Week 5

Only one student came to my office hours this week. They had questions about forces and how to use Newton's second law.

Week of September 26th

This week was back to usual for my office hours. On Tuesday, four or five students came in and generally had questions about the same two homework problems that were particularly tricky. I helped them with finding mistakes in their work and eventually solving for the correct answer. Thursday was filled with students coming in with questions about what they did wrong on their exams that were returned the day before. I spent most of my Thursday office hours going over the test with different students that came in at scattered times over my two hour office hour session. I also helped to point out where exactly they went wrong and suggested to do some similar practice problems when it comes time to come back to the material on the first test for the final.

Week 5

This week no one came to my office hours on monday. On tuesday students were in and out of the room for multiple classes. I worked with one student from my class who has come to office hours before. We worked through the homework problems and did some example problems from the book. The student has a good understanding of the material but just wanted a little bit of guidance on where to start with a problem and what the easiest way to solve the problem is. The topic we worked on was forces and tension.

Week of 09/26/2016

This week I only helped people in my Monday office hours, as on Tuesday and Wednesday I had no one come. On Monday I had a girl come in to ask about conceptual problems from the textbook, and for the most part she seemed to really grasp the concepts that were important. I also helped somebody with a few book problems, and she also seemed to understand the concepts, she just had some difficulty with working out her math and had some problems with moving around variables. However, I helped her work out these problems and overall everybody I worked with seemed to be very prepared for their upcoming exam.

Week of September 26

On Monday I had a lot of students who were going over last-minute concepts before the exam. Their questions ranged from going over which equations to use in which scenarios, what the problems on the exam would be like, and questions on the book problems. The book problems were fairly tricky, but we were able to work through a couple of them. Based on previous experience with Broccio's exams, I knew that the extended response problems on the exam would not be as difficult as the book problems.

On Wednesday after the exam, I had one student who was having trouble on force. Though this material was ahead of what was being taught in lecture, another TA and I were able to give her a basic understanding of force and friction. We helped her on her homework problems and she was able to understand them for the most part. Once this material is covered in lecture, it will make a lot more sense to her. I hope the students did well on their first exam!

Week of September 26th

This week I didn't have any students come to my office hours, most likely due to the fact that there was a test on Monday and my hours were all later in the week.

Week 4

During my third week (week 4) of office hours, I had a total of 6 students come to see me. This was not unusual as this was the last week before the students' exam. We mostly went over homework problems about 2 dimensional kinematics and I clarified any conceptual questions the students had.

Nick Pelosi
Dr. Broccio Phys 0110

week 3

Last week the students were preparing for a test so I had many people come to my office hours in the morning. I had about 10 people come to my office hours. One thing I have been noticing is that over 80% of the people that show up to my office hours for help are girls. I am not sure the reason for this but it is interesting.

Journal (Week 9/27)

Finally got some students into my office hours from my own class! I have to admit, I was a little taken back when they said they were there to get help from me. It was the day before the exam so I think a lot of students just wanted some final clarification on topics they were unsure about. Every question was more or less about the new topics of electrical potential energy and electric fields, which in my opinion is some of the toughest stuff they will run into in this course.

I had some students hang around and get help for a full 2 hours, and then I also had some students that needed a quick explanation of an equation and were on their way within 10 minutes. It was a good variety of frustrating and complex homework problems that 9 out of 10 students could not get, and easy explantations of when to use a certain equation and when not to.

Best part of the day was that everyone left the hours with a better understanding of the topics (or at least that is what they told me). If they come back after the exam with questions then I am going to assume I was of help, though!

27 September 2016

Today, only one student came into my office hours; he needed help with projectile motion. It seemed to be beneficial if I helped to guide him towards the best equation he could use to get the problem started. And once he began, everything fell into place for him. He also had questions about the difference between average velocity and average speed, to which I responded and cleared his confusion. With a little guidance, he understood how they were different from each other. This student, again, was from a section other than mine; I have yet to tutor a student from my assigned lecture time.

Week 3

During this past week I had many people come in with the same questions. I was able to help them out with every question except for the problem that required an expression of one ball dropping while the other was being thrown straight up. Most of the questions I had were regarding kinematics and manipulating multiple equations to get to the final answer.

Week 3

Office hours were pretty busy this week. I saw around 10 students Wednesday and Friday, probably because of the upcoming test. I also met up with 4 students at the library for extra help. Students seem pretty stressed out, probably because it's their first exam and they don't know the difficulty of the exam. It is reassuring though that many of the stressed out students are really trying to do the book problems and understand everything. In other words, they are struggling but are not discouraged.

Week 4 09/26

Last week I had several students come to my office hours on Monday and Wednesday to ask about book problems that were assigned for test practice. On Tuesday I had no one show up. Monday and Wednesday groups seemed to have good conceptual understanding of the material, but wanted help preparing for their first exam. Most students brought in book problems that they were confused about, and I helped them to get to an answer.

Week of 19 September

I receive my first two students this week. One had a question about electric fields, and other asked help reviewing her thermodynamics homework. I will be finishing the sheet for introduction to electricity tomorrow so they may have it to study for their exam.

Week 3

This week is kind of busy because the first exam is on next Wednesday.  A number of students emailed me about the projectile motion and how to deal with questions about potential; I do feel comfortable dealing with those problems. Also, I notice some of them are having troubles of looking for existed conditions and setting up the equation.

Week 3

Hello everyone,

This week was the busiest one I've had yet. My class has an exam on Monday so that's likely why so many people showed up, but I think a lot of them will be back next week as well. Either way I am really enjoying the experience! I've noticed that most students are not only doing the assigned homework; they are also attempting the optional practice problems our professor has recommended for preparation for the upcoming exam. A lot of these questions were pretty tough, but I feel as if I was able to help them better understand it.

-Mike Shanahan

Week of 9/19

This week was much busier due to the upcoming exam, and I had many new students. 8 AM on Friday was even more hectic than 10 AM - noon on Monday, especially since I was the only TA available at that time. In addition to helping them reason through whatever problem they brought forward, I also gave them the same study tips I gave to my more regular students that made a habit of coming in every week. These tips included going over the recommended book problems, difficult ExpertTA problems, and all of the "check your understanding" questions in the textbook. However, I also cautioned them that anything in lecture and in the textbook is most likely fair game.

Week of September 19th

This week, as expected, was very busy during my office hours. My Tuesday office hours consisted of students with questions about their homework due the next day, the format of the test, and a few questions on the practice test Dr. Nero provided. I was able to guide the students on the right track to solving their homework and practice test problems, as well as give some insight on my experience with Dr. Nero's tests. My Thursday office hours were even busier than my Tuesday office hours, with many students coming in to ask questions about the provided practice test, especially on how to find the cross product of two vectors, as well as a few book problems. I was able to show everyone my preferred method of solving the cross product of two vectors, and towards the end of my office hours went through and solved a few problems for the select students that had questions about book problems.

Week of September 19

This week I had a lot of people at my office hours because of the exam next week. Students had trouble on the conceptual ideas of projectile motion and how the x velocity is the same, only the y velocity is changing because of the force of gravity acting on it. Another area of concern was which equations to use during which scenarios. I advised them to make a list of the given values and a list of what was unknown. This would help them determine which equation to use. I also helped other students on homework problems and addressed any other concerns they had about the exam. I based my advice on the semester I took Physics 1, but told them to be prepared for anything asked during lecture, book problems, and Expert TA problems.

This week was definitely the busiest week for my office hours, but I felt that I accomplished a lot because the students were asking good questions and could better understand conceptual ideas better. I wish them all the best on their first exam!

Weeks 1-4

During the first week I held office hours, which was the second week of school, two students came to my office hours. We worked on some homework problems and tried some practice problems. I mostly just answered questions that the students had. The third week of school no one came to my office hours. This past week, the fourth week of school, four students came to office hours. There were two from phys 0110, and two from phys 0174. I mostly worked with the students from 0174 since I was the only uta who had taken calculus based physics. We worked on practice problems and I clarified a few topics that the students asked about. Overall the students seemed to understand the material and were able to use logic to find the answers.

Week of September 19

This week I only had one girl come to my office hours, but she stayed for 2 hours. We worked on her constant acceleration and projectile motion. I had to explain how the x and y directions are somewhat independent from each other in these types of problems. I have noticed that most of the students struggle with this. They have a hard time understanding when to use which equations and what information you can get from the y direction and x direction.

Journal (Week 9/20)

Three weeks and still no students from my class have shown up for office hours. I guess the professor is just really good at his job, or maybe the students are just really good at comprehending the information thus far. Regardless, since I did not have any of my own students again this week, I helped out some Phys 0110 kids instead. I figured since I am there and I took the class, I might as well make myself useful. 

I only helped one girl with her homework for Professor Wu. They were (what we initially thought) simple vector addition problems, but for some reason a straightforward question ended up taking 35 minutes to solve. Turns out the online program "Expert TA" is very picky with what values you input and how you set up your equations. I have heard numerous complaints about the system, but then again, no system is all that simple to use at first. 

At the end of the day, it was nice to have finally helped someone out and to see their eyes light up once they finally grasped something that they were struggling with. Hopefully that is a motif of this semester and I can keep on doing my job and helping some more students. My class has their first exam coming up Wednesday of next week so I am expecting to have quite a few students stopping by for some last minute clarification. I'll let you all know how it goes!

20 September 2016

This week, I provided help to two students individually, and for an hour helped a group of 5-10 students with another TA. What they mostly seem to be having trouble with is relative velocity, and they expressed concern about this on their first midterm exam. Breaking down these types of problems into a picture and then different perspectives within the problem allowed for students to grasp the idea conceptually, which in turn led them to build an equation relating all of the velocities within the problem. One student still had questions about the relation between position, velocity, and acceleration and acceleration's relationship to force; I helped to conceptualize the idea of there being no force if there is no acceleration. I also received and responded to a student e-mail, concerning the cross-product operation and its function. So far, no student from my class has shown up to get help, so I've only been helping with students from other sections, which is going well nonetheless.

Week 1/2

During tutoring hours for my first two weeks of class I encountered students with many of the same problems. The problems that I mostly provided help with were complex multi-step kinetics problems as well as a few trigonometry problems. I was able to help students and explain about 80% of their problems and when I had trouble with a few problems, the other TA present was able to chip in and we could usually solve any homework problem provided to us.

Weeks 1/2

Hello everyone!

I completely forgot to post to the blog for the past two weeks; from now on I'll set a reminder to post at least once a week.

My first week was really great! I am in Dr. Broccio's MWF class (the flipped class) and a lot of the UTA work is actually done in the classroom as opposed to office hours in this format. Once the students get used to asking you questions in lecture, they start to come to your office hours (at least this is how it's working for me thus far). I had around 10-15 people come to my Friday office hours that week!

My second week was slightly less busy. A few returnees from my first week's office hours showed up, so I was happy to see that I'm starting to gain some regulars.

I believe their first exam is next week, so I expect a lot of students to come to office hours this week. I will update the blog with my experiences on Week 3 on Friday.

Have a great week everyone!
-Mike Shanahan

Week 3

During my second week of office hours I had 4 students total come to see me. Some students still had vector questions but the majority of questions were on 1-dimensional kinematics as well as the related homework the students are required to complete. Most of the time, the students just needed a jump start on how to initiate solving the homework problems.

Nick Pelosi
Dr. Broccio Phys 0110

Week 2

My first week of office hours I had 8 students come. Main topics that were brushed over included vectors. Many students had questions based on how to add and subtract vectors as well as break down each vector into its component x and y form.

Nick Pelosi
Dr. Broccio Phys 0110

Week of 9/12

This was the first week I had my regular office hours, since last week had a holiday. I helped four or five students overall throughout the week, all of them with the online homework questions.

I found that the majority of the students had difficulty knowing what formulas to apply when, so I went through different problem-solving strategies that they found useful (writing down your known values, writing down what you're ultimately solving for, etc.). This seemed to help a great amount.

Week of September 12th

This week was very similar to last week in terms of numbers of students appearing at my office hours. Tuesday was a bit different, I actually had a student come in who needed help with a rather challenging homework problem that had some very tricky negative signs, but in the end with a little guidance he was able to figure it out on his own. Also, I was able to help out two different students during my office hours on Thursday. The first student needed help with some vector addition, so I went over how to break each vector down into components, as well as helped her understand what to do when the coordinate axes change. The second student was just a bit confused on the givens of a certain homework problem, and with some clarification she was able to do the rest of her homework on her own successfully.

Week of September 12

This week I had two students come into my office hours. On Monday, I had the same student I had from the previous week who had questions on the use of the kinematics equations. Once I told her my tips on finding unknown variables, she quickly figured out the rest of her problems. The other student I had on Wednesday had a question on a checkpoint problem in the lecture slides. With discussion from another TA, we deduced that the wording of the question was very confusing, which led to her wrong answer. The question could have been worded in a more concise way, which would have made the student less confused. There was a discrepancy between average acceleration and constant acceleration, which is used in the kinematics equations.

Week 2

Office hours seemed busier this week. No one came on Monday, but 2 people came Wednesday and Friday. I also met with 2 students separately on Friday for extra help.

September 12

Still nobody. Though I did receive an email from a student asking about the details of the exams. I politely told her that she probably knew more than I, and that if she ever needed help understanding concepts, I would gladly help her.

Week of September 12th

This week a total of 5 students came to my office hours. They all needed help with the homework. For the most part, the students were very close to the answer and understood all of the basic concepts. The homework consisted of mostly kinematics.

13 September 2016

This past Tuesday, I had a total of 3 students come to me for help. They needed help mostly with Newton's kinematic equations when being used for vertical motion. It helped to clarify what vectors are and how to use them to the students. One particular trouble a student had was reading a time vs. velocity chart. I explained to them how to determine position and acceleration graphs from it and how to use them accordingly.

Weeks 2-3
I've had at least 2-3 people visit my office hours these past two weeks. Majority of questions asked were about the homework. Students primarily struggled conceptually with certain kinematic problems using the wrong values for certain variables or not realizing the value the question was asking for.Overall my experience with helping the students were positive and they are starting to have a change of thought in questioning the nature of questions and values instead of just plugging in values given into an equation. There were numerous complaints about the sensitive formatting of the homework system expert ta with students submission not fitting the right response just in the wrong format. A number of students also asked me to notify the professor to extend the homework deadline to tuesday at midnight instead of tuesday's at noon in order to get help from their recitation and lecture professor. Professor Wu was very cordial and complied to the delight of the class.

Week 2

I had one student come during office hours this week. They needed some help with vector problems.

Week of 9/12

This week was my first full week of office hours as we did not have Monday classes last week. Monday at 8 AM, I did not have a single student. This was probably because it was early in the morning and students still had time until the homework was due. Thursday at 8 A.M., I had one student. Off the homework problems we talked about, most of the questions she had were small math issues. However, the biggest trouble seemed to be problems that needed to be broken up into different pieces to get a final solution. This seemed to be a problem for the four students who came to my office hours today as well. The best way to help students solve these problems was to draw a picture and write down the known information and use that to find out the answer. I also had students today begin to ask me more conceptual questions that could be on the test. The idea of a vector having both magnitude and direction, and the relationship between acceleration, velocity and displacement graphs were recurring questions.

Week 9/15/16

This week I had 3 students come in for help on homework problems. The first student had received an extension on the homework from last week and was struggling with trigonometry and vector addition. She seemed to feel more confident after she left but I encouraged her to visit with more UTAs and do more practice problems. On Tuesday, nobody came to my office hours, but on Wednesday I had 2 girls come in to ask about some confusing wording on a homework problem. It was difficult because I did not understand the wording of the problem either, but everybody in the room worked to solve their problems. The girls seemed to understand the basics of kinematics and how to use kinematics equations.

Journal (Week 9-12)

No one came to my office hours this week. I think it's mainly due to the fact that the beginning of physics 0111 deals with more conceptual ideas and diagrams, and not so much on calculations. The calculations that they are beginning to do are primarily vector addition, and since that was stressed so heavily in physics 0110 I think they already will have a solid grasp of the concept. Maybe next week I will have my first student who needs help. Only time will tell.

Week of September 12

This week I had two students on Tuesday and one on Thursday. They were all asking for help with the homework that is due this weekend. One student that came seemed like he was more interested in trying to get me to do his homework for him rather than trying to learn. I made him work out the problems on his own and then offered help when he needed. For the most part questions this week were about kinematics. Students seemed to have a hard time selecting an equation to use for a given problem, plugging in and solving is never the problem.

Week of September 5th

I had one office hour this week. In my first session, I had several people show up and ask for help on the homework. I had them explain to me the steps that they had performed so far and I looked over their reasoning and checked their work. I found that most of my students we only forgetting a negative sign or just mixed up a trig expression. I enjoyed helping these students and it helped me reaffirm my own understanding of these concepts. 

Week of September 5

I have so far received no students to my office hours. I did prepare a four page review of thermodynamics and kinetic theory. I have asked the professor to possibly post the sheet and he has yet to respond with feedback.

Week of September 5th

Last week I had one student come into my office hours on Thursday afternoon. She had trouble with a problem from the homework regarding vector addition. I told her she could break up each vector into its own triangle and draw these separately. Then use trig to to find the x and y values for each vector making sure to pay close attention to direction (positive or negative). This made sense to her and after we worked through the x-values summation she was able to do the y-values and resultant vector on her own.

Broccio
TuTh 2:30-3:45PM

Week 1

I got a few students coming to office hour due to the holiday. Some of them asked about concepts of vectors, such as finding rectangular components and basic calculation.

Week of 9/5

I only had one office hour this week due to the holiday. Two students came in during the last 20 minutes of the hour, and I helped one of them understand a homework question that she couldn't quite wrap her head around. I also helped her better understand how to use trigonometry functions and when to apply them. Unfortunately I didn't have time to help the other student, but another TA came in at the end of the hour to help out. 

Week of Sept 5

I had two office hours this week, since we didn't have class on Monday. I helped three students with homework questions by seeing what they did, then correcting their mistakes and/or walking them through the problem. The students were all very responsive and engaged. During office hours and in-class activities, I am finding that some students are struggling with math concepts and would benefit by reviewing trigonometry, algebra, and geometry.

Week of Sept 5

I had two hours of office hours on tuesday and this week no body came. On Thursday I had my third hour and I had one girl come ask for help. We spent about a half hour working on vector addition problems. She seemed to have a good understanding of the basics and was just looking for some reassurance on her homework problems. She had already attempted most of the homework problems before she asked for help, which was very nice. One thing that I noticed this week is that there are multiple students that are confused about what mode their calculator should be in (degree or radian). I think I had about 5 students ask about it or get a problem incorrect because of it.

Week of September 5th

Although it was only a four day week this week, I had all three of my office hours. While my first hour on Tuesday was uneventful due to the lack of students, I was lucky enough to have someone come in during my two hours of Thursday office hours. She was having trouble with vector addition homework problems, so I went over step by step of how to break down vectors into their X and Y components to easily add them together. This really seemed to click with her and improve her conceptual understanding of exactly what a vector was. She was then able to do all of her homework problems correctly. I advised her to go back and do similar problems from the book or read the vector component section if she ever felt uncomfortable with vectors in the future.

Week 1

I only had one student stop by my office hours this week with a vector question.

Week of September 5

This week was a 4-day week, so I only had one day of office hours. A girl came in with questions on her calc-based physics homework. Though I only took algebra-based homework, I managed to help her on questions regarding displacement, maximum velocity, and acceleration using the standard equations. She had trouble picking which equations to use, so I guided her until she was able to do the problem on her own. Drawing pictures helped her visualize the problem better. I advised her to practice this question again, and review which equations to use when given different variables are given.