New student here! What is discussion section about?

washugrad
Wed, 06 Jun 2018 04:50:49 +0000

@dustpyf to answer the question in your title, the discussion section is usually an hour with the teaching assistant or graduate student instructor where the students can ask questions about the homework and anything else in the class they are confused about. You have these in courses with larger enrollments where the professor spends the actual class time mostly lecturing and doesn’t have a lot of question-and-answer time in the lecture. Not sure how it works for physics 10 or over the summer, but for instance back when I was at Berkeley we’d have around 200 students in a Physics 8A lecture and then around 20 in a discussion section which gives the kids a chance to actually get to know their GSI and get help on the homework.