Creating online options for students has become more of a focus with the growth of distance-education programs. It has also become necessary with the growth of online databases, electronic journals, and electronic books. Teaching classes is one of the few areas where libraries have not all switched to online access. Reference librarians still tend…

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…

An unconditioned stimulus in the form of "participation money" serves to keep track of students' comments during class discussions and extrinsically to reinforce their class participation behaviors. Using a longitudinal experiment to investigate the effect of the participation money stimulus on several education outcomes, the author finds that the…

Web-based tutorials offer an opportunity to provide automated individualized feedback to help students develop, for example, the ability to identify independent and dependent variables and the ability to discriminate between experimental and predictor variables. Doing so enables them to distinguish between the relatively clear-cut causal…

The use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support language teaching and learning in higher education has become standard practice in recent years. While OER initiatives have given considerable attention to teacher's engagement as well as the sharing of culture and the creation and uploading of OERs, there is little evidence about specific…

This article describes a C-SAP-funded project evaluating the introduction of a new tutorial programme for first year Sociology students, which sought to integrate a "skills framework" to enable students to develop a range of academic skills alongside their study of the subject. The pegagogical and institutional background to the decision…

A leaf is a fundamental unit in botany and understanding what constitutes a leaf is fundamental to many plant science activities. My observations and subsequent testing indicated that many students could not confidently and consistently recognise a leaf from a leaflet, or recognise basic leaf arrangements and the various types of compound or…

This article reports on an observation-based evaluation of student-tutor interaction in first-year undergraduate tutorials. Using a single case analysis, the paper looks at how tutors and students built and maintained relationships through two different though interlinked forms of interaction--storytelling and the use of classroom space for…

A crucial aspect of the teaching of professionalism relates to the provision of learning experiences that will promote the achievement of this affective learning domain. The development and trial of a learning opportunity to scaffold learning concepts of professionalism is described in this paper. Peer reviewed literature was used to construct a…

Information literacy is an integral generic skill or graduate attribute in higher education, with many higher education institutions developing information literacy policies and including information literacy in graduate attribute policies. Barrie (2007) notes that universities around the world are increasingly concerned with ensuring that their…

What does research reveal about tutoring adolescents in literacy? We conducted a meta-analysis, identifying 152 published studies, of which 12 met rigorous inclusion criteria. We analyzed the 12 studies for the effects of tutoring according to the type, focus, and amount of tutoring; the number, age, and language background of students; and the…

In the contemporary university the large classes associated with many core units mean that tutorials are often taken by many part-time sessional who are typically employed on a casual basis, paid an hourly rate and not paid to attend the lectures. Given this situation, unit coordinators are often responsible for another phase in curriculum…

This article examines motivational potentialities in remedial mathematics education within an ethical context, applying a model for ethical decision making in education developed by Shapiro and Stefkovich, in which three broad ethical categories are discussed: the ethic of justice, the ethic of care, and the ethic of critique. These ethical…

This paper describes our efforts to integrate liberal learning principles in a capstone course within the overwhelmingly career-focused discipline of accountancy. Our approach was based on the belief that business and liberal learning courses are complementary, rather than competitive, elements of a well-rounded education. The ability to deal with…

High attrition rates of African American college students' is a continuing concern of higher education administrators. This is particularly true of African American men attending community college. African American men consistently experience low levels of scholastic achievement as a result of entering college underprepared, with academic deficits…