Samenvatting

Society and (higher) education have changed rapidly in recent decades. For example, since knowledge has become more volatile, life-long learning has become increasingly important. Higher education itself has been subject of change in the last decade as well. Particularly in the wake of social-constructivist theories, many institutes have transformed their learning approach to a model in which students are involved in different activities at different moments. Thus, student populations are becoming more heterogeneous. For example, they have different tutoring needs. This leads to an increasing workload for teachers. At the same time, students have changed in their expectations. A young generation of students, who grew up with ICT embedded in their daily lives, have become used to the almost instant availability of knowledge and accessibility of people through the internet. The aim of this research paper is to propose a solution for the extensive and diverse tutoring needs that have arisen in these novel societal and educational settings. Peer tutoring is indicated to be a promising replacement for teacher guidance in certain contexts. An important problem in its implementation, however, is how peers should be matched and how the tutoring itself should be organised. Instant messaging is proposed as a possible vehicle for solving these problems. Our study focuses on developing a system for automated allocated peer tutoring through instant messaging. A first version of the system was made available to two groups of students, one in distance education, the other in regular education. A selection of students participated in interviews, providing data on the feasibility and acceptance of this implementation of allocated
synchronous peer tutoring. The interview data indicate that students are positive towards system-allocated peer tutoring, but that the context in which it is implemented is crucial.