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…

Several retention strategies have been developed at Miramar College in San Diego, California, to reduce attrition and enhance institutional effectiveness. One of these, the PLACe tutorial center, is dedicated to empowering students to attain educational success. In spring 1992, developmental English students who did not use the PLACe Center had a…

This handbook provides assistance for tutors in Operation Success, a program to provide limited-income and first-generation college students with academic support services to enable them to persist and graduate from Wichita State University (Kansas). The program provides an interconnected series of academic support services; peer tutoring is…

The Supplemental Instruction (SI) program of the University of Missouri-Kansas City addresses attrition by providing academic support in courses that are high risk for students. The program contains a number of innovative features, for example: high risk courses are identified instead of high risk students, and everyone in those courses is offered…

Describes a new method of evaluating the Supplemental Instruction (SI) model as implemented in a high-risk biology course at an urban multicultural university campus. Examination grades indicated that the average grade of participants in classes that had SI sessions was significantly higher than that of participants in classes where SI sessions…

In a University of Central Lancashire (England) program, upperclassmen support learning of peers through small-group peer tutoring in study skills, earning academic credits for doing so. The program targets courses with difficult content, predominance of lectures, and low rates of teacher-student interaction. Evaluation indicates reduced course…

This issue of the "VCCA Journal" contains the following articles: (1) "Dear Andrei--Dear Patricia: International Education in English Composition I," by Robert Kilmer; (2) "The Cultivation of Critical Thinking: Some Tools and Techniques," by Russell Crescimanno; (3) "Assessment Partnership: A Model for Two-Year…

As part of the General College of the University of Minnesota's Pilot Education Program (PEP) (1979-80) for academically underprepared minority group students, background information is presented about the development of the Chicano/Latino PEP package, the way that the Chicano/Latino team functioned; the nature, content, and teaching methods; and…

The key features of student achievement were examined at twelve sixth form colleges (SFCs) in the United Kingdom with an emphasis on strategies to maintain and improve performance. It was found that students at SFCs have on average higher prior attainment and suffer less deprivation than their counterparts in General Further Education and Tertiary…