Information About Kevin - Dublin tutor -

(3 reviews)

Personal Description:

I am an astrophysics Ph.D. researcher in Trinity College Dublin, I'm offering grinds in mathematics, applied maths, physics, chemistry, geography, and science. I'm passionate about STEM education and believe that one-to-one lessons are by far the best way to learn about a topic. I'm based in the city center, happy to travel or give grinds from TCD.

My Ph.D. research is on the chemical composition of exocometary belts. This is a fancy way of saying I study what space rocks around other stars are made of. As part of my studies and doctoral research, I've gained a solid understanding of physics, computer science, mathematics, geology, and chemistry.

I've also got an M.Sc. in applied mathematics, a diploma and research experience in machine learning/A.I… an undergraduate in Physic and Astrophysics, and I'm undertaking a masters track program in statistics.

For third level students, I may/may not explicitly state I'm up for tutoring a particular area but FirstTutor doesn't allow for much specificity. So for example I say I tutor third level mathematics and I've tutored university level science students in calculus, but I wouldn't be comfortable tutoring a class on lie algebras for a pure mathematics student. Bottom line, if you're a science or engineering undergraduate there's a decent chance I'll have covered the topic and can help you out! If you're unsure, feel free to ask!

Tutoring Experience:

I worked for Trinity's Walton Club for 2 years. For their weekly club I designed and delivered 3 lecture series on data science, python programming, and astrophysics as well as delivering their regular physics/maths lecturers. I was an educator for their annual Summer camp series teaching STEM topics to senior cycle students as well as a weekly club focused on teaching STEM to secondary students.

As part of my Ph.D… I also deliver lab demonstrations to undergraduate students. This can be anything from explaining how lab equipment works to trying to give them a grasp of the underlying physics. These are often quite difficult to understand topics, even to people studying physics at university so my main job is to convey information in an easy to understand manner to students who often haven't covered the topics in the labs before.

I've worked with Trinity's Transition Year Physics Experience program which has transition years come into the college to create an academic level poster about a topic in physics. This was great teaching experience as these students often choose some very challenging topics such as quantum computing and black holes and it was my job to break these topics down and explain them to students who previously had only taken junior cycle science.

Approach to Grinds:

Traditional lectures/classroom formats are often a poor way to teach as students learn topics at different paces. Thus, they can be end up being frustratingly fast or slow depending on the student and the topic. The advantage to grinds and smaller group teaching is that a teacher and student can take time to cover the areas a student is most struggling with. It's my aim as a grinds teacher to priorities understanding what a student's strengths and weaknesses are in relation to a topic so I can tailor lessons to their individual needs and find a style that suits their learning style best.

I also believe it is usually best to use the simplest terms possible to explain a topic. Often in science and maths topics, we can get very bogged down in jargon, which is necessary to some extent, but in teaching a topic it often hinders learning. It's also a good sign of understanding a topic if you can explain it like you're talking to a 5 year old. This sort of approach gives the learner the intuition they need to confidently grasp a complicated idea.