Thomas Bilitewski

I believe that teaching is an integral part of being a university professor, benefits both students and teachers, and is a critical mission and societial functions of universities in preparing our students for their future.   

I actively support department-wide goals to transform the student experience in large service courses by implementing research-backed active learning strategies. Furthermore, by working to improve instruction in small-group discussions, I support the university-wide mission of providing the highest quality education through modern, inclusive teaching methods. 

My teaching centers on a student-first approach, placing learners and their success at the center while positioning me as a facilitator of their learning process. To be an effective university educator, I rely on evidence-informed approaches framed by established theories of higher education learning. Because I recognize that my students come from diverse educational backgrounds, I prioritize continuous feedback from both peers and students. Cultivating this reflective practice allows me to adapt my instruction to the ever-changing requirements of different learners, guiding my ongoing professional development and ensuring lasting student success. 

Professional Development 

I strongly believe in the continual improvement of my teaching practice through professional development and active reflection. Exposure to research-backed learning theories has provided me with a robust framework upon which to base my instructional decisions. 

Understanding learning as a highly individual process has considerably changed my practice; I view my primary responsibility as providing the environment and activities most beneficial to that individualized process. Specifically, for each course unit, I clearly define intended learning outcomes and ensure they directly align with final assessments. I prioritize transparency, explicitly communicating to students why they are performing a specific task, what they are intended to learn, and how they will be evaluated. 

Peer Evaluations 

Becoming a better teacher requires preparation, feedback, and active reflection. To that end, I regularly invite senior professors in the Department to observe and evaluate my classes. These peer observations have been immensely useful for my professional growth. Gaining feedback from an informed outsider—who is not directly involved in the instruction and can therefore notice different classroom dynamics—provides a crucial perspective on my strengths and areas for improvement. Comparing their feedback with my own pre-observation notes allows me deeper insight into both my instructional behavior and the learning dynamics of the room. Additionally, observing the classes of senior colleagues has given me the opportunity to contrast my own practice with theirs and experience the classroom from the student's perspective. 

Student Feedback 

I place a special focus on acquiring and integrating student feedback. This serves two main purposes: it evaluates the effectiveness of my teaching to inform my ongoing reflection, and it allows me to identify the methods most likely to motivate my students. Ultimately, opening this dialogue is essential for creating a truly effective learning environment. Because university contact time is relatively short compared to the time students spend in independent study, fostering self-motivation is a key aspect of developing autonomous learners. 

I formally collect week-six feedback in all my classes using anonymous "start-stop-continue" online forms. This allows students to identify practices they believe would improve their learning ("start"), practices they find unhelpful ("stop"), and practices that support their success ("continue"). I then dedicate class time to discussing this feedback, providing the pedagogical reasoning behind certain choices, and highlighting the changes I am making based on their input. This process gives my students agency over their learning environment, promotes meta-cognition, and allows me to identify and address potential roadblocks early in the term. 

Exemplary Case Study: Large Intro-Level Class (College Physics II)

When designing and teaching my large introductory physics class (approx. 180 students), I apply the following core principles: 

•     Employing backwards course design. 
•     Encouraging active student engagement via in-class Think-Pair-Share exercises. 
•     Utilizing physical demonstrations and simulations of physical phenomena. 
•     Demonstrating problem-solving strategies via in-class examples. 
•     Implementing multiple low-stakes formative assessments to scaffold mastery. 
•     Collecting and integrating student feedback to inform teaching practice. 

I choose all assessments and problems based on the principle of backwards course design. I first define core student learning outcomes for each unit. Exams are then designed, and problems chosen, working backward from these outcomes. Students engage with the material on multiple levels: encountering new concepts, constructing knowledge and integrating it into their prior knowledge frames in the large lecture, working through problems and asking questions in small-group discussions (15 students and 1 TA), and checking their understanding through formative homework assignments (allowing multiple attempts) before demonstrating mastery in summative exams. 

To guarantee transparency and alignment, I prepare a practice exam for every midterm and discuss how each question maps to our core learning outcomes. Post-exam, I present a review that maps specific test questions back to their corresponding in-class work, discussion group quizzes, or homework, reinforcing the alignment of our coursework. 

Adapting to Student Needs

Students identified a significant challenge: they struggled to translate their success on homework into in-person exam performance. To help students overcome this, I introduced a zero-grade, in-person "mock exam" during class time before the first midterm. This allows them to experience exact exam conditions without grade anxiety. Additionally, I introduced low-stakes quizzes aligned to core outcomes during discussion groups. Placing a minor grade weight on these discussion groups significantly increased attendance—a problem I had identified —and consequently improved overall student learning outcomes. 

Fostering Engagement and Accessibility

I utilize iClicker think-pair-share questions during lectures to engage students and assess learning in real time. Based on week-six feedback, students almost universally appreciate these questions, noting they improve engagement and comprehension. 

Furthermore, I have developed a number of tangible, in-class demonstrations—supplemented by interactive simulations when physical experiments are unsafe or unavailable. Tangible demonstrations are critical for learning physics as a real-world science. Because many of our students join OSU without any prior physics coursework, they have never seen the foundational experiments that inform our understanding of the modern world. Seeing the real-life effects of relevant quantities significantly improves their grasp of underlying abstract equations. 

Finally, the iterative feedback loop remains central to my methodology. Specific changes I have made this year directly resulting from student feedback include solving in-class problems on a document camera rather than the whiteboard for better visibility, making discussions of course alignment more explicit, and actively reviewing student feedback with my Teaching Assistants so we can implement uniform improvements across all discussion sections. 

Exemplary Case Study: Small-Size Advanced Graduate Class (Statistical Mechanics)

I regularly teach PHYS 5213 (Statistical Mechanics), a graduate-level Physics course. The smaller setting allowed me to structure instruction differently than in my large introductory courses, demonstrating my ability to adapt my pedagogy to advanced academic levels and intimate classroom environments. 

Rather than relying solely on traditional lectures, I designe the course to blend lecture content with highly collaborative, active problem-solving. I developed custom worksheets that students completed in small groups working directly on blackboards. This peer-to-peer approach proved particularly effective, empowering students to actively construct, debate, and apply their own understanding in real time alongside their peers. To further illustrate complex physical phenomena, I integrated numerical simulations and interactive code workbooks, allowing students to independently manipulate variables and observe outcomes on their own. 

Finally, to ensure the course material was directly relevant to their academic and professional trajectories, I implemented a capstone project in lieu of a traditional final exam. Students authored a scientific essay and delivered a formal presentation to the class, applying the course concepts directly to their own areas of research interest. This assessment not only evaluated their advanced mastery of statistical mechanics but also actively cultivated essential soft skills in scientific communication and the professional presentation of research. 

Class Descriptions

I regularly teach College Physics II, an algebra based class, introducing students to the physics of electromagnetism, starting with force between charges, proceeding to currents and magnetic fields, culminating in the discovery that light is electro-magnetic radiation. This then leads naturally into the exploration of the properties of light in geometric and wave optics, leading to an understanding of phenomena such as rainbows, eye glasses, and telescopes. Finally, the investigation of the properties of light then leads via the particle-wave duality to the quantum revolution, leading to atomic physics, nuclear and particle physics.

I've also taught Statistical Mechanics, a course introducing the statistical description of interacting and non-interacting classical and quantum particles via the formalism of partition functions. It forms the basis of our understanding of how macroscopic phenomena arise from microscopic descriptions, i.e. how concepts such as pressure and temperature are related to the microscopic particle description, and how phases of matter, such as liquids, solids and gas come to be, extending to more quantum phases such as Bose-Einstein-Condensates and Fermi-liquids.