Promoting active participation in non-compulsory course activities, with exercise sessions in focus

Abstract

Friday afternoon 3pm non-compulsory exercise session in quantum mechanics. If your
study schedule would show this, what would you do, go there or skip? Conforming with
the experience of the authors, there is a signicant amount of students who decide for
the latter option. Who couldn't understand that a free Friday afternoon is much more
favourable than an exercise on a dicult topic? Nevertheless exercise sessions are con-
ducted for good reasons, therefore it is important to lure in as many students as possible.
To understand why so few students come to non-compulsory exercise sessions a survey
has been conducted amongst a small pool of students from Department of Physics, Chem-
ical Engineering and Chemistry. This survey showed that exercise sessions are actually
highly appreciated by the students and the actual problem seems to lie in the way they
are conducted and scheduled.
To tackle the subjects of how to conduct and schedule an exercise session such that most
students can prot from it, in later chapters dierent learning styles and their needs in
exercise sessions and also the best placements of exercise sessions in a course plan are
discussed.