Garrett Swan

Teaching

My goal as an instructor and mentor is to spark engagement, maximize learning, and provide an environment that allows each learner to flourish. I value finding creative means of accommodating all learners, and aim to continually be receptive to new ideas that stem from feedback from students and colleagues as well as the literature.

For my complete Teaching Portfolio,click here.

Courses and student ratings for the courses I have instructed:

  • Data and Model Programming for Computational Social Science in Spring 2021 at University of California San Diego
      Mean rating (n = 24) = 95.8% would recommend me as an instructor
  • Illusions and the Brain in Winter 2021 at University of California San Diego
      Mean rating (n = 132) = 99.2% would recommend me as an instructor
  • Visual Cognition in Fall 2020 at University of California San Diego
      Mean rating (n = 38) = 100% would recommend me as an instructor
  • Data and Model Programming for Computational Social Science in Summer 2020 at University of California San Diego
      Mean rating (n = 8) = 100% would recommend me as an instructor
  • Data and Model Programming for Computational Social Science in Spring 2020 at University of California San Diego
      Mean rating (n = 31) = 100% would recommend me as an instructor
  • Intro to Cognitive Psychology in Spring 2017 at Pennsylvania State University
      Mean rating (n = 103) = 6.01 out of 7
  • Intro to Cognitive Psychology in Fall 2016 at Pennsylvania State University
      Mean rating (n = 32) = 5.22 out of 7

    • Mentoring

    I have greatly valued the mentors that have shaped me, and I have enjoyed engaging as a mentor with junior colleagues and students. I have mentored undergraduate students in research at PSU and at the Schepens Eye Research Institute. As an instructor, I mentored teaching assistants at both PSU and UCSD. I have learned that it is vital to establish the overall goals of the mentorship early and to arrange regularly scheduled meetings. These meetings are important for checking the status of our goals, adjusting expectations, and providing an opportunity for open communication. To further my development as a mentor, I earned a Science Mentoring Certificate from the Science Education Office at Harvard University. The skills that I developed through this program have augmented my mentoring and teaching ability

    Below, I have listed some specific students that I have mentored:

    Teaching assistants

    Victoria Gertel (Fall 2016, Spring 2017), Adnan Shahpurwala (Spring 2020), Taha Siamwala (Summer Session 2 2020), Jonathan Keefe (Fall 2020), Janna WennBerg (Winter 2021), Sunyoung Park + Andrew Lona + Brendon Hahm (Spring 2021)

    Tanya Bhayana (part-time MS student) – 2019 to 2020

    I mentored Tanya on research project evaluating the effects of central vision loss, auditory distraction, and driving scenario (i.e., highway versus city). I helped Tanya understand how research is conducted by walking her through experimental design, how to administer an experiment to participants (including basic vision measures and how to operate the driving simulator), data processing, and data analysis. Tanya has submitted her thesis proposal to the New England College of Optometry.

    Vilte Baliutaviciute (pre-doctoral research assistant) – 2019 to 2020

    I assisted with mentoring Vilte in how to administer an experiment to participants (including basic vision measures and how to operate the driving simulator) and how to process data.

    MS students from Technical University of Munich – winter 2018

    I assisted with mentoring in Aliakbar Ahmadi in how to apply machine learning techniques to evaluate the gaze scan algorithm. I also assisted with mentoring Benjamin Orthen in how to design an experiment using the driving simulator using Unity game engine.

    Jacqueline Albert (Southern California College of Optometry), Joseph Herrmann (Texas Tech University Health Sciences), and Maha Shahin (Mansoura University Department of Ophthalmology) – summer 2017 and fall 2018

    I assisted with mentoring how research is conducted. With these visiting researchers, we completed an experiment investigating the effect that simulated vision impairment has on hazard detection.

    Andrew Maceyko (Pennsylvania State University) - 2015 to 2016

    I mentored Andrew on a psychophysical experiment measuring visual memory. I helped Andrew with developing the paradigm, processing, and data analysis in Matlab.