As an academic institution that is still in its early phases of organisational growth, Monash University, South Africa does not have a pool of postgraduate students that can be utilised for teaching assistance in units with large groups of students. This necessitated the selection of high-calibre honours candidates and third-year students that…

Problem-based learning (PBL) can be described as a learning environment where the problem drives the learning. This technique usually involves learning in small groups, which are supervised by tutors. It is becoming evident that PBL in a small-group setting has a robust positive effect on student learning and skills, including better…

Young people from refugee backgrounds face significant academic and social challenges in mainstream secondary education in Australia. Research suggests that mentoring initiatives and tutoring can help students remain engaged in education and achieve positive educational, social and emotional outcomes. The Classroom Connect Project is a joint…

Interim assessments are hot in American schools. Also called benchmark or periodic tests, these assessments are given every four to nine weeks to check on students' progress. Although interim assessments are an important tool for school improvement, they are easy to misuse. In the author's work coaching principals in a number of districts, he has…

Originally published in a 1984 issue of "College English," Stephen North's article "The Idea of a Writing Center" has over the years been much cited in writing center scholarship. Even so, this scholarship as a whole did not proceed to gain much presence in "CE" and other broadly-oriented composition journals. Reconsidering North's piece, the…

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…

This study suggests that students repeating a first-year composition course benefit from working with specific tutors in the writing center. The article focuses on students who did not pass first-year composition and took a tutorial version of the course. A chi-square analysis shows that students working with a specific tutor had a higher pass…

The purpose of the study was to understand reading tutors' perceptions of the effectiveness of tutorial programs on reading achievement of at-risk students in a South Texas school district. Fifty-eight reading tutors tutoring at-risk students in grades 3-8 were asked to complete a survey entitled "Reading Tutor Survey" and…

Two-way communication between students and tutors is one of the two key factors contributing to the success of a Distance Learning programme, the other being the complete and well-designed educational package. Both elements are essential to guide students' learning. By means of this communication the tutor can facilitate the interaction of…

Through the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project (PWTARP), the authors have set out to explore and document what peer tutors take with them from their training and experience. The Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project has made it possible for the authors to sample and analyze more systematically the reflections of 126 former tutors from…

Background: Paired reading (PR) is an application of peer tutoring. It has been extensively researched, and its efficacy across a range of outcomes has been established. Benefits include improvements in key reading skills, and also in affective aspects of learning. Several studies have shown gains in self-esteem, although measurement methods have…

Foreign language anxiety (FLA) has been the focus of many studies into affect in classroom settings. However, the growing numbers of distance language learners worldwide in recent years calls for greater attention to be paid to this increasingly important constituency of language learners. Following on from Hurd's investigation into FLA with…

The present study focuses on comparing the impact of role assignment and cross-age peer tutors on students' level of knowledge construction in 15 asynchronous discussion groups of nine students each in a first-year university course (N=135). Content analysis was applied to analyse the level of knowledge construction in students' online postings.…

In the present article, the reorientation of a fourth-semester physiology course for pharmacy students is described. The motivation for the introduction of changes was to prepare the students to not only assimilate facts but to learn and understand how to integrate and apply them. The article considers how this reorganization was received by the…

In this paper, we analyse learning dynamics in the context of physics group work of the kind increasingly found in engineering education. We apply a phenomenographic perspective on learning, seeing the notion of variation as the basic mechanism of learning. Empirically, we base our analysis on data from first year engineering students discussing…