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UKAT offers conferences, webinars and other events throughout the year, both online and in various locations around the UK. These events provide professional development opportunities for personal tutors and academic advisors who are invested in helping students achieve academic success.

The UKAT Annual Conference is the major event of the year and provides an opportunity to learn in general sessions from experts in the field, gain knowledge and review best practices with colleagues in concurrent sessions, and participate in interactive workshops. The variety of learning formats also may include poster sessions, exhibitor presentations, and formal and informal networking opportunities.

Upcoming Events

  • Why doughnuts are sometimes good for you: A model of student support

    Thursday 18 January 2024, 14:00 - Thursday 18 January 2024, 15:30
    Online

    Wendy Garnham, University of Sussex

    In current times, the call for greater, more personalised support for students in Higher Education as arguably never been greater. The range of support required has diversified alongside our student body. The Doughnut Model is a model that was designed to address the increasing need for student support in the Central Foundation Year Programmes at University of Sussex. It has enabled us to reduce withdrawal rates, increase success during the resit period and facilitate the number of students accessing wider support services. In the webinar, we will share not only what the model looks like but also some of the detail about how it functions.

  • UKAT Annual Conference 2024

    Monday 8 April 2024, 08:00 - Tuesday 9 April 2024, 15:30
    University of Greenwich, London, UK

    Our students need good personal tutors and advisors like never before in these challenging economic and social times. We therefore want this to be a radical and constructive conference in setting a vision for the future of personal tutoring that will place it at the heart of student success strategies in UK Higher Education.  

    The overarching theme for the conference is Personal Tutoring in the Spotlight. Contributions are being invited that will speak to our specific ‘spotlight’ themes:

    1) Spotlight on… Student voices. Contributions produced by and/or with students who can share their perspectives on and views of personal tutoring and advising, what they value, and what they need.  

    2) Spotlight on… Collaboration. Contributions considering personal tutoring and advising as a collaborative practice between academic and professional services colleagues, for example focusing on professional boundaries, policies and systems, and case studies of transformative collaborations.

    3) Spotlight on... Student core skills. Contributions reflecting on how personal advising and tutoring can shape and develop students’ core academic. professional, and personal skills, and in doing so address study skills and awarding gap issues.

    4) Spotlight on… Professional development. Contributions thinking about how we can better prepare academics and professional services staff to be the best tutors and advisors they can be, whether through in-house training programmes or other institutional or grass-roots schemes.

    5) Spotlight on… Advocacy. Contributions demonstrating how individuals, teams, departments, or institutions have advocated or might advocate for the centrality of personal tutoring within UKHE, for example through innovative policies, embedding tutoring into recruitment procedures, cutting-edge scholarship and digital materials, or any other ways in which personal tutoring and advising is advocated for on the local, national, or international stage.

    The closing date for submissions is 24 November 2023

    For further information and how to submit, see the full Call for Proposals .

  • European Access Network Conference 2024

    Tuesday 11 June 2024 - Wednesday 12 June 2024
    Abertay University, Dundee

    The European Access Network (EAN) conference 2024 has now opened its call for papers. Scotland will welcome the first EAN conference since the pandemic with an event entitled 'New Beginnings for European Access - Designing Equity, Transitions and Student Success'. Dundee will be the host city and we invite proposals for talks, workshops and posters for this engaging and welcoming international conference that will run from 11-12 June at Abertay University.

    The conference asks you to share your practice and/or research excellence across one or more of theses themes: 
    Preparation - how we prepare, set expectations, support and enable our students to successfully transition through well designed processes. 
    Diversity - how we reach out to and enable students from all backgrounds to progress to and succeed in tertiary education. 
    Partnerships - how schools, colleges, universities and other agencies and organisations are working together to support student and institutional success.

    We hope to welcome talks from schools, colleges, charities and universities who are innovating and learning from their work in the access space as we all strive to enable student success. We really look forward to reading your proposals and to welcoming you to the sunniest city in Scotland - Sunshine is guaranteed!

Events in italic typeface are not provided by UKAT but are 3rd party events which may be of interest to UKAT members