Does anyone else find it challenging delivering tutorials that someone else has prepared? Especially when there are seemingly objective questions with (presumably) right/wrong answers and you can't be sure about them in the same way as if you'd come up with them yourself. Or maybe it's just me. On the plus side, it is great not to have to spend time preparing them. But I seem to spend more time preparing for them than if I were actually being paid for preparing and doing it from scratch!

Yep... exactly what I'm doing today. We've been given a list of topics to discuss with students, but I don't even know the answers to the questions myself! It is optional though at least, so I can pick the least objectionable topics. This is a bit easier than coming up with novel ideas when I don't have much time.

I like to use their answers, which they submit to me two days earlier and produce a set of tutorial question or discussion points based on their shortcomings. I don't step through entire questions which they have already demonstrated they can do and have full worked solutions for as that would be wasting my time and theirs. So ultimately I end up designing my own tutorials. Of course it's up to me to be certain I have a good background in the tutorial subject matter.

I like the idea of that. I get given the sheets and there isn't much flexibility (or so it seems). And the students often find it totally overwhelming because they haven't prepared for it, as they themselves didn't know what it would be about. Poor guys!

Yep, I had that comment from someone today. I'm going to set pre-reading material for next week.

Good that you can do that. I wish there was pre-reading for mine/I was allowed to set some. I might ask the course leader if she/I can. It sounds like more work for the students at first glance, but in reality it would help them so much.

In my school, clearing TA hours by teaching tutorials are the worse kind of effort to returns ratio. You get to clear 3 hours(from weekly preparation of stuff discussed in tutorial) plus the actual teaching hours. Ive tasked to teach 3 separate tutorial questions and although it requires a of effort im taking it as an opportunity to grow.