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1st Year Tutorials
Learning Environment
Each lecturer at Nottingham has a number of tutees in each year of
study. They act in a pastoral care role with respect to these
tutees but, in the first year, they are also expected to provide
tutorials. Many tutors use these tutorials as ad hoc
trouble-shooting sessions but I found it hard to maintain attendance
with such a vague remit (students who felt they were doing OK
frequently seeing no point in turning up). It is clear that some
tutors find this sort of loose session easy to run in an engaging
fashion however I did not and instead I have gradually built-up a
selection of tutorial outlines and exercises aimed to cover
frequently requested aspects of the school's modules. I inform the
students that I do not expect them to attend all tutorials but that
I do expect them to attend at least one in four. I advertise
tutorial topics in advance and advise students to choose tutorials
that they think will be relevant and helpful to their studies. If
there are none coming up they think useful they are encouraged to
request topics themselves though I have found students rarely do
this (originally I did not have any pre-planned subjects and so
students were encouraged to nominate all topics themselves - they
were relatively unwilling to do this and I found I was requesting
the tutorial group one week to choose a topic for the following
week). The School is planning to move to the
central ePARS system in the next year or so which I perceive should
greatly support advertising and requesting tutorial.
Design of Materials
The teaching materials take the form of a set of exercises. The
students are told that any exercises handed in before the tutorial
will be returned with feedback. Usually about one student will make
use of this service but the vast majority prefer to wait until the
tutorial before going through the material. I usually aim to have
the exercises cover what I perceive to be the key points in the
topic and so can use the answers, where it seems appropriate, to
springboard discussion of that point. Some examples of tutorial
exercise sheets are shown below.
Feedback
Attendance at the tutorials continues to be poor and I frequently
have to arrange for letters to be sent out reminding tutees that
they are obliged to attend sessions. There are some specific
tutorials which the students clearly find useful, especially in first
semester but interest clearly tails off in second semester. It is
possible that this is because the students become more accustomed to
University style study and no longer need the back up of individual
tutorials. It is also the case that most of my tutees have been
drawn from the joint Honours management or e-Commerce and Digital
Business degrees and these students may not be studying very many
computer science modules in second semester and so feel I have
relatively little help to offer.
Selected Tutorials
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