(no subject)
After 40 years of students knocking on my door wanting help with their math problems, you would think I would be glad of a break now that I have retired. But it seems I'm having withdrawal symptoms. I recently discovered the LJ math_help and mathematics communities, where people post problems at all levels from elementary to graduate level, and I can't resist posting replies to the entries there. In the past few days I have come across another, similar, site, the S.O.S. Mathematics CyberBoard, and I immediately plunged in and started making comments there. I think I'm getting addicted to this, and I need to be restrained.
The thing I need to be very careful about is that a lot of the questions asked in these places are problems that have been assigned to students, which may well count towards course credit. I don't want to be a party to cheating by aiding and abetting students who are going to the internet to get other people to do the work that they ought to be doing themselves. When students are having real difficulties, and can show that they have made a genuine attempt to tackle a problem, I have no qualms about pointing out where they're going wrong, and maybe giving them a hint as to how to proceed, but one needs to be careful to avoid giving them anything like a complete solution.
But I've had 40 years' experience doing exactly that with real-life tutorial groups, so I guess I ought to be able to handle it online.