Do Tutorials work?

[TheArtfulDodger]

Acted - this is one for you...

Would be interesting to know pass rates of those who attend tutorials vs. overall pass rates by subject. Not sure if you keep these statistics.

Appreciate that those attending tutorials may well be a 'self-selecting' group but it'd be interesting to see how pass rates compare. Personally, I find tutorials to be v.useful and make sure I go along to one for each subject I'm doing.

 

[Admin]

Hi Omega

We’re glad you find the tutorials useful. Certainly the feedback we get seems to suggest you’re not the only one getting a lot of use out of them.

Yes, we do try to look at the pass rates of students attending tutorials versus the ‘national average’, although it’s not that easy and for any one subject/sitting/tutorial, it’s very volatile. However, our investigations suggest that if the average pass rate is around 46%, then that of tutorial students is around 54% (these particular figures were for April 2004, but that level of difference has been reasonably consistent).

Perhaps more interestingly, nearly three-quarters of students who take out a tutorial, as well as submit their X Assignments and Mock Exam for marking, go on to pass the exam! Although only a relatively small subset of students use all of these services.

As you say, however, there are loads of caveats, for example:

1) we don’t know who sits the exams, and we have to manually match pass lists to tutorial attendance lists

2) the selection effect – the sort of student who uses all of our services is probably the student most likely to pass (although perhaps we should argue that those finding the exams tricky are more likely to ask for the extra help!)

Hope this helps you. (And if our tutorial and marking sales double next session then we’ll put the commission cheque in the post.)
Admin

 

[TheArtfulDodger]

Great - thanks for the figures.

Interesting to note the 75% pass rate figure for those doing tutorials/x-assignments/mock exam marking.....

 

[FatSam]

mmmm, maybe there has only ever been 4 students who had time to do all of them!
To be honest, if you can find the time to do assignments, mock and go to a tutorial, you deserve to pass!

 

[Sauny Bean]

Certainly makes interesting reading. This forum has certainly brought to the fore-front previously unpublished statistics.

Another interesting statistic would be to know the proportions sitting for the first, second, third etc time and the proportions of each of these that pass... I'll bet somebody somewhere has already done research on this...

 

[TheArtfulDodger]

Perhaps Acted could use all these figures/stats as a marketing tool highlighting the success rates of people using what they have to offer by subject......