Presents an educational case study in which an English-as-a-Second-Language student brings a draft of his argument essay for freshman composition to a tutor in a university writing center. Presents a response that examines several ways in which the study has challenged an educator to think more deeply about beliefs. (SG)

Many learning and instructional approaches that manipulate the environment in which learners work and cooperate with each other have illustrated growth in cognitive, intellectual, social, and affective areas. To date, however, uncertainty still exists as to the mechanism by which various types of peer tutoring facilitate learning. This study seeks…

Peer-mediated approaches have been used for years to improve the academic behaviors of students, especially those with disabilities. The most systematized and well researched of the peer-mediated approaches relates to peer tutoring systems, which include specific elements of training, implementation, and evaluation. The purpose of this article is…

MathsAid was established in 2001 as a university-wide resource for students enrolled on programmes at Kingston University that contain a mathematics or statistics component. Its broad aims are to provide a set of non-threatening remedial and motivational opportunities in maths and statistics through one-to-one tutorial support, peer-assisted…

Districts are paying scant attention to the provision of federal education law that allows students in low-performing schools to transfer elsewhere, though more are providing children with the supplemental services to which they are entitled. New data submitted to the federal government show that eligible students who transferred to a…

Concern is rising in some quarters that the No Child Left Behind Act permits foreign companies to provide federally financed online tutoring to students at underperforming schools. Such arrangements appear to constitute only a minute fraction of the tutoring business that is mushrooming under the federal law. Nine members of Congress asked the…

Tutoring services, known in the federal No Child Left Behind Act as "supplemental services," arguably represent the federal government's largest free-market experiment in education. In the rush to capture market share, more than 1,000 tutoring providers have signed up for the program. But market uncertainty, combined with differences in…

In this article, we describe and evaluate a Web-based interactive tutorial used to present hypothesis testing concepts. The tutorial includes multiple-choice questions with feedback, an interactive applet that allows students to draw samples and evaluate null hypotheses, and follow-up questions suitable for grading. Students either used the…

This qualitative study examines the perceptions and responses of struggling ninth-grade readers who are teaching reading to struggling second- and third-grade students in a cross-age tutoring program. The program was designed to overcome the entrenched, negative affective barriers that older students often bring to the required reading class by…

This study investigated the effects of Total Class Peer Tutoring (TCPT) and an interdependent group oriented contingency (GOC) on the social studies performances and off-task behaviors of eight general education fourth-grade students in an urban elementary school. An A-B-BC-B-BC design was implemented to evaluate the differential effects of TCPT…

Initiation, response and follow-up (IRF) exchanges produced by a student and his tutor in an internet-based tutorial interaction have been analysed in terms of the multifunctional characteristics of each utterance. Different functions, related to different purposes, were observed in the IRF moves performed by the student. The control over the…

The surprising success of Live Homework Help, a product of Tutor.com unknown to libraries before 2001, is in very large part owing to the company's effort to understand library funding and help libraries tap into all kinds of potential funding sources. The story is a model for partnerships between other companies and libraries. For the people of…

This paper considers gender differences in online contexts and examines current trends in women's performance, access and experience of online courses. It uses supportive case study examples and specific research into students' academic engagement, conceptions and perceptions of learning support in online environments. The analysis shows that…

This paper reports on a study which investigates the implementation of a synchronous e-learning system ("Interwise") for online tutorials on an information technology related course offered by the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK). It examines a set of interview data related to students' and tutors' views on the use of the system.…

With the advent of wireless technology, new tools are available that are intended to enhance students' learning and attitudes. To assess the effectiveness of wireless student response systems in the biology curriculum at New Mexico State University, a combined study of student attitudes and performance was undertaken. A survey of students in six…