Imogen C.

I am currently a 4th year medical student at King's College London, with a previous Bachelor of Science - Neuroscience (intercalated). I feel that teaching is the best way to give back my knowledge to benefit someone else. For me, tutoring is a very fulfilling and rewarding job, whereby goals can be set and obtained. However, what I also find so remarkable is that this goal can always be moved higher or further, whereby the possibilities and potential to learn is endless, which is highly satisfying as a tutor. I therefore have been involved in tutoring/teaching at university for 3 years now, developing a wide skill set to be a successful tutor. These roles cover group sessions, presentations and 1 to 1, detailed below:
I volunteered in a Peer-Assisted Learning scheme (PALs) at university whereby we were allocated groups to teach and facilitate sessions on medical themed topics. These are very student led and adapted to their needs and wants at that point of their medical degree. This enabled me to have an adaptive approach to teaching whereby weekly changes in themes and teaching methods, which encouraged and instilled this adaptability and versatility in me, both of which I can bring into my tutoring sessions.
Furthermore, as part of my medical degree I undertook a ‘Doctor as Teacher’ module in which we were taught the most effective teaching methods for engaging audiences and achieving the best outcomes. This provided me with lots of useful resources and led me to direct and lead a teaching session on a chosen topic for another student. Due to the pandemic this was inevitably delivered online, which helped me gauge a real concept of the online meeting platforms and how to navigate presenting and teaching on them. Feedback from this session was highly positive, and they came away having learnt and gained a lot from my teaching.
Additionally, during my neuroscience degree, I gained a lot of experience in presenting, where I would have to condense and simplify large amounts of information into a single presentation and help others to understand this. This enabled me to develop my style of teaching where I found a problem-based learning approach and encouraging participation is most beneficial. I feel the best way to learn is by making mistakes and learning from them. Having information loaded onto you with no audience/tutee inputs largely results in inefficient learning. My method of teaching involves going through problems/questions and resolving them together or allowing the tutee to solve the problem independently and then going over the content with additional teaching if required. Inevitably helping them to hammer home what is being taught. As aforementioned I think adaptability is also key and would want to work closely with the tutee to ensure I meet their needs at each session, which can change over the duration of tutoring.
Overall, my experiences have given me the tools and skills to be an effective and confident tutor, all of which I hope to demonstrate to you.