Comments on: Helpful hints for tutors

By: Paul Burns

Paul Burns — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:39:17 +0000

At least two of the best teachers/tutors I had at uni were women. One of them changed my life by literally showing me how to think abstractly. (A lot of spastics seem to be pretty concrete thinkers until they learn otherwise.) The worst tutor I ever had at uni was a bloke – no names no pack drill – but he was the only one who was hopeless. Just sayin’.

By: Pavlov's Cat

Pavlov's Cat — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:22:52 +0000

Returning to the point of the post, Michael D at #28 mentions the single most productive tutoring technique I ever stumbled across, which is to encourage students who have given brief answers to expand on them: ‘That was an interesting point, can you talk about it some more?’ This is also a very handy technique when people ask curly questions from the audience at seminars or conferences.

By: Gina Hardfaced-Bitch

Gina Hardfaced-Bitch — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:40:59 +0000

lots of tutors, and I hate to say it, especially women ARE complete bitches

To a little charmer like yourself, Sammy R, they may well be. Human endurance has its limits.

By: Ambigulous

Ambigulous — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:08:31 +0000

Lefty E

OK, let’s require Sammy.R to prepare a 20 minute tute paper for next week, “Five Common Misuses of the Apostrophe”. I believe it should be peer-assessed by some of the other students. Shall we say, all the female students?

By: Lefty E

Lefty E — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:46:26 +0000

“Perhaps the one’s above protest too much.”

Even if that did make grammatical sense Sammy R, it wouldn’t have an apostrophe.

By: Sammy.R

Sammy.R — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:30:24 +0000

I don’t know why you are all jumping on Delicio Felicio, as lots of tutors, and I hate to say it, especially women ARE complete bitches. Perhaps the one’s above protest too much.

By: IR guy

IR guy — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:00:49 +0000

I had a lecturer in a Masters of International Relations course whose theory was that long silences are completely unendurable to humans in groups. He was quite happy to reveal his theory early on: he said that if he asked a question and nobody responded, we would all wait in complete silence until somebody finally cracked and said something. He said it would always take less than 60 seconds, and he was right (although one time we got to about 58 seconds before somebody cracked).

The eventual speaker would usually be one of the class talkers or swots (I was one); but if somebody spoke too often in any given (three-hour) class, they would get a yellow card (warning) then a red card, and weren’t allowed to say anything more for the rest of that class. Then the silences would last longer, but still less than a minute. And eventually it would be the really quiet people who felt compelled to say something to break the silence. It was brutal and awkward, but remarkably effective.

By: Ambigulous

Ambigulous — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 03:26:20 +0000

Paul Norton: a friend tells me
i) although the “open” question allows all kinds of off-topic silliness, it occasionally allows a student to make a useful and/or perceptive comment, which Likert-scale questionnaires with poorly written or vague or inapplicable questions, simply do not.

ii) One time he received one student response “too many jokes” and another “not enough jokes” in the same class. He assumed these boys had been sitting next to each other while filling in the form.

iii) His response? 28% fewer jokes, but the mean quality of the jokes was increased by 46%, weighted for customer responsiveness, world’s best practice; and peer reviewed by a benchmarking panel endorsed by the relevant Go8 committee.

By: Paul Norton

Paul Norton — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:22:14 +0000

One of my preferred techniques (especially in the big tutorials which the bean counters are inflicting on us these days) is to get the students to break into small groups for most of the tutorial and then report back on the fruits of their discussions at the end. This is good for getting the less assertive students engaged in discussion.

A question to others: how do you go about making sense of students’ text responses to course and teaching evaluations? And would I be right in guessing that there’s a gendered dimension to the phenomenon of students writing off-topic and off-colour comments about their lecturers’ and tutors’ appearance, dress, demeanour, etc.?

By: Laura

Laura — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:40:44 +0000

Just give them all 64, LE.

Is that bit of matter on the floor at #40 a sockpuppet? Looks like one.