School & Teaching

University Teaching

Programming Team Engineering Autumn 2017/18

The original course intended for the CS students, who are usually very bright and excel at problem solving but often have deficiencies in social skills. I wanted to show them that planning projects, communicating with clients, managing a team of software engineers, and reviewing their collaborator’s work is a significant part of their future jobs and can be approached in a “hacking” manner. I tried to explain, how some industry standards came about, we discussed their merits and disadvantages. For example, open space is a very common office set-up nowadays, even though is noisy. Let’s speculate, why it has become so popular? The first reason is one of human traits, shame: a programmer is more conscious about contents of his screen (spending more time working and less on Facebook) knowing that other people may see it — even if they do not care; The second reason is approachability: open space makes it much easier to approach someone with a question, than offices would.

Probability for Computer Scientists Autumn 2018/19, Autumn 2019/20, Autumn 2020/21

I was giving exercise classes for a classic course in probability. The course is being taught by a mathematician, prof. Krzysztof Dębicki. My main task was to show students, how the mathematical definitions and theorems they are learning are relevant in Computer Science (and other areas, like election polling).

Enrolment System Autumn 2018/19, Spring 2019, Autumn 2019/20, Spring 2020, Autumn 2020/21

Starting in Summer 2018 I became a leading developer of our Courses Enrolment System (zapisy). The system is very important, as it allows students to shape their studies to their liking. The precedence is given to students with more tenure (more ECTS credits gained), but the system also rewards students who had rated their courses in previous semesters and those who helped shape the university’s offer by voting for courses they are interested in. It also maintains anonymity of students when they rate their professors with blind signatures protocol. The development is partially based on a workforce of students. I was taking care of the System’s development, coding a lot but also providing guidance and giving away tasks to the students.

Quantum Algorithms Spring 2020

I taught a half-semester course in Quantum Algorithms. It assumed almost no previous knowledge except for some basic linear algebra and general algorithmic outlook. I covered the basics of quantum mechanics, paradoxes, “quantum synchronising” (CHSH game and similar), Grover Algorithm, Fourier Transform over Z₂ and Z_N, Shor’s Algorithm, and query lower bounds. The course was originally planned as rather demanding, it proved even more as we were forced to teach remotely and I resorted to recording a series of Youtube videos and conducting exercise classes by video-conferencing.

School teaching

Informatics School year 2013/14

Teaching algorithms class to eight-grade high school pupils. I took part in our ongoing efforts to prepare some pupils from the best schools for Olympiad in Informatics and give the rest some algorithmic background and practice in problem-solving. Two of my pupils advanced to the finals of Polish Olympiad, many chose computer science as their university major.

Tutoring 2012—2015

Private classes in mathematics. I was mostly teaching high-school students, whose parents were worried about matura (A-levels) or wanted to invest in their children’ education. I found, there are four challenges with this job: One is to teach mathematics to kids, who are being trained at school to perform repetitive tasks without really understanding them (sometimes even their teachers do not understand them). Secondly, I needed to show them, that mathematics is central to understanding of the world, and you can use it to predict results of simple experiments. Kids are not only taught mathematics horribly, but physics as well. Often, free fall feels abstract to them. The third challenge is to fight for the kid’s attention — especially when they have five more private classes like mine after day’s worth of school (which is already tiring). Finally, it is important to convince their parents to examine what their child has learned — only this way the pupil will need to relieve the contents in their head between tutoring sessions. Sadly, many parents feel, that hiring a tutor frees them from responsibility of following their children education, and most parents are not that interested in maths. Without false modesty I can say, I was doing quite well in tackling these challenges.