A tutorial, in

education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...

, is a method of transferring knowledge and may be used as a part of a learning process. More interactive and specific than a

book A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physi ...

or a

lecture A lecture (from Latin ''lēctūra'' “reading” ) is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical infor ...

, a tutorial seeks to teach by example and supply the information to complete a certain task. A tutorial can be taken in many forms, ranging from a set of instructions to complete a task to an interactive problem solving session (usually in academia).

Academia

Tutorial class

In British

academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...

parlance {{Short pages monitor; a class of six to eight students is a far more common tutorial size. At Cambridge, a tutorial is known as a supervision. In

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal A ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

, and South African universities, a tutorial (colloquially called a tute or tut) is a class of 10–30 students. Such tutorials are very similar to the Canadian system, although, tutorials are usually led by

honours Honour (British English) or honor (American English; see spelling differences) is the idea of a bond between an individual and a society as a quality of a person that is both of social teaching and of personal ethos, that manifests itself as a ...

postgraduate Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate ( bachelor's) degree. The organization and ...

students, known as 'tutors'. At the two campuses of St. John's College, U.S. and a few other American colleges with a similar version of the

Great Books A classic is a book accepted as being exemplary or particularly noteworthy. What makes a book "classic" is a concern that has occurred to various authors ranging from Italo Calvino to Mark Twain and the related questions of "Why Read the Cl ...

program, a "tutorial" is a class of 12–16 students who meet regularly with the guidance of a tutor. The tutorial focuses on a certain subject area (e.g., mathematics tutorial, language tutorial) and generally proceeds with careful reading of selected primary texts and working through associated exercises (e.g., demonstrating a Euclid proof or translating ancient Greek poetry). Since formal lectures do not play a large part in the St. John's College curriculum, the tutorial is the primary method by which certain subjects are studied. However, at St. John's the tutorial is considered ancillary to the

seminar A seminar is a form of academic instruction, either at an academic institution or offered by a commercial or professional organization. It has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some parti ...

, in which a slightly larger group of students meets with two tutors for broader discussion of the particular texts on the seminar list. Some US colleges, such as

Williams College Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was kill ...

, offer tutorials almost identical in structure to that of an Oxbridge tutorial. At Williams, students in tutorials typically work in pairs alongside a professor and meet weekly, while alternately presenting position papers or critiques of their partner's paper. In Romania, the term "tutorial" is used to designate occasional face-to-face meetings between professors and students enrolled in distance-learning programmes, with the former being referred to as "tutors" (Tutori de disciplină).

Tutorial schools

There are also specialized schools for tutoring such as,

Kumon Kumon Institute Education Co. Ltd. is an educational network based in Japan, created by Toru Kumon which uses his Kumon Method to teach mathematics and reading primarily for young students. History Kumon was founded by Toru Kumon, a Japanese ...

and EduHub. These supplemental hands-on learning programs are especially popular in Asia.

Conference tutorials

Offered as a service or deliverable to its members, conference tutorials are one example of a continuing education activity sponsored by a technical and professional association.

Private study

A tutorial in high schools in the United States may also mean a session for

homework Homework is a set of tasks assigned to students by their teachers to be completed outside the classroom. Common homework assignments may include required reading, a writing or typing project, mathematical exercises to be completed, informatio ...

or other private study.

Education

In documentation and instructional design, tutorials are teaching-level documents that help the learner progress in skill and confidence. Tutorials can take the form of a screen recording ( screencast), a written document (either online or downloadable), interactive tutorial, or an audio file, where a person will give step by step instructions on how to do something. Tutorials usually have the following characteristics: * A presentation of the view usually explaining and showing the user the user interface * A demonstration of a process, using examples to show how a workflow or process is completed; often broken up into discrete modules or sections. * Some method of review that reinforces or tests understanding of the content in the related module or section. * A transition to additional modules or sections that builds on the instructions already provided. Tutorials can be ''linear'' or ''branching''. While many writers refer to a mere list of instructions or tips as a tutorial, this usage can be misleading.

Computer-based tutoring

In computer-based education, a tutorial is a computer program whose purpose is to assist users in learning how to use parts of a

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

product such as an

office suite Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital painting ...

or any other application, operating system interface, programming tool, or

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

. There are three kinds of software tutorials: 1) video tutorials that the user views, 2) interactive tutorials where the user follows on-screen instructions (and—in some cases—watches short instruction movies), whereupon he/she does the tutorial exercises and receives feedback depending on his/her actions; and 3)

webinar Web conferencing is used as an umbrella term for various types of online conferencing and collaborative services including webinars (web seminars), webcasts, and web meetings. Sometimes it may be used also in the more narrow sense of the peer-l ...

s where users participate in real-time lectures,

online tutoring Online tutoring is the process of tutoring in an online, virtual, or networked, environment, in which teachers and learners participate from separate physical locations. Aside from space, literature also states that participants can be separated by ...

, or workshops remotely using web conferencing software.

References

{{wikiquote, Explanations Educational practices