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Re: Tutoring



This sharing of how tutoring is accomplished has been informative for me.

Here at Bridgewater College, a liberal arts college of about 1200
students, we try to provide as much contact time between prof and
individual students as is possible. (I try to hold my availability in
tension with the belief that students really need to push the limits of
their understanding before seeking help and that they must even then do it
themselves while using assistance from others.)

We are trying a recitation section in the calculus-based intro course this
year for the first time. In my algebra-based intro course, I had a problem
session in place of the lab before the first exam. That appeared to work
well, too.

Our college does provide tutors through our counseling center at no
additional cost to the students. Departments recommend the tutors, and the
counseling director then arranges the details. This is not through our
departmental budget.

In my humble opinion, student distress with physics seems as high as ever.
Even my intro astronomy course for non-science majors causes a lot of
"math anxiety." (However, I am a strong believer that math is the language
of science.) On the other hand, we also have a lot of students who do
very well with the concepts and the math. I have seen a bi-modal
distribution in my grades this year like I have never seen before. Is this
a national trend, or are we special in our recruiting here at Bridgewater?

Richard
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Dr. Richard L. Bowman
Chair, Dept. of Physics e-mail: rbowman@bridgewater.edu
(and Dir. of Academic Computing) phone: 540-828-5441
Bridgewater College FAX: 540-828-5479
Bridgewater, VA 22812 http://www.bridgewater.edu/~rbowman/
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