), organising and leading induction days, and chairing a committee convened to judge a series of lectures given by the second and third year students, awarding a significant cash prize to the winner.