Small Group Teaching Methods in Higher Education

Summary

The proceedings of thirteen undergraduate tutorials in a variety of disciplines were tape‐recorded and analysed to determine the amount of speech contributed by each member and the cognitive content of the verbal interaction. A small number of groups worked without a tutor. Tutors spoke for rather more than half of the time and when the tutor was absent many students doubled their own contributions and participation was spread more evenly. There was a marked emphasis on providing information in almost all of the meetings but in the leaderless groups this tended to diminish and there was rather more stress on argument. It is suggested that the use of leaderless tutorials be more widely adopted.