Blog 7: Review Session for Exam 1

Feb. 22nd – Review Session

                My review session was held at Alumni room A, and there were 31 students who attended the review session and 2 students attended Karlie’s review session by accident. (Karlie and I think that same letter ‘K’ for our names and same letter ‘A’ for the rooms might have affected the students’ memory.) The review session lasted for around 45-50 minutes.

                Overall, the review session went well for me. I had no problems with computer or students in terms of participation. I came in the room 20 minutes before the review session, and waited for the students to come in. I said hi to some of the students who came in earlier and talked with them for a little. I passed around the attendance sheet around 11am, and I had them read their notes before I started the review session. I had them stand up and say the pledge, and went over the slides. Everyone shouted their answers, either right or wrong, and I told them the actual answer. I was happy that I did not have to “candy fish” people to answer the questions; everyone participated during the session without me begging them to say something. Around 35 minutes past, Dr. Gurung came in and took some questions that students had. Those questions were related to Mastery Quiz.

Things that did not go well:

  • Sarah’s computer was not set up by the Tech workers because they thought Alumni room A &B were together as one set of an event. Sarah needed to readjust to the circumstance, and she needed to use my computer and flash drive because Alumni room B did not have an internet access in the room. It did not affect my review session much and I was willing to help her out; however, I wish it did not happen because it would have been less stressful for everyone and it would have went more smoothly.
  • Another thing that did not go well or things that I wish it did not happen would be that students chatting during the review session. There were 2-3 students who were kind of talking to each other and laughing about something. I asked them if they are doing alright, and they told me they are doing fine. I continued the review session, but they still kept talking time to time. Even though I was bothered a little, I ignored it since nobody else was distracted during the review session.

 

Things that I would do differently:

  • I would slow down a little more and ask them why the other answers were different. I should make them think more even when the correct answer is told.
  • Also, I noticed that I should have mentioned about the sign-up sheet at the end of the session because I missed one male student’s name. He came to the session late and he did not have a chance to sign up.

Review Session

The review sessions went good I think. I got multiple emails before the test that they were helpful and informative. They also asked if we were going to do study sessions for the future tests. So we might have a decent turn out for out of class review sessions.

I got a few angry emails after saying that none of the questions were on the test, which they were told there were not going to be. But overall I think we had a good turn out and people thought it was useful. I did get a lot of emails, after I sent out the PowerPoint slides, for the answers. I told them if they were at the review session they got all the answers but if they needed some answers they were going to need to work for it. They had to send me what they thought the answer was and I would only tell them it was wrong or right. No one took me up on my offer to help.

Overall it was a good experience. I was nervous thinking about having to keep students occupied for an hour all by myself especially being sick. But I am glad I did it and that it is over. Candy also worked as a great motivator J

Overall looking at the grades, there were a good percentage that got A’s and B’s so maybe out review sessions did pay off!

Busy 2 Weeks!

Wow! The past two weeks have been jam-packed not only with exciting psych stuff, but other really awesome, non-psych stuff (at least for me!). Lately, it seems that attendance has been declining. We’ve been down to about 200 the last two weeks. (Sometimes less depending on the day) The week of Valentine’s Day was filled with relevant examples (the attractiveness studies for example) that were quite entertaining to the class. Thursday had a recap on attractiveness and the biology behind it and the TAs presented a neuron demonstration, using participants from the class. The demonstration went quite well and it seemed like the class understood the parts of the neuron pretty well by that point because it didn’t take too long for them to name them. The following week was drastically different. Tuesday, all of the pods met individually for review sessions for the first exam. It was a different dynamic for everyone. I was leading the room and the students were only with one sixth of the class. At first, it was kind of difficult getting participation (I forgot I had candy until half way through the session!) but after I began to offer up candy there was definitely an increase in participation. I heard a lot of positive feedback from the individuals in the pods, they thought it was beneficial to have sample questions and a big review like that. Lucky for me, I didn’t have the student that tried to argue with me over answers or prove me wrong! After the review session, I still got a lot of questions about the exam. I think it was mostly people worrying about the format, as online testing is something that many people are unfamiliar with, especially at an intro level. I had one particularly interesting student ask me a bunch of questions regarding the honor code. He was curious about how we were going to enforce it and how it can even be fair to the rest of the class. I think it will be nice to fall back into a regular routine for the next couple of weeks leading up to spring break.

Taking the Stage

Tuesday was the big day; Dr. Gurung had left the class period open to his TA’s to hold a review session with their individual pods for a whopping 80 minutes. I must admit the time leading up to this review session was filled with nerves and doubt. When I say doubt, I hate to admit but I was having self doubt about whether or not I knew the material well enough to answer the questions that were going to be asked of me. I knew that I knew the material, but I was more fearful it would all escape me once asked about it; however I can say that wasn’t the case. In order to feel more comfortable I did bring a familiar face; my sister, in which Dr. Gurung noticed when he made his rounds! I say do whatever makes you feel at ease and as long as it is not a distraction to the students and this was not.

What worried me most was making the students feel comfortable and how to make the session flow through discussion. I started the session by allowing the students 5 minutes to look over their notes and ask me any questions they might have before we got into the pre-made review questions. In this time period I did receive questions which made me happy, because at the moment I thought I was going to have a great review session due to the student involvement, unfortunately I was wrong. During this time, Dr. Gurung stopped into my room to observe and talk a little bit about the format of the exam. During this time I noticed a change in student body language and eagerness, the students sat upright and were at the ready to write down whatever Dr. Gurung had to say about the exam and as soon as he left the students went back to a more relaxed body language and a laziness came over them; meaning they seemed to lose enthusiasm for the session.  I really saw this lack of enthusiasm when it came time for the students to stand up and recite the honor code; majority of them had a look on their face that said “you have got to be kidding me.” However, they all did it whether they wanted to or not.

After the short time allotted for questions and the recitation of the honor code, I let the students know that I wanted this session to be more of a discussion and that the slides that were being presented were to test if they knew the material and it was not for the purpose of the taking notes. The first 10-15 minutes of the review went well, had a lot of participation when it came to answering questions; the bag of candy probably helped, but it soon didn’t interest the students. After the first 15 minutes dissolved, the review session went downhill and did not have a chance to recover, the students had just lost interest.  It even got to the point where I had to say “Come on guys, I know one you knows this!” Once that was said, I knew the only way I was going to make this through was to get the review questions done, with an occasional stop to ask if anyone had any questions and during the times I stopped to do this I did get a few questions.

Overall, the review session went well. I do however wish the students were more engaged and willing to participate in discussion when questions were asked. Secondly, I felt as if the students had a good grasp for the information because I did not hear a lot of wrong answers during the review which made me optimistic for exam scores, however, we will have to wait and see! Finally, I felt as if I had my nerves under control and the students could tell I was comfortable about being there. I do feel that having a past TA experience allowed me to feel more confident and comfortable in front of my students and having this experience under my belt will help me in upcoming review sessions!

A Big Day

Today Dr. Gurung gave up class time to give the students the ability to have more one-on-one time with their TA’s to get as many questions answered before the exam.  This is not typical of Dr. G’s style, but beneficial to the students.  As a TA I prepared as much information as possible, being ready for every question that could be asked during the session.  I hoped that the students would have questions to ask and chose to not play a game based review session.  Knowing now how my review session went, I cannot help but wonder if I chose to use a game based session if the outcome would have been different. 

The best part of the session was the reciting of the honor code.  I felt very hopeful that after everyone stood up, raised a hand, and said the honor code, and looked somewhat ridiculous, that whatever tension was in the room was relieved and everyone would feel more at ease to ask questions. Unfortunately, that was not the case.  Although I waited patiently for any questions during the first 5 minutes, I received none.  Throughout the entire review session I had only a few questions, most of which were based on the exam format.  With the very little questions that were asked, it did seem as though everyone had a good handle of the information.  The lack of questions allowed me to move quickly through the information, and the students all seemed to have answers for the questions.  Although it was difficult to fully understand if the students were understanding the material or if they did not know the information but did not want to ask questions.  It honestly felt that the students simply wanted answers to questions instead of checking to see if they knew as much information as possible. 

There are many things that I could have done different during my review session that may have produced different results.  First, I could have used a game format that would have encouraged competition and discussion between the class.  I would have preferred class discussion instead of the complete lack of questions and answering questions posed to the class.  Secondly, I could have remembered to grab my bag of candy to help entice the students to participate.  Although this may have worked for my group of students, I do know after discussion with other TA’s it did not seem to have as great of an affect.  Finally, I could have been slightly more prepared on the information.  I had my book open and had to use it very few times, however, I feel as though my students would feel more confident.   

On the other hand, I feel as though I was confident during my review session and I handled the situation well.  I had an answer for every question that was asked, even if I had to double check my answer.  I was surprised that it seemed to have come easy for me to come up with follow-up questions during the review session to help encourage interaction.  More surprising was that the students always had an answer for my questions.  Instead of ignoring my few mistakes during the powerpoint presentation, I made jokes about it, which helped for me to calm my nerves.  Hopefully, it also helped the students to see me as more of an equal and peer instead of an intimidating figure.  From the type of review session I had today, I am cautiously optimistic on the exam scores for this first exam.  It seems as though everyone knows their stuff!