My staff tutor for S207, Sally Jordan, attended the session, and she kindly provided the following comments on the session:
I know that planning was a bit of an issue – very many thanks for all you had done and for coming so well prepared. I felt that the balance of activities on the day was good.
There was a lovely friendly atmosphere throughout. I felt that you did the right thing in rearranging the furniture, but I was slightly surprised to see that the rearrangement gave us two rows – in such an otherwise informal setting, it would have seemed very strange had some of the students sat on a row in front of the others. I’d be interested to know what seating arrangements you generally prefer for tutorials – I quite like getting students working in groups around small tables, though I know that can be a problem if you’re making lots of use of Powerpoint. I appreciated the name labels and the fact that we all introduced ourselves at the beginning.
The dayschool started nicely on time (and ran to time all day) and I liked the way the agenda was shared with the group. I might have asked right at the beginning if there was anything else they’d like to cover (this sort-of happened – there was a pause and the students seemed very happy with what you had planned). I’d also normally suggest sending the tutorial plan to the students beforehand, either by group email or by posting to the tutor group forums – that gives them chance to add topics for discussion. However, I do appreciate that there would have been several difficulties with this approach on this occasion, and it is also perhaps less appropriate for a revision session than for other tutorials. The students did get a choice later in the day, which was lovely, and they had the confidence to ask for an explanation of lenses (which you and Robert between you explained quite well).
The first activity (the matching of terms to their definitions) was lovely and getting students to attempt to write a definition first was very sensible and worked well. I’ve always considered this part of the S207 exam to be the most difficult and I haven’t changed my mind as a result of yesterday!
From here we moved onto the discussion of ‘silly mistakes’. I thought this was a good idea, though I might has included fewer examples relating to vector notation and more other things (you could perhaps have given an answer to an incorrect number of sig figs or with incorrect units? – or is that more appropriate for S104 than S207?).
After the summary of Book 2 topics, we moved into the first set of examples and I think these worked extremely effectively to build the students’ confidence in their ability to answer exam questions. With you, Robert, Alan and me all having an opinion as to the best way of tackling the problems I was slightly anxious that the students would be confused, but actually I think these three students will have benefitted from seeing a variety of approaches.
After lunch and Robert’s introduction to the S207 exam and the discussion of exam and revision strategy, I really liked the fact that you gave the students the choice of either returning to the examples in your Powerpoint or working through an old exam paper - and didn’t they do the exam paper well! After giving them a sensible length of time, you and Robert discussed the questions with them – lovely.
All in all then, an excellent day. You, Robert and Alan have different but complementary styles and your collective knowledge of the subject matter and experience of teaching shone through!
