In 2006 a new type of tutorial, called Map Meeting, was successfully trialled with novice first year physics students at the University of Sydney, Australia. Subsequently, in first semester 2007 a large-scale experiment was carried out with 262 students who were allocated either to the strongly scaffolding Map Meetings or to the less scaffolding…

This paper describes an attempt at evaluating a potentially critical "detail" of teaching practice; that is, using a particular diagram to illustrate the imaging role of a converging lens. This "basic" diagram has been designed to contribute to help students overcome the well-known "travelling image" syndrome. We conducted a comparative study with…

Computer tutorial review lessons for a one-quarter lecture course in introductory college physics have been developed and used by approximately 500 students, on a voluntary basis, over a period of several years. The investigation reported here shows that the exam grades of students who used the computer materials are significantly higher (.01…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of learning strategy and summarization within a computer-based chemistry and physics program. High school students worked individually or in cooperative dyads to complete science instruction; half of them completed summaries over the instructional content when directed to do so. The study…