"One size does not fit all"
Tutorials are an unavoidable part of every ETH degree course. But at least students attending physics lectures are free to choose the format in which they practice the principles of their subject.
For students of physics, there’s no getting away from the fact that they will have to practice the principles they learn in lectures until they have fully understood them. This process also equips them with skills that extend far beyond theoretical knowledge and remain valuable long after their studies: they learn to quickly grasp a problem and solve it systematically. Especially in the first few semesters, this calls for highly personalised teaching and learning formats — no easy task when there are thousands of Bachelor’s students at ETH needing to learn the basics of physics. “There’s no one perfect tutorial for all students,” says Guillaume Schiltz, the Department of Physics educational developer, “but we do take our students’ learning needs seriously.”
Since 2013, students in the foundation phase of their degrees have been able to choose a tutorial format that best fits their learning preferences. The “tutorial marketplace”, as the model is known, offers four formats that correspond to [...]
DownloadFull article of Isabel Nägele and Florian Meyer in ETH Globe 1/2017 (PDF, 183 KB)