The increased and widened student participation in higher education, especially in Science and Engineering courses, has had a profound effect on the teaching practice and the ways in which the curricula can be effectively delivered. Many traditional practices of teaching and learning have not been sustainable without adaptation. Consequently, new instructional innovations have constantly searched and introduced a typical example being different information technology based or computer supported learning environments. Common to above- mentioned innovations is that they often imply deeper commitment and different kinds of social competences both from teachers and students compared to traditional methods. This kind of qualities are, however, not self- evident and they does not appear automatically. Instead, several studies report students' academic failure and anxiety caused by the complexity of new learning environments. Several studies concerning the students' learning skills have indicated that the students' difficulties in their courses and even dropping-out often happen due to lacking or non-integrated study methods. Even at the university level, the difficulties may concern very basic skills such as reading or writing skills. On the basis of empirical findings, the present paper argues the importance of intervention programs performed near the students and teachers to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Firstly, the present paper argues that an intervention program consisting of workshops concerning reading and writing skills and performed near the students can help university students to develop specific learning strategies such as brainstorming, cloze testing, sense inference, keyword and main idea detection, quoting and outlining. Secondly, it is argued that intervention programs fostering discussions among academic staff about their own teaching practices are very useful. Establishing a dialogue between peers can be a first step towards a genuine learning community. In sum, we suggest that the exchanges of experiences on teaching between the teachers can improve teachers' instructional skills and, indirectly, enhance students' learning as well.On the basis of the results, the students' intervention program produced an increase of 32.5 % in the students' performance compared to the experimental group. On the other hand, the discussions between faculty members created the beginning of teaching communities. Future activities have already been organized, such as thematic seminars to be held at the University of Aveiro in April 2003, in Glasgow (September 2003) and Turku, Finland (January 2004). In conclusion, relatively simple interventions can make a significant difference in the teachers' teaching practices and in the students' study performance. New workshops will be carry out during the 2002-03 academic year.