Twenty-seven first-year nursing students, divided across six focus groups formed on the basis of their past chemistry experience, were interviewed about their chemistry experience as a component of a Health Science unit. Information related to learning and academic performance was able to be established from student conversations resulting in…

Student preferences for delivery options were obtained within a monetary framework by asking students to purchase their ideal course structure. Results show that accounting students prefer to spend more on tutorials but purchase less lecture time; the difference due to the higher cost of tutorials compared to lectures. Face-to-face classes were…

The Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme-Tertiary Tuition (ITAS-TT) has provided Australian government funding for one-to-one and group tutorial study support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students attending Australian universities since 1989. It has been a central plank supporting Indigenous university students in their studies.…

Field courses are essential for subjects like Earth Sciences, Geography and Ecology. In these topics, GIS is used to manage and analyse spatial data, and offers quantitative methods that are beneficial for fieldwork. This paper presents changes made to a first-year Earth Sciences field course in the French Alps, where new GIS methods were…

An improved first year student experience is a strategic focus for higher education in an increasingly competitive marketplace. A successful peer tutoring program creates a visible community of practice, supports the student learning experience, elevates senior students as ambassadors of the program, and reinforces an emphasis on learning through…

In this study we explore how absence from sociology classes is understood by undergraduate students at University College Dublin. The authors use Scott and Lyman's (1968) concept of accounts to explore absence sociologically. Drawing on data generated via focus groups, an open-ended questionnaire, and an online survey with students, we outline the…

This research examines students in a first-year engineering course who receive library instruction by using a newly developed online module and attending optional in-person tutorials. It aims to evaluate the outcomes of library information literacy instruction using this module combined with in-person help. Results show a significant improvement…

This article reports on a programme in which peer-assisted learning (PAL) was combined with case-based learning (CBL) in a second-year radiologic biology unit of study. Our aim is to explore evidence of whether PAL supported the development of qualitative conceptions of learning. The programme involved students in small PAL groups preparing and…

This study focused on the civic education course at Universitas Terbuka (UT). Its purpose was to design a new approach for the online tutorial for the course by analyzing the literature related to online and distance education and investigating participant feedback on the current offering of the course and tutorial, which is a compulsory course in…

A sound knowledge of pathological disease processes is required for professional practice within health professions. The project described in this paper reviewed the resources currently available for the delivery of systematic pathology tutorials. Additional complementary resources were developed and the inclusion of these additional learning…

Many students enrolled in university physics have little interest in the subject matter, a trend more pronounced in females. This study assesses students' conceptual understanding and interest during the electrochemistry unit of a physics course for nonphysics majors that was revised in light of consistently low ratings from its students. The…

The following paper presents the first known examination of the experiences of class tutors within a peer-assisted learning program. Three female first-year class tutors, aged 25-28 years, provided insight into how they experienced a novel peer tutoring program embedded in their tutorials. Using grounded theory techniques, it was found that the…

This study examined the effectiveness of a Blended Learning (BL) environment designed to facilitate the learning of study skills with a large (over 200) and diverse undergraduate student cohort in a Higher Education (HE) institution in the UK. A BL environment was designed using the model provided by Kerres & De Witt (2003), and was also…

In order to increase engagement and to consolidate skills, a tutorial-based skills course (module) was introduced as a compulsory component of first-year in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen. We evaluated whether students had attained certain "graduate attributes" during the course, comprising: transferable and…

This formative evaluation within a graduate initial teacher education program sought to identify student teachers' perceptions of lecturer practice and its influence on their developing practice. Data collected from course and teaching evaluations and focus group interviews suggested that microstructural course elements--lectures, tutorials, and…