The attitudes of teachers referring students to writing centers for mandatory instruction may weaken the center's ability to provide support to the students who need it most. Training tutors to provide a pleasant learning environment can increase the program's effectiveness. (MSE)

Experience in Scotland shows that telephone tuition can be an effective means to bring remote students and tutors into direct contact. One-to-one tuition, conference call tuition, and loud-speaker tuition are discussed. Limitations and advantages of this medium are noted, and development across the United Kingdom is advocated. (AF)

A series of highly structured, criterion-referenced, small-group discussion tutorials were designed to be used with a large introductory lecture course, Biology of Mankind, that is taught at the University of New South Wales. The design of these tutorials and their role in achieving course objectives are discussed. (JMD)

Describes a volunteer tutoring program coordinated by associates of the Exxon Corporation to help middle and high school students with math and science homework. Enumerates the successes of the tutoring program and highlights other outreach activities of the company in Baton Rouge. Stresses that the future of high-technology companies depends on…

Introduces an intelligent tutoring systems where the college-level learner deals with a teacher and a "troublemaker." Discusses the types of interaction in directive learning, peer learning and learning by disturbing; evaluates the impact of each strategy on learner self-confidence. For learners with low self-confidence, peer learning…

Describes a service learning program with a focus on literacy called the Student Literacy Corps. Describes how urban elementary school children, college students, professors, administrators, and community members worked, shared, and learned together. Includes a sample lesson. (SR)

Argues that methods of assessing effectiveness of university supplemental instruction (SI) programs (in which successful students provide additional instruction to students in high-risk courses) have been inadequate. Suggests ways of isolating SI effects on student achievement, and recommends broadening research methods to include qualitative…

Summarizes a study that utilized path analysis to examine the effects of tutor-tutee intimacy, tutoring conditions, and background variables on overall tutor satisfaction. Reveals higher satisfaction among tutors reporting greater intimacy with tutees. Discusses those variables affecting intimacy including ethnicity, same-sex pairing, and ease of…

The relative effectiveness of staff tutors and student tutors in teaching higher level cognitive skills to University of Limburg (Netherlands) law students appears to be similar, but staff tutors are felt to be better because they are experts in their field. (Author/MSE)

An adolescent with moderate mental disabilities tutored a seven year old in arithmetic. The peer tutoring program increased the mathematics performance of the first grader, successfully integrated the adolescent into a more typical classroom environment, improved the accuracy of the tutor's mathematics performance, and resulted in changes in…

Describes the Academic Support Programme (ASP) established at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa in response to (1) the disadvantaged educational background of Black students and their consequently high dropout rate, and (2) the projected increases in the enrollment of such students. ASP primarily serves students whose home…

Presents an authoring environment dedicated to the development of curriculum and course material that can be handled by an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). The adopted curriculum model is Curriculum Representation and Acquisition Model (CREAM) which represents subject-matter content from the domain, the pedagogical, and the didactic points of…

Seventeen fourth and fifth graders with severe writing disabilities received a weekly one-hour individual tutorial which focused equally on transcription (handwriting and spelling) and composition skills. Students showed reliable improvement in composition and handwriting automaticity but not in spelling. Suggestions for teaching phonological…

Discusses the incorporation of a problem-based anatomy course into a traditional curriculum in the School of Medicine at the University of Zagreb. Describes the course, challenges that arose during the transition, and institutional solutions. Students showed a high preference for the active learning process experienced in tutorials over the more…

Twenty-three first-graders at risk for learning disabilities received one-to-one tutoring from noncertified tutors for 30 minutes, 4 days a week, for one school year. Tutoring included instruction in phonological skills, explicit decoding, writing, spelling, and reading phonically controlled text. Participants significantly outperformed controls…