The tutorial system is a method of university teaching where the main focus is on regular, very small group teaching sessions. It was established and is still practised by the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. In addition to attending lectures and other classes, students are taught by faculty fellows in groups of one to three on a weekly basis. These sessions are called "tutorials" at Oxford and "supervisions" at Cambridge. One benefit of the tutorial system is that students receive direct feedback on their weekly essays or work in a small discussion setting. The University of Buckingham also practices the weekly tutorial system since it was set up as England's first private university in the 1970s. Student tutorials are generally more academically challenging and rigorous than standard lecture and test format courses, because during each session students are expected to orally communicate, defend, analyse, and critique the ideas of others as well as their own in conversations with the tutor and fellow students. As a pedagogic model, the tutorial system has great value because it creates learning and assessment opportunities which are highly authentic and difficult to fake. Outside the United Kingdom, a small number of universities have a tutorial system influenced by the Oxbridge system: Omega Graduate School in Tennessee, Williams College in Massachusetts, Honors Tutorial College of Ohio University, Sarah Lawrence College in New York, New College of Florida, and the Bachelor of Arts with a major in Liberal Studies at Capilano University in North Vancouver, Canada. These tutorials are often limited, either restricting them to those on an "honors program", or offering them as a single class rather than being the central feature of the university's teaching. In France, the system of Classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles has a similar system of weekly oral examinations, called :fr:Colle |khôlles, by groups of two or three.
