5 ms·

Don't most universities have TAs around, especially for lower year courses, to help students falling behind? I remember in my undergrad when we had difficult co

Don't most universities have TAs around, especially for lower year courses, to help students falling behind? I remember in my undergrad when we had difficult courses, half the class basically camped outside our TAs' office before each assignment deadline to ask for help or clarifications.

gus_massa 5y ago
I agree. I'm a profesor in the first year of the University of Buenos Aires. We have no official list of answer for the exercises (but there are a few unofficial ones). The students can ask me or the TA abut the exercises. We prefer to see what the student has attempted, and find the exact spot where the student made the mistake. It takes more time, but it's more helpful than a nice ideal solution. We also may recommend to make another exercise from the official list and come back in 10 minutes with a solution attempt, or make some custom exercise on the spot that is about the same subject. (Exercises about derivatives are easy to invent, integrals and linear algebra is harder.)
- joey_bob 5y ago
  What portion of student's would you estimate ask you or the TA about exercises?
  - trinovantes 5y ago
    When I was in undergrad, I would say it was about 10-50% of the class depending on the difficulty of the course
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    It's difficult to know, because sometime the course have 100 students, and each day different students make questions to each TA. My guess is 10%-50%, but it depends a lot on the major the students are. One of the useful trick is to write an optional homework exercise in the blackboard. I get a lot more of answers than just selecting an exercise from the official list. Sometimes it's just an exercise from the list with different number and sometime it has an intermediate step to make it easier. But writing it in the blackboard increase the chance the students will write it down. Another trick is to write an old midterm and then go to each desk to talk to the students about what they are doing. We usually write the solution at the end of the class, and have some discussion about it, but the useful part is the discussion with each student (or small group of 2-3 students).

gus_massa 5y ago

I agree. I'm a profesor in the first year of the University of Buenos Aires. We have no official list of answer for the exercises (but there are a few unofficial ones). The students can ask me or the TA abut the exercises. We prefer to see what the student has attempted, and find the exact spot where the student made the mistake. It takes more time, but it's more helpful than a nice ideal solution. We also may recommend to make another exercise from the official list and come back in 10 minutes with a solution attempt, or make some custom exercise on the spot that is about the same subject. (Exercises about derivatives are easy to invent, integrals and linear algebra is harder.)

joey_bob 5y ago
What portion of student's would you estimate ask you or the TA about exercises?
- trinovantes 5y ago
  When I was in undergrad, I would say it was about 10-50% of the class depending on the difficulty of the course
- gus_massa 5y ago
  It's difficult to know, because sometime the course have 100 students, and each day different students make questions to each TA. My guess is 10%-50%, but it depends a lot on the major the students are. One of the useful trick is to write an optional homework exercise in the blackboard. I get a lot more of answers than just selecting an exercise from the official list. Sometimes it's just an exercise from the list with different number and sometime it has an intermediate step to make it easier. But writing it in the blackboard increase the chance the students will write it down. Another trick is to write an old midterm and then go to each desk to talk to the students about what they are doing. We usually write the solution at the end of the class, and have some discussion about it, but the useful part is the discussion with each student (or small group of 2-3 students).