Weeks 2-5

Weeks 2-5 of holding office hours went very well.  I have had a consistent group of 5-6 students coming to at least one session each week.  We generally review topics covered in Dr. Broccio's videos  and go over homework problems.  I am encouraged to see that most of the students are coming in to actually get help with learning concepts, and not necessarily coming in just because they want me to walk them through the homework.

Lat week, I also held a review session in preparation for exam one, and had 12 students show up.  It went much more smoothly than I was expecting.  For anyone looking to hold an exam review in the future I found this general layout to be pretty effective: before the students arrived, I wrote a 3-4 questions on the board that covered topics I thought to be the most important.  We then went over each of the problems in pretty good detail, and I had members of the class come up and solve them and give their reasoning too (to show how there may be more than one correct way to solve a problem).  Then I opened the group to questions involving conceptual questions only.  After going through any conceptual questions then I turned to solving any of the assigned problems from the book that the students had on the board.  I left this for last, as some student didn't have any difficulties with these problems, so they could leave early.  All told, this process took about 90 minutes.

I should also say I was excited to see that in a class survey of how students studied for exam one, 13% of students found tutors to be the most effective.  Good job everyone!