One of the students from my last two office hours came asking for help with this weeks written work. I don't believe I saw such a problem last semester, though it may have slipped my mind. It asked for the electrical potential of a charged sphere inside and out of its radius. I ended up using the internet for help.

The rest of the online homework went smoothly. There isn't much you can do to trip someone up on electric potential, as there are no vectors. On that note, Dr. Hong posted the handout I created on courseweb. Hopefully, this will lead to less confusion.

Week 3

There were no students showing up on Monday. But on Thursday, two students were waiting there before the start of office hour. One of them had come before and I was really glad that she came here again this week. She just asked for help on some homework problems. Although I still didn't have homework access to prepare in advance, these homework questions were quite straightforward and not hard to solve.  Another student was very confused about vector addition and subtraction. So we reviewed this part together and I explained the basic rules to her. I'm happy that she told me it was really helpful. I was no longer nervous this week. I hope to help more students in the future.

Week 3

This week I helped one person.

This was a very uneventful week for me. My room was changed on Monday, and Dr. Nero did not update his website until Tuesday after my office hours. For this reason, no one really showed up.

On Wednesday, I only had one person show up, and she just wanted help on one of the PEC labs. I hadn't considered that someone would come for help with one of these, but it wasn't too difficult. It was actually kind of fun trying to work through the lab without having done it myself--it was definitely a test of my conceptual knowledge. As far as I could tell the information I gave her was helpful in understanding what was going on. She was the only person that showed up all week, though.

I would usually write more in a post, but there really isn't much to report on this week. I got a lot of homework done on Tuesday and Thursday when no one showed up, which was nice. I am hoping to have more people show up next week, though.

Week Before Exam 1

Monday will be the first exam in the class I TA for, and everyone seems surprisingly relaxed about it. I honestly expected more people to have pre-exam jitters. I made a review sheet for students for this exam, and it seemed to be well appreciated, so I will probably make one for the next exam as well. I look forward to seeing how students do on the exam!

2nd Week

This week I held office hours on 3 days, but students only showed up on Monday.  They had a test in class on Tuesday, so they came in with the practice exam that the professor had posted online and asked for help on various problems they couldn't quite get on their own.  I worked through all the problems beforehand so I could easily compare their steps with mine.

I also had a student come in for the last five minutes to ask me to sign a paper for extra credit.  He did not come in with any questions, so I asked if he would look at the practice exam and try to work through at least one.  He refused, so I did not allow him to get extra credit.

My other two sessions were empty, but I think people will start coming back soon as they are starting forces now and there appeared to be a lot of confusion during class.

Alexandra M
Phys 0174
Nero 1-1:50

Week 2

I guess this is coming a bit late but I haven't had my 3rd session yet so hopefully that's okay.  My second session went well I think. There were a few more students this time (11 in total) and I started to see the effects. I find that when there are a lot of students in the room, if I pose the question of what to do next in a problem, or even just ask them if they have any questions they wanted me to go over, there is a tendency for silence. When there are only 2-3 students in the room I don't really have this issue. One nice thing about asking the students for their names as they enter the room is that I feel like I know most of their names so I think that I may start calling on people.

They have their first exam the day after my next session so I expect to have quite a bit of people at that session. I was originally going to try to come up with a practice test on my own but the professor recently posted a practice exam online so I think I will just have the students work on that during the session and we can go over it as a group at the end, or answer individual questions as need be.

Week 2

Today I finished up my office hours for the second week. Like last week, nobody came to my Tuesday office hours (3-5PM). That makes sense because they just had a test at 2PM.

On Wednesday (3-4PM), I had one student come in. It was the same student that I helped last week. So it was nice to see that she thought I was helpful. She stayed for 45 minutes and had to leave for her recitation at 4PM. We spent most of the time generally going over forces. Then she started her homework and I was able to help her if she got stuck. I did not do the problems for her though. Instead, I asked her questions that would provide insight on how to set up and complete the problems.

So this week I only helped one student. Hopefully in the following weeks more students will come to my office hours for help.

Ryan Tan Week 2

Ryan Tan
Physics 0175
Dytman TH 1100-1245

It seems that my Tuesday afternoon office hours are more popular. 7 students have showed up for that session as opposed to 1 student for my Wednesday morning office hours. Recently, students began coming with only simple questions so I began to take them deeper into what was taught in the lecture. For example, the day that Gauss's Law was taught, the professor only covered the application to point charges. In the office hour session, I showed the students how to apply Gauss's Law to find the electric field for an infinite line of charge as well as an infinite sheet of uniform charge density. This was covered in the following lecture, but the students expressed that they were happy to have gotten a jump start.

Week 2

My first week of actual office hours!!! This was the week before the exam, but only one person came into each of my office hours. It was a great way to ease into the tutoring process, though. It seemed to me that I helped the two students out very well, as they said they would come more often. I didn't seem to have a problem answering their questions, but I know that the topics are not too difficult at the moment. I guess we will see in the next few weeks!

Week 2

I helped one student this week. We worked on three homework questions. Things went on smoothly because she has a good grasp of definitions and good mathematical ability. The only problem is that she doesn't know which equations to use in some complex questions.     My professor would give me the access to homework next week, so I would be able to prepare for office hours and make it better.

Week 2

This week I helped 5 students.

This was the first week that I help office hours. Dr. Nero posted the office hours for all UTA's on Tuesday, which is my first day of office hours for the week. For this reason, I didn't have anyone that day. Wednesday and Thursday I did have students stop in, though.

On Wednesday, I had one girl come to my office hours. She didn't need a lot of help--she would just work through problems and if she got stuck she would ask for help. This was nice because it was very personalized and I was able to help her through whatever problems she was having. Additionally, she was pretty good at physics, which made my job pretty easy.

On Thursday, I had four students come to my office hours. They were coming to prepare for the test that they have on Tuesday. I worked through several of the problems from their practice test on the board. It was pretty nerve wracking, but I feel that I did alright. There were definitely times where I wasn't quite sure where to go next, but overall I think I did okay. One thing that I definitely need to do is bring my old equation sheets to office hours. There is no way I could remember all of the equations needed, and looking them up in the book takes too long. By bringing them, it would make things much easier.

I was surprised that a lot of questions the 5 students had weren't necessarily about physics problems--they were more about what I did to find success. To me, this was much more comfortable than actually discussing physics.

Overall, it was a good first week, and I am looking forward to tackling the next week ahead.

Week 2

I actually had several new students show up this week. They were all looking for homework help. Conveniently, most of them had questions about the same problems in the homework so things went fairly smoothly. I was able to give them an initial direction to work in and they were able to solve the problem on their own afterwards. I expect with the exam coming up that I will see more people at office hours.

Week Two

I just finished my second office hour session last night. I was glad to see a turnout of students, as opposed to the previous week. I am hoping that attendance will continue as the course material becomes increasingly difficult.

Three students had already arrived at the beginning of my office hours. They asked for help on one homework problem that they found particularly difficult. At first, since there was only 3, I tried to sit down with them and do the problem on paper. This proved to be difficult and I ended up moving to the chalkboard, which I used for the rest of the night.

Next, another 2 students arrived. They also had trouble with the same homework question, so I walked them through the work I had done on the board. After explaining a few more concepts about electric fields from rods, I walked them through the concepts of a few more questions that I had thought were tricky in the homework. After this, 4 of the students left. One remained and asked to just sit there and do homework so she could ask me for help if she needed it while I went along.

At about 8:00pm, one more student arrived. He also needed help with the same homework problem that the other students had had trouble with, so again I walked him through the work that was on the board. He also sat for the remainder of the time with me doing homework, and they would intermittently ask me for help on a problem which I was able to explain on the board. I also gave them some review advice for their upcoming exam next week. At 9:00pm, they both left.

I asked all the students whether it would be better for them to move my office hours to a different night since there had been no turnout the previous week, but they all said that Friday nights were good to get help on homework since it's due on Sunday night. I hope attendance will continue.

Cory Cizauskas Entry 2

Not much changed since last week. I finished the vector handout for Dr. Hong and prepared a few problems for my office hours.

The same two people from last week attended for help with their homework. We didn't manage to get through as much as last week (partially because I struggled to use the smart-board in the back of the library), but I did walk them through several applications of Gauss's law.

I wonder if weekend office hours are the best choice.

Week 2

My office hours are Monday 3-6, and since the University was closed on Monday I did not have office hours. I have helped a few students with basic questions outside of office hours though. Since it is still early in the semester, the questions have been pretty basic so it has not been difficult to teach the concepts they have questions about.

Week 2

My professor just announced office hours this week. No one showed up to my office hours, though. The test is coming soon and people should come for help before then. Other than the people I already know in the class, I have not had anyone contact me for help.

Week One

Alex Connor

My first week of holding office hours went well.  I was not sure if any students would even show up, but to my surprise I averaged about 4 students a session.  They all usually had the same questions about the same homework problems.  Therefore, I structured my sessions so that I would work through the problems at the board while asking them questions about what the next step should be.  This proved to be efficient because I was not just giving them the answers, rather I was filling in their gaps of knowledge so that they could solve the problems themselves.  I look forward to the rest of the semester.  

1st Week Holding Office Hours

This week, I only held office hours once due to the holiday on Monday.  Two students showed up, and we went over some of the homework problems.  One had already completed the homework, and the other had not started yet, so they both decided they wanted to do other examples, which I did not have on hand.  Next time, I will prepare these in case the students want extra practice for particular types of problems.  So far, they seem to be struggling most with deciding which equations to use, but it wasn't a serious problem.  They have a test on Tuesday, so I'm hoping some more students will show up to review during my office hours Monday.

Ally Meier
Phys 0174
Nero 1-1:50pm

Week 1

Last week on Friday, January 16th (6-9pm) I held my first office hour session. I was hoping some students might come with last minute homework questions before the weekend hit, but nobody showed up. I spent the time going through some of the textbook material for this week and working on some of my own studies. I will be waiting to see if anyone comes this Friday evening; if students consistently cannot attend on Friday evenings it may be best to try to change the time of my office hours.

Week 1

Chris Smith
UTA Physics 0174
Nero TuTh 2-2:50

Today I concluded my first week of office hours. During my first session (Tuesday 3-5 PM), nobody showed up. So I spent my time working on some of my own studies. During my second (and last) session of the week (Wednesday 3-4 PM), I had one student come for almost the entire time. Because there was only one student, it felt more like tutoring. We started by going over some basic math concepts (dot product and cross product mostly) and doing problems associated with that topic. Then we moved on to some homework problems she got wrong on the previous assignment. With what time we had left, we worked on projectile motion problems. I learned physics best from learning the theory and then going through examples and problems, so that is what I plan to do during my sessions unless.

I was expecting more than one student to show up this week. Hopefully more will show in later weeks and when it gets closer to an exam.

Week 1 and 2

Last week, my office hours had not been announced during class, so nobody attended.

This week I reviewed the lectures in preparation for office hours. I do not have WebAssign access yet, so I could not see the homework problems. Instead, I reviewed the extra practice problems given in lecture. I did not have any students come, but I think as the semester progresses, there will be more students.

Looking forward to a great semester!

After having completed a few weeks of office hours, I feel as though this will be a promising semester. Students seem interested in coming consistently, instead of just before exam time. The class as a whole seems eager to learn and I am excited to teach them!

Ryan Tan Week 1

Ryan Tan
Physics 0175
Dytman TH 1100-1245

Today marks the end of my first week as a UTA. I have held three sessions of office hours and 6 people total have come. Each time I began with a review of what was taught in the previous lecture. I had prepared a set of practice problems related to the lecture. I received a well response from the students who attended. Some had issues with homework. Others were confused about vectors, which I helped to clarify. I am hoping to be able to help students more outside of these office hours, however. I much prefer one-on-one tutoring to a group. All in all, it was a good first week and I look forward to the rest of the semester.

Cory Cizauskas: Entry 1

This past week, I met with Dr. Hong for his weekly meeting and learned what my responsibilities would be as a TA. I decided to place all three of my office hours on Saturday afternoon, so that students would be able to ask questions and work through what they understand until they find another.

To prepare for these office hours, I completed an early version of the online homework and found similar problems in the book that I may use to explain different concepts.

However, two students attended my lecture, so these problems proved to be too elaborate to answer sparing questions. I instead used examples off the top of my head and explained relevant examples in the textbook.

I was a a bit caught off guard when one student asked how to use vectors with electric fields. I tried drawing vectors for multiple particles and explaining magnitude with trig and believe to have cleared things up. During yesterday's TA meeting, we stumbled across how to bring students up to speed on vector summation, so I volunteered to create a handout summarizing material from the book. I'm working on it now.

Week 1

I helped 2 students this week, but I had told them that I was a UTA and because I knew them outside of class. Other than that, no other students came to my office hours. I do not think that the class knows about it because our professor never announced it publicly. The two students that I helped out seemed to have more trouble with math then physics. I had to help them with trig and simplifying equations. I just helped them when they had homework questions but they seemed to do fine with most of the problems

Week 1

Week 1 consisted of no office hours. My faculty mentor (Nero) wanted us to wait till the week of the 19th to start office hours. I am currently in my first office hours, hoping people will seek help. I will post later in the week about my sessions.

The lectures have been straight forward. The majority of students answer the clicker questions correctly, so I assume they understand the material. They have an exam next tuesday, so I am hoping a few students come this thursday (5 days before the exam).

Week 1

This first week has been quite uneventful as a Physics UTA: no students showed up to either of my study sessions. I also don't believe many of the students have checked the Courseweb for the UTA session times yet. Later in the semester, as they get closer to the first test, I will probably have more students attend my study session for last minute help. This lectures have been very straight forward and I haven't noticed anyone that appeared to be struggling with the material.

Week 1

My professor didn't give the students UTAs' office hour information until Friday. So no one came to my office hour this week. It is not a bad thing for me to have a week to do the homework assignment and prepare for the group session. 

When attending the lecture, I listened carefully to the professor and focused specifically on how he explained complex problems to students. I began to realize how different it is between learning physics well and explaining it clearly to others. I also noted down some questions asked by students during lectures so that I could prepare my group session better.

 I still feel a little nervous for the upcoming week, but also excited to help others to learn physics, one of my favorite subjects. I prefer to help students individually. But if there are more than 3 students coming together, I would consider a group discussion.

Week 1

This week I assisted 0 students (I did not hold office hours)

I was expecting to start my UTA office hours this week, but was surprised to find out on Tuesday that Professor Nero did not need me to start until next week. This was nice because it gave me an extra three hours to do whatever I wanted, but I was definitely a little disappointed that I didn't get to start. I was (and still am) excited, and a little nervous, about starting my office hours.

On Monday night I formulated my review sheet and looked over the homework questions so I knew what to expect on Tuesday. Unfortunately, this was a waste of my time, but it definitely made me feel more confident about what I would be facing in office hours. The methods to solving the homework questions came back to me much more easily than I expected. I was confident that I would be able to help with any of them, and I hope that this holds true for future homework assignments as well.

My strategy going into this week was to break everyone into small groups, and I plan on sticking to that strategy. I think it will work well for me. With that in mind, I will still be open to changing up my style based on the number of students I have and the  needs of those students.

Although I didn't start this week, I am excited to start next week, and I am much less nervous than I was a week ago.

Week 1

I have to say I was a little nervous coming into my UTA session, but once I started everything came naturally for the most part. When the session started, there was soon about 5 students in the class. The first student who came in was communicative with respect to the help he needed (mostly on understanding the homework), but the rest of the students were for the most part passive listeners as I went over the problems. Even though I initially stated over the weekend that I wanted to divide the session into groups, I found myself subconsciously gravitating towards going over problems to the chalk board. This is what I am most used to when it comes to assisting others so I think I might just stick to it unless I receive some other feedback.

After about 2 hours, the first group of 5 students all left almost at once but they were quickly replaced by 2 more students. These students were more concerned with walking through some of the concepts and derivations that were shown in lecture. I definitely preferred helping in this manner because I didn't have to worry as much about giving the students too much help on the homework.

There were a few times where I initially made a mistake or took the wrong path when solving a problem but I was able to right the ship in those instances. Being confident in the material helped me to calm the nerves and to be honest the 3 hours flew by. All in all I had 7 students attending my session last night (1/15/15).

Welcome UTA Bloggers!

Hello UTAs,

This is the forum in which you will be posting your responses for the week in regards to your lectures, office hours, and over all thoughts and feelings about your pedagogic experience thus far. This is also a networking opportunity and support group among your fellow peers/colleagues.

We do ask that in the beginning of every post that you specify how many students you assisted (we suggest a sign in sheet) so that the A.R.C. can track how many students utilize our UTAs (this is included as a stipulation in your contract) and that your posts are consistent on a week to week basis (this is NOT the place to vent about professors and others...that's what Twitter is for).

In short welcome and I look forward to working with each and every one of you in the upcoming semester!

Best of Luck!


Caitlyn Hunter
Undergraduate Coordinator
Physics and Astronomy Department
University of Pittsburgh