SkillsTutor and its competitors (including dot.com companies) are tapping a potentially lucrative market--kids wanting academic coaching to improve test scores. Some experts worry that test-prep could overemphasize skill-building materials or usurp broader-based, critical-thinking classroom activities. The jury is still out. (MLH)

Explains the relationship between computers and multiple intelligences and explores its potential. Topics include behaviorism and cognitivism; constructivism; multiple representations in the human mind, including various forms of intelligence; individual differences; the challenge of altering early representations; and machine versus human tutors.…

Records data from 98 German male students who participated for 9 weeks in an off-campus online seminar on General Psychology. Findings suggest that the form of communication between the tutor and his or her students is a crucial and important aspect in virtual seminars--this holds true even though supplementary (written) social information about…

Describes how Puerto Rico's teenage tutor, Jorge Aneudy Villalba, leads a children's learning crusade through an urban desert of poverty and despair, determined to prove the kids from the projects can make their own future. (Author/EV)

This article links the demand for private tutoring to mounting desires for school choice. The number of private tutoring businesses is rapidly growing in Canada, even though its educational system lacks characteristics that spark a demand for those services in other countries. Testing ideas derived from the school choice literature, I examine…

Open and distance learning provide particular (and sometimes overlapping) contexts for discussions of student retention. This paper argues that the environment for learning created by distance learning tutors is a key factor in student retention, whether retention is taken to refer to student completion of a single course or student persistence…

The author draws on his K-12 teaching experiences in analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of asynchronous, text-based conferencing in online education. Issues relating to Web-based versus client-driven systems in computer-mediated conferencing (CMC) are examined. The paper also discusses pedagogical and administrative implications of choosing a…

While numerous claims have been made for the pedagogical benefits of eLearning, these claims are rarely subjected to rigorous empirical evaluation. Moreover, there are indications that eLearning is more expensive to deliver than conventional distance teaching. One component of this extra cost arises from the greater time input required of…

Purpose: The on-line tutor or e-moderator faces a diversity of new challenges, including instructional design, organisation, direct instruction and facilitating discourse. This study aims to contrast the views of students and tutors regarding what factors constitute effective e-moderation in order to identify key attributes of an on-line tutor.…

This paper describes a community service learning (CSL) project that helped sixteen Latino/a teacher trainees in the areas of caring, social justice, bias reduction, teaching experience, personal growth, joy, and collaboration. The project was significant because the participants and the children they tutored were all Latinos who had shared…

This article sets out to identify key competencies which language tutors need to develop in order to manage synchronous online teaching. In order to aptly monitor interactions with distant learners, it is proposed that three types of regulation pertaining to socio-affective, pedagogical and multimedia aspects are required. On the one hand, this…

This final performance report provides project outcome information and data to the U.S. Department of Education for the federally-funded Library Literacy Program. The West Georgia Regional Library conducted a project from October 1992 until September 1993 that involved collection development and providing tutoring services to adult learners in a…

This final performance report for the St. Charles Public Library and Literacy Volunteers of America-Fox Valley literacy project begins with a section that provides quantitative data. The next section presents a summary of activities during 1993 based the following project goals and related objectives: (1) increase visibility to attract students…

This article describes a model for student/faculty collaboration in WAC development--students tutoring faculty on drafts of the writing assignments they have designed for their own students. While writing center scholarship is student-centered and invites student participation, Writing Across the Curriculum scholarship and implementation remains…

This article explores the experiences of adult learners and tutors on a particular externally assessed distance-learning degree programme. On this programme, assignments are set, reviewed and graded independently of the on-site tutor by the external awarding body. An analysis of eight interviews with four tutors and four graduates from one such…