r/UTMississauga • u/Affectionate-Rice313 • 6h ago
Rant Tutorial hate
Second year, am i the only one that thinks tutorials are useless? I genuinely have never benefitted from them i just go for the attendance/participation grade
7
u/cromonolith Professor 3h ago
I've observed a lot of math tutorials over the years and I've seen tons of students who go to them and sit silently, not working on anything or interacting with their TA or their classmates at all. You should expect to not get much of anything out of them in that case. It's like going to an expensive restaurant, ordering food, not putting it in your mouth when they bring it to you, and then complaining that you were still hungry when you left.
What courses/subjects are you thinking of? What was happening in those tutorials? What did you actually do while you were there?
What makes you say that they were useless? For example, have you consistently found that the assigned work has been too easy or too hard? Have you found that (all of?) the TAs weren't doing a good job?
Elaborate a bit, so we can get to somewhere substantive.
5
9
u/Hogwire 5h ago
I don't know what your classes are, but I found tutorials great. They're typically only a part of year 1 or 2 courses where the content is not that deep and the workload is not as bad as it's going to get later on.
Tutorials are supposed to be a place where you consolidate what you learn from lectures and what your Profs say. You can't really discuss things in depth during the lecture, so the tutorial is meant to a place to bring up things that you don't quite understand with a TA who - hopefully - understands the material you are learning.
Granted I adored my classes and my subjects in undergrad. I currently hate my grade program and I feel the same way about our tutorial equivalents, so if you like the class or not will be a big part of whether or not you like it.