TUTORING & STUDY ASSISTANCE

What is available ... and what should you expect?

[  Discussion sections  |   Study groups  |  Office hours  |  Faculty tutors  |  Paid tutors  |  Expectations  ]

Discussion Sections

Discussion sections in many courses are frequently used for review and practice with problem solving techinques. They generally have a smaller class size to allow more opportunity for participation by individual students, and for students to get to know each other.

Study Groups

Forming study groups with other students can be a powerful lesson in discovering how the whole can be stronger than the sum of its parts. Attempting to explain a situation to someone else can be very valuable in exposing exactly where the weaknesses lie in one's own understanding. Most teachers have a story to tell about some fundamental concept of their discipline that they never truly understood until they started trying to explain it to someone else -- mostly because that was the first time they were forced to notice that there was this serious gap in their own understanding.

Working together on lab experiments is one frequent starting point for the formation of such groups. Indeed this is one of those "secret" reasons why science lab sections tend to be organized the way they are. Your teachers will generally be happy to assist you in setting up this kind of activity -- in fact there are study spaces available in the department specifically for this purpose. Just ask.

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Office Hours

Faculty Office Hours are a common site for those "I just need a hint on this one problem" questions, and these questions can frequently be handled on the spur of the moment. However, for more extensive discussion of your progress in a class you probably want to make an appointment -- and if you should arrive with a quick question while a longer discussion is in progress you'll have to wait your turn.

Indeed most faculty are quite willing to answer this sort of quick question on a walk-in basis -- even if it is not an officially posted office hour -- as long as they are not in the middle of something that can't be postponed, and as long it lies within their area of expertise. Sometimes completing the preparation for a lecture which starts in 10 minutes just can't be interrupted -- and you really don't want a physicist attempting to answer your question about geology. It doesn't hurt to ask -- just be prepared for an occasional negative response.

Full-Time faculty office hours, class schedules, and adjunct faculty contact info. are posted each semester on the bulletin board in the department reception area -- room 311SE.

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Faculty Tutoring

There are often one or two faculty members in the department who are assigned to be available for independent tutoring as a part of their regular workload assignment. This is similar to the arrangement whereby faculty from the appropriate disciplines may spend a certain amount of time in the Math/Science Center or the Writing Center. These assignments are regularly posted on the bulletin board in the department reception area -- room 311SE.

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Paid Tutors

Postings offering to tutor for pay are occasionally found on campus bulletin boards. The student should understand that this is private enterprise at work -- i.e. it is no different than an ad on a public bulletin board in the supermarket. The department maintains a list posted on the bulletin board in the department reception area -- room 311SE; however, keep in mind this is only a list of tutors who step forward and wish to be put on the list. The department does not generally have knowledge of these people or there credentials. It is entirely possible that they may be quite competent, but their services are in no sense supervised or endorsed by the College nor by the department.

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Expectations

"Tutoring" might mean anything from "I'm hopelessly lost in this course and I desperately need someone to bail me out", to "I seem to understand most of this stuff, but I really need a hint on why I'm so hung up with this particular problem". People in the first category are generally seeking a long term interaction with a single person, while those in the second group may be well served by a thoughtful conversation with the next "expert" who happens to become available. There are nevertheless several general ideas that apply in either of these situations.

What exactly should any form of tutoring be expected to accomplish? This is a very troublesome question. It is not unusual to encounter students with completely unrealistic expectations -- that this person will have some secret (and quick) way to explain the subject matter which will suddenly make everything perfectly clear. Such students almost always go away disappointed.

The most valuable service a long-term tutor can perform is to analyze the way YOU are currently approaching the subject matter, and assist you in finding areas of difficulty that are holding you back. In other words, tutoring hours are not really giving you a good return on your investment of time, and perhaps dollars, until you reach the point where you are arriving at the session with work already in hand to be evaluated. It may take a bit of time to build up a tutoring relationship to this level of interaction, but you should keep this in mind as the overall goal of the process.

In the physical sciences, the very first question any potential "tutor" is likely to hear will be something along the lines of "Can you show me how to work this problem?" This is not a terribly bad place to start. It recognizes, for example, that it would not be useful simply to ask, "What is the answer to this problem"? After all, you've usually got the answers to at least half the problems already listed in the back of the book, yet that hasn't solved your current difficulty. What is really needed is an understanding of the method that was used to reach the answer.

It is unfortunately true, however, that this is still missing the most important point. If you just passively watch as an expert works through the detailed solution, then at the end of the session you are simply overloaded with a lot more stuff that you must now try to memorize. You are not really any closer to being able to attack the next problem from scratch by yourself than you were when you walked into the room. You haven't really been working on understanding.

What you really need is information on a much deeper level. You need to understand not only the mechanics of the method, but the reasoning behind the method. Questions like: "How did you decide what method to try on a problem like this?" ... "How do you detect when things are going wrong and it is time to try a new approach?" ... "What general techniques that I already know from earlier chapters should I be able to apply here as well?"   These are not just good questions to ask when working with someone else -- they are the fundamental questions you must always be asking yourself, even when studying alone.

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