Teaching Statement Alon Efrat

Teaching Statement


Alon Efrat

For the past seven years I have been a teacher and teaching assistant in many courses at various academic institutes. The demand for programmers in Israel has resulted in the proliferation of software engineering courses, and I have taught in a number of them. My teaching style is friendly and warm, and enables me to stimulate the curiosity of my students and their desire to address challenging questions. In this way, I am confident that in the majority of the courses I have taught, students were highly motivated.

I enjoy teaching introductory courses in computer science and programming since they enable to help the students to develop the bases of a methodical yet creative way of coping with problems. I always consider teaching these courses challenging and exciting. From the very same reasons, I also enjoy teaching algorithms courses, such as graph algorithms, computational geometry and data structures courses. I have taught both introductory and advanced courses in these areas, and I consider myself very experienced. As my interest in Geographic Information Science (GIS) grew, I taught a graduate student seminar in GIS in Tel-Aviv University. In addition, during my work at the Open University, I participated in teams that developed a course in file systems and a course in computer graphics, both for distance learning.

My teaching and research experience, as well as my interest in geometric algorithms, will also enable me to successfully teach courses in related areas, such as computer graphics and robotics.