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Advice on core module tutorials

For more information contact: Toby Hall.

Tutorial questionnaires are circulated in each of the core modules around week 3 or 4 of the semester, so that any problems with tutorial groups can be rectified early on. The main message from these questionnaires is always positive: students very much appreciate these tutorials, and their main requests are to have more of them, longer, and in other modules too.

However, there are some more negative comments which come up routinely, and these are reflected in the advice below (most of which is very obvious!).

Time management

  1. Don't spend too much time on easier questions at the expense of harder ones (but don't ignore the easier ones either, particularly if students in your group are relatively weak).
  2. Ask students which questions they've found most difficult, and concentrate on those. (It's worth impressing on students that tutorials are much more valuable if they've attempted the problems beforehand.)
  3. Make sure you look at the problems before the tutorial in enough detail that you're not wasting students time during it.
  4. Students like it when we go over common mistakes in their solutions on the previous week's work, but not when we spend too long doing it.
  5. Similarly, they like a brief summary of the main ideas/results which will be used in that week's work.
  6. Tutorials mustn't overrun. Students may have a lecture immediately afterwards.

Treating students gently

  1. Don't say that things are trivial - even though they are.
  2. Don't assume that students know how to do all of the problems when they arrive - many don't, and they come to the tutorials to get help.
  3. Most tutors think it beneficial to ask students to solve problems at the board. Students don't seem to mind doing this, provided that the atmosphere is friendly and there isn't too much compulsion. They find it very unpleasant to be singled out to solve a problem when they don't know how to. They also don't like it when the tutorial is entirely taken up with students solving problems, so they get relatively little input from the tutor.

Other

  1. Try to use the same method as the lecturer (as given, for example, in the model solutions).
  2. If the mark you return to students is 1 or 2 out of 2, give them an alphabetical grade too so they have some idea of how well they're doing.