All students in the introductory calculus-based course in the UW Physics Department are enrolled in three hours of lecture, three hours of laboratory, and one hour of tutorial each week.  The instructional materials developed by the Physics Education Group for use in the tutorials, Tutorials in Introductory Physics, have been especially designed to supplement the lectures and textbook of the standard introductory physics course.   The tutorial materials are intended for use in a small group setting.  The role of the instructor is to help students by asking questions, rather than by simply giving answers. To teach in this way requires a deep understanding of the subject matter, knowledge of the intellectual state of students, and skill in asking appropriate questions. Most of the tutorial instructors are graduate Teaching Assistants (TA's) enrolled in the physics Ph.D. program. The rest are undergraduate physics majors, M.S. students, post-doc volunteers, and a few faculty. Preparation of the instructional staff takes place weekly in a required graduate teaching seminar.

    It is well known that most instructors tend to teach as they have been taught. Therefore, the preparation of the tutorial instructors is conducted on the same material and in the same manner that they will be expected to teach. They go through the same sequence of activities as will the undergraduates later in the week. At the beginning of the seminar, the participants take the pretest that was administered earlier in the day in the introductory course. After taking the pretest themselves, the participants then examine the student pretests and try to identify common errors. Working collaboratively in small groups, they go through the tutorial worksheets step-by-step. Experienced TA's engage the seminar participants in the same type of instruction through questioning that they will be expected to use in the tutorial sessions. Discussions of appropriate instructional strategies for addressing student difficulties arise naturally in this setting.

    To date, more than 300 graduate students, post-docs and junior faculty have participated in the program.  Some of the volunteers have declared that this structured teaching experience in the Graduate Teaching Seminar has helped them obtain academic positions.