- What is the role of lectures vs tutorials in the course - **Lectures introduce new material, while tutorials help students understand said material by doing exercises, reiterating, etc**. - Which ice-break activity would you consider for your 1st session? - **Pick a person at random, they say a category, everybody else has to say their favorite thing in that category (i.e. food, operating system, animal, etc.)** - **Icebreakers are always awkward, so it's best to not rely on it. The true icebreaker is to break the awkwardness by acting unserious during it.** - Select 1-2 objectives for the tutorial and answer the following questions:  **Let's choose understanding graph algorithms as an objective.** - What is the verb used in the objective? - **Understanding** - What is the meaning of the verb?-=What must a student actually need to do to achieve the learning objective  - **They have to:** - **Understand relations** - **Grasp the visual representation of those relations - graphs** - **Be able to trace the path of an algorithm (mentally)** - What do you think students will struggle with the most? - **Understanding the concept of an algorithm in the context of graphs** - **Memorizing the algorithms** - How can you divide the learning objective =problem in order to work on smaller parts at the time? What would you discuss first and what second to work on the given objective? - **Understanding the use case of a graph, using a top-down exposition to the concept** - **Learning to use specific notation to describe relations and then turn them into a graph, and vice versa** - **Applying previously learned problem solving/programming skills on this newfound representation of data** - **Assigning the terms onto simple algorithms** - **Explain the benefits and advantages of more complex, yet optimized algorithms** - Now, think about active learning methods - How do the lectures given in the course prepare your students for tutorials? Will you use some active learning tools to recapture the information from the lectures?  - **I would assume that the lectures arm them with a shaky understanding of the current subject. Lectures are usually fast-paced and people who are fully able to follow them usually don't need to go to tutorials :D.** - **It would be great to explain the concepts again. Through rewording them, reinforce the knowledge of students who already grasp them and create an opportunity for the others to analyse them.** - **Solving exercises (i.e. applying the concepts) is very beneficial in most courses.** - What active learning tools do fit your learning objectives the most and why? For what would you like to use them during your tutorial? - **Setting goals in the beginning of the session sets the tone and shows progress** - **Having dialogues is beneficial for both parties involved. Sparks the curiosity of both TA and Student.** - **Providing real world examples and analogies is crucial for the digestibility of the information provided.** - **Group work on more complex problem is great for both the academic process as well as the social one** - How will you monitor the progress of learning: you want to know how your students progress in the course. What active learning tool would you use for that? - **I would encourage them to ask me questions about assignments, exams or quizzes, without revealing the answers of course.** - **I'd ask them about their perceived most confusing part of the material and elaborate on that.** - **Asking them directly should also do the trick, of course avoiding sounding judgmental** - **Making yourself available outside of formal situations (being on whatsapp or when seen on campus) works wonders.**