Week of 1/22

My office hours were slow again this week as no one attended. I did however have some people ask me questions about the Lon-Capa homework outside of my office hours and was able to help them without any difficulty. This is the first week that the students had clicker questions during lecture so I assisted with them as the students answered. One difficulty with the clicker questions is that because they are timed I have very little time to explain a topic to the student, sometimes making it difficult to answer more complex questions in the time allotted. Most of the questions I have gotten have been theoretical. Professor Clark does examples in class with very detailed and meticulous calculations however my initial impression is that some students are having difficulty understanding the broader topics. Often students are asking why? and not how? indicating to me that they can grind out the calculations but their understanding of the fundamental topics is not always there.