Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1980. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-89).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 193-198).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, November, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

M.Ed. / A personal tutoring established by the ancient universities and adopted subsequently by both old and new universities has implicitly acknowledged that High Education students derive both academic and personal benefits from one-on-one academic guidance and group collaborative work (Mattis & Dewart, 2007). In the Department of Mathematics, Science, Technology and Computer Education at the University of Johannesburg both the individual and group tutoring models are employed to assist students in their academic programmes. The research question that this study is addressing is: “What are the students’ expectations of the tutors in a postgraduate Computer- Based Education programme?” This research study describes a case study method based on the students’ expectations of the tutors in a post-graduate Computer-Based Education programme. For some reasons students have a misconception (about the roles of the tutors) that a tutoring session is a place where they will, with very little effort on their part, acquire and develop the computer skills needed for competency in the course. Either they view the tutor as an assistant lecturer, or someone who can give all the answers to their problems. The case is to elucidate the students’ perceptions and experiences towards the role of tutors in the Development of Web-Based Instruction in a Computer- Based Education course. Through qualitative data analysis the study revealed that the students in this study needed to know where to draw the line between the role of tutors and that of lecturers. The students acknowledged the kind of help that they received from the tutors during the tutoring sessions. Peer tutoring was portrayed by the students as having particular significance for them as they were faced with challenges of inadequate mastery of the necessary computer skills. It is also acknowledged that peer tutoring has the benefit to contribute to the improvement of their academic performance.

D.Phil. (Education) / Transformation policies in South Africa have seen higher education come under increasing pressure to broaden participation of historically under-represented groups. Recently, student enrolments have become increasingly diverse in terms of cultural, socio-economic and linguistic backgrounds, as well as the levels of preparedness that students have for traditional higher education programmes. This places new and challenging teaching demands on lecturers and peer tutors. Whilst peer tutors may find themselves in an ever increasing teaching role, so might those who are responsible for guiding and developing them. This research focuses on offering holistic support to junior lecturers, via mentorship, who have the responsibility of developing and advising student tutors, so that they are able to engage in sound pedagogical practice. The purpose of this study is to investigate the responses to a mentorship programme designed to assist junior lecturers to develop tutors at The University of Johannesburg. These junior lecturers are referred to as tutor coordinators. The research aims to identity what kind of identity shifts, if any, the tutor coordinators experienced as a result of the mentorship programme. It also aims to understand how tutor coordinators engaged with collaborative mentorship and to what extent the mentorship programme influences pedagogy. Several theoretical perspectives have informed the research. These include ideas on collaborative mentorship and interdependence as well as reflective practice, as a tool for professional development in combination with insights from post structuralist theory on discourse, social organisation, power and in particular, identity. The study is framed by the understanding that the research participants construct multiple identities rather than report on an existing identity, and that identity is linked to power relations in a particular context. Broadly this research is a qualitative study. More specifically, it uses emancipatory action research as the research design. This is because the participants were provided with an opportunity to critically engage with their own practice via self-reflection and the recursive relationship offered by the mentorship programme. Questionnaires, observations and interviewing were used to collect the data. Interviews gave in-depth insight into participant subject positions and responses to the mentorship programme. Initially, the data was analysed thematically, using global analysis. Once the themes had been extracted, CDA (critical discourse analysis) was used to allow for a social analysis of language. The findings suggest that the research participants’ experiences in the role of tutor coordinator, shaped their identities in different ways and that in several cases they experienced considerable fragmentation of identity. This fragmentation is evident in the multifaceted and differentiated responses to various features of the mentorship programme. In addition, in some cases notable pedagogical shifts were made and personal sites of development were positively facilitated. This research brings to the fore issues that could determine professional staff development programmes as it considers South African academic identities framed by their current professional and educational challenges.

Dr Math is a math tutoring service implemented on the chat application Mxit. The service allows school learners to use their mobile phones to discuss mathematicsrelated topics with human tutors. Using the broad user-base provided by Mxit, the Dr Math service has grown to consist of tens of thousands of registered school learners. The tutors on the service are all volunteers and the learners far outnumber the available tutors at any given time. School learners on the service use a shorthand language-form called microtext, to phrase their queries. Microtext is an informal form of language which consists of a variety of misspellings and symbolic representations, which emerge spontaneously as a result of the idiosyncrasies of a learner. The specific form of microtext found on the Dr Math service contains mathematical questions and example equations, pertaining to the tutoring process. Deciphering the queries, to discover their embedded mathematical content, slows down the tutoring process. This wastes time that could have been spent addressing more learner queries. The microtext language thus creates an unnecessary burden on the tutors. This study describes the development of an automated process for the translation of Dr Math microtext queries into mathematical equations. Using the design science research paradigm as a guide, three artefacts are developed. These artefacts take the form of a construct, a model and an instantiation. The construct represents the creation of new knowledge as it provides greater insight into the contents and structure of the language found on a mobile mathematics tutoring service. The construct serves as the basis for the creation of a model for the translation of microtext queries into mathematical equations, formatted for display in an electronic medium. No such technique currently exists and therefore, the model contributes new knowledge. To validate the model, an instantiation was created to serve as a proof-of-concept. The instantiation applies various concepts and techniques, such as those related to natural language processing, to the learner queries on the Dr Math service. These techniques are employed in order to translate an input microtext statement into a mathematical equation, structured by using mark-up language. The creation of the instantiation thus constitutes a knowledge contribution, as most of these techniques have never been applied to the problem of translating microtext into mathematical equations. For the automated process to have utility, it should perform on a level comparable to that of a human performing a similar translation task. To determine how closely related the results from the automated process are to those of a human, three human participants were asked to perform coding and translation tasks. The results of the human participants were compared to the results of the automated process, across a variety of metrics, including agreement, correlation, precision, recall and others. The results from the human participants served as the baseline values for comparison. The baseline results from the human participants were compared with those of the automated process. Krippendorff’s α was used to determine the level of agreement and Pearson’s correlation coefficient to determine the level of correlation between the results. The agreement between the human participants and the automated process was calculated at a level deemed satisfactory for exploratory research and the level of correlation was calculated as moderate. These values correspond with the calculations made as the human baseline. Furthermore, the automated process was able to meet or improve on all of the human baseline metrics. These results serve to validate that the automated process is able to perform the translation at a level comparable to that of a human. The automated process is available for integration into any requesting application, by means of a publicly accessible web service.

M.Ed. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Traditional university modes of instruction have been shown to be less effective than. both PSI and peer tutoring procedures. The present study compared the relative effectiveness of proctors and peer tutors in a PSI type course. Twelve subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental conditions. The within-subject variable was the order of exposure to the teaching. Methods (being proctored, being tutored, or tutoring) and the. between-subject variables were type of teaching method (proctor-ed or peer tutored) and the number of the trial (first or .second test under the assigned teaching condition). An analysis of variance split plot 3.22 of the number of correct answers on the first test of each unit yielded a significant main effect for teaching method; F(1,9) = 17.24, p < .01; and a significant interaction for Teaching Method x Order of Exposure to Teaching Conditions; F(2, 9) = 4.31, p < .05. Analysis of the number of tests taken to reach criterion yielded significant main effects for teaching method; F(1,9) = 7.44, p < .05; and for order of exposure to teaching conditions; F(2,9) = 4.88 p < .05. The results indicate that proctoring resulted in better student performance than did peer tutoring on both measure of course performance. Other methods for easing the application of PSI type procedures to large courses or situations where proctors are unavailable should examined.

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