Tutorials: Our action plan

Special thanks for your constructive criticism and for your suggestions on the tutorial aspect of this course. Physics 303K instructors, TAs and the tutorial homework grader have met to discuss the issues involved. Some of us have also met with the Deans, the Math-Science Committee of the College of Engineering and faculty members who are interested in the quality of Physics 303 teaching. Following is our action plan.

1. Mission of Physics 303K: We reaffirm that the mission of Physics 303K is to teach students both the concepts of physics and the physics problem solving skills. The tutorial materials (the six sessions posted on the web and the accompanying homework) are an integrated part of the course. 303K instructors will continue to incorporate the tutorial materials in their lectures and include tutorial materials as one third of the exam.

2. Regular homework vs tutorial homework. We recognize that in order not to overburden students, it is important to monitor the number of questions to be assigned in the regular homework set. From this point on during the tutorial weeks, the total number of regular homework questions will not exceed 25. During non-tutorial weeks, the regular homework questions will not exceed 30.

To implement this, the following questions will be deleted from the present homework 7:

• 001-003, A problem which involves a pulley and a mass
• 021-023 A problem which involves a curved path, a region with friction and a spring
• 024-025: A problem which involves an irregularly curved slide
• 030-031: A problem which involves the recoil of a rifle

3. Grading of the tutorial homework:

• From hereon, the grading of each question will be marked explicitly, e.g. no-credit, partial credit, full credit.
• Number of points will be marked on the tutorial hw-solution posted outside of our lecture hall.
• After a set is graded, a summary of common mistakes will be posted on the same bulletin board.
• The scale-transformed-percent-score(stps) will be used for tutorial hw-grade.
  stps = 1. - 0.5(1 - percent_rawscore)

4. Tutorial session: We recognize that the small group discussion format may not be suitable, at least for some tutorial sessions. For latter cases, we encourage the TA to change the format to make it more effective. For instance, the TA may try to "walk through" the tutorial material with the entire class. The TA may at the same time solicit answers and discussion from various parts of the classroom. This may help to control the coverage of the material and at the same time promote the participation of the entire class.