Tutorial system

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Both University of Cambridge and University of Oxford, undergraduates are taught in the tutorial system. Students are taught by faculty fellows in groups of one to three. At Cambridge, these are called "supervisions" and at Oxford they are called "tutorials." One benefit of the tutorial system is that students receive direct feedback on their essays in a small discussion setting.

Student tutorials are generally more academically challenging and rigorous than standard lecture and test format courses, because during each session students are expected to orally communicate, defend, analyze, and critique the ideas of others as well as their own in conversations with the professor and fellow-students. As a pedagogic model, the tutorial system has great value because it creates learning and assessment opportunities which are highly authentic and difficult to fake. See Palfreyman, D. (2008) 'The Oxford Tutorial' (OxCHEPS) - also available on-line at www.oxcheps.new.ox.ac.uk (Papers page, Item 1).

[edit] Further reading

  • Adamson, J. W. [Briefest of references to the Oxford Tutorial in] "Education." In From Steel and Addison to Pope and Swift. Vol. 9 of The Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller, 459. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1913. This extremely short excerpt can be read through Google Books.
  • Bailey, Cyril. "The Tutorial System." Revised by J. B. Bamborough. In Handbook to the University of Oxford, 279-86(?). Oxford: Clarendon, 1965.
  • Brewer, Derek. "The Tutor: A Portrait." In C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences, new ed., ed. James T. Como, 41-67. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, Harvest, 1992. You can actually read the whole of this section through Amazon.com's "Search inside this book" feature.
  • Highet, Gilbert. "Communication: Tutoring." In The Art of Teaching, 107-16. New York: Knopf, 1950.
  • Kiosses, Spyriodon. "Teaching and Studying Ancient Greek Literature: A First Approach to a Case Study." Master’s thesis, University of Oxford, 1997.
  • Moore, Will G. The Tutorial System and Its Future. New York: Pergamon, 1968.
  • Shale, S. Understanding the Learning Process: Tutorial Teaching in the Context of Research into Learning in Higher Education. Oxford: Institute for the Advancement of University of Learning, 2000.
  • Waterland, Daniel. "Advice to a Young Student, with a Method of Study for the First Four Years." In The Works of the Rev. Daniel Waterland, 3rd ed., vol. 4, 393-416. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1856. Online and in pdf at http://www.archive.org/details/worksofrevdaniel04wateuoft. Of Waterland's Advice. . . it is said that it "is an outstanding monument to the theory and practice of tutorial instruction in early eighteenth-century Cambridge," from Victor Morgan, 1546-1750, vol. 2 of A History of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2004), 342.
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