Session Outline

It has been recognised that the role of the personal tutor is related to successful student outcomes (Yale 2019), however, it has also been noted that students do not always feel confident in approaching their tutor (Owen 2002) which can lead to poor grades and eventual withdrawal from their chosen course. Regular contact with a personal tutor has been shown to have a positive impact on the student experience and outcomes throughout the university journey (Ghenghesh 2016).

In 2018 Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) rebranded academic advising to become personal tutoring. Upon conducting investigations to confirm what the role of the personal tutor was structured group sessions to one tutors personal tutoring groups, embedding study skills relevant to each year group. This was run as a pilot study with the view to evaluation and roll out across the whole Diagnostic Imaging (DI) programme. It was hoped that the introduction of the sessions would help develop the tutor/tutee relationship as well as providing key study skills for the students. In addition, group sessions would encourage peer learning with students in the group.

This session will look at what we implemented across the DI programme at GCU and the resultant evaluation of these sessions from the perspective of both the tutors and tutees as well as demonstrating how the evaluation was acted on to further develop the sessions to address the needs of the tutors and tutees.