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2025 Spring · How to Do Office Hours and Tutoring Well

  • Relevant computing-education research: SIGCSE 2023 Student Expectations of Tutors, SIGCSE 2024 Just-in-Time Teaching Tips to Support Computer Science Tutors.
  • Some intro-programming courses' attempts at AI tutoring (Harvard, UC Berkeley).
  • Feedback questionnaire; self-introduction + chat about a tutoring topic ("the main channel students use to seek help in our course" / "the most common question students ask").
  • Introduces Stanford CS198's Debugging Interview Preparation Worksheet (debugging strategy, conceptual understanding, understanding student code, communicating effectively, making students comfortable), and discusses whether these apply beyond programming courses.
  • Situations in tutoring: stumped by a question, missing prerequisites, remembering a previous wrong answer, avoiding being inadvertently passive-aggressive / posted on the anonymous board; recommends Nonviolent Communication.
  • Online vs. offline; why WeChat-group tutoring is unpopular (boundary issues); set QoS rules; the overseas office-hour system; make the tutoring method clearly known.
  • Why some students don't seek help when stuck; planning tutoring over a semester; can LLMs help with tutoring.

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