The increase in the use of technology-enhanced learning in higher education has included a growing interest in new approaches to enhance the quality of feedback given to students. Audio feedback is one method that has become more popular, yet evaluating its role in feedback delivery is still an emerging area for research. This paper is based on a…

Writing centers can be staffed wholly or partially by tutors with little training in science writing. This article suggests that an emphasis on scientific rhetoric, not content, may be most useful for training tutors and developing handouts and checklists to aid novice science writers in invention and revision. The article also suggests that a…

Peer mentoring is a powerful strategy to support students in their first year of tertiary education utilised by a large number of tertiary institutions. While social justice principles such as rights, access, and equity as outlined by Creagh, Nelson, & Clarke (2013) highlight the importance of "student centredness," Taylor (2013)…

Education has proven to be an effective means of developing the human resource base of most nations and could advance the development of nations. In other to upgrade and train more professionals and non-professionals in the sphere of education, the concept of teacher distance education has gained more attention globally. Therefore, more and new…

This article illustrates how an event guide can be used to organise, systematise and prioritise the large amount of findings from an extensive study. The study aimed to enhance student support at a distance-education institute in a Southern African country (Lesotho). In this case study an improvement-oriented evaluation of the strengths,…

Prior studies indicate that vocational students' literacy practices are more demanding than is generally recognised. Employing a view of literacy acquisition as socialisation, we investigated the literacy practices of trades training in Carpentry and Automotive Technology, by interviewing tutors and examined course books and student writing. A…

The telecollaborative project under study involves, on the one hand, Masters students who are studying to become teachers and who design the tasks as well as tutor them, and, on the other hand, French language students. The relationship in this type of telecollaboration has been shown to be both asymmetric and symmetric. The hypothesis this paper…

When modeling student learning, tutors that use the Knowledge Tracing framework often assume that all students have the same set of model parameters. We find that when fitting parameters to individual students, there is significant variation among the individual's parameters. We examine if this variation is important in terms of instructional…

In recent years, the usefulness of affect detection for educational software has become clear. Accurate detection of student affect can support a wide range of interventions with the potential to improve student affect, increase engagement, and improve learning. In addition, accurate detection of student affect could play an essential role in…

Cooperative tutoring in a writing center setting consists of two tutors who work collaboratively with one student. It is a variation of one method of training new tutors, where the novice tutor observes the expert tutor during a tutoring session and eventually participates with the expert tutor. This study focused on the interactions between the…

Jim Valkenburg's article "Scaffolding and Tutoring Mathematics" that appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of The Learning Assistance Review (TLAR) addressed the characteristics of appropriate communication between a tutor and tutee as they approach their work together in study sessions. One strategy he examines is the use of scaffolding, a concept…

The dramatically increasing number of international students at University of California (UC) campuses has had a marked effect on its campus writing centers, causing a reconsideration of personnel, pedagogy, training, services, and cross-campus partnerships. In this article, writing center administrators and staff at 3 UC campuses--UC Irvine,…

The authors examined how the variability in adult conflict resolution styles in family and school contexts was related to adolescents' positive development. Cluster analysis classified 440 fathers, 440 mothers, and 125 tutors into 4 clusters, based on self-reports of their conflict resolution styles. Adolescents exposed to Cluster 1 (inconsistency…

The purpose of this study was twofold: to assess evidences of construct validity of the Brazilian Scale of Tutors Competences in the field of Open and Distance Learning and to examine if variables such as professional experience, perception of the student´s learning performance and prior experience influence the development of technical and…

This paper presents research undertaken with trainees, mentors and tutors who are associated with the new School Direct initiative in England. Introduced quickly in 2012, this was a new way of training teachers which is seen as school-led. That is, schools, not higher education institutions, are the leaders of this programme and in many cases…