A Typical PASS Session

Student experience 16 December 2020

Want to know what you do in a PASS session in the Department of Chemistry? Find out more from one of our PASS Leaders Tyler.

A typical PASS session is started off with a relaxed and casual ice breaker, that usually consist of an informal conversation about how everyone’s coping both academically and also just in general. We may talk about anything, from who has been the best lecturer to house hunting. It’s a relaxed environment that warms everyone up and gets people talking. I think it’s also a good way for the Passes and the Pass Leader to mutually express any concerns or emotions towards their personal life or the chemistry course itself and provides a sense of community within the chemistry department.

As a group we will usually go through what we will be doing in the PASS session. This may change week by week but most of the time its mutually agreed in the previous week. Typically, we will agree on some topics the Passes are struggling with or do not feel completely comfortable with their current understanding. Usually me, Kelly and Chung will create or source some questions that test their understanding and also get them to apply their knowledge. We will then go through the problems checking their understanding each step of the way, by asking questions about the theory behind the steps they’ve taken to solve the problem. For example, we may go through the theory of hybrid orbitals:

As a group we would really explore the theory of chemistry to help consolidate their understanding. One excellent asset of the PASS scheme is the ability for Passes to be able to talk to like-minded students who can help facilitate their learning by understanding the content from a student’s point of view. As PASS Leaders we may help simplify a concept so it’s easier to understand or suggest analogies. Having learned the content relatively recently as PASS Leaders, it’s also helpful as we can remember what helped us understand various concepts last year. In our PASS sessions we might also go through a step by step analysis of a calculation question such as the example shown below:

Once all the questions have been answered and everyone is happy, we would then start to close out the session by asking what our Passes would like to go through next week and we will leave it completely up to them. We are extremely flexible with the sessions and do a variety of questions, facilitating, going through lab report writing and many other things.

PASSTyler