Session Outline

When you consider the specific themes of this, and previous, UKAT conferences they always implicitly raise consideration of a larger question - ‘what is the purpose of personal tutoring?’ Personal tutoring is complex and multi-faceted, serving a range of different purposes, at different times and in different institutions. Numerous books (e.g. Drake et al, 2013) and journal articles have been devoted to different approaches to academic advising/personal tutoring, and the need to identify a vision and clear outcomes for the process (Campbell, 2008). It is our conjecture that being able to clearly articulate the different purposes of personal tutoring can help inform the development of vision and outcomes, student interventions, required competencies and tutor professional development priorities.

We are currently developing a tool to visualise the full spectrum of purposes for personal tutoring. The aim of such a tool is to provoke discussion amongst tutors, to characterise individual or institutional perceptions of the process, and to articulate connections between identified purposes, intended outcomes, tutor competencies and student interventions. Such a tool will help institutions revising their personal tutoring provision to craft a process aligned to its intended goals and graduate outcomes, as well as informing the professional development of individual practitioners.

We invite you to participate in this interactive, dialogic workshop and to co-create this tool with us. We will present our thinking and a draft of the tool as it currently stands. We invite you to think this through with us in small group discussions and to critique our thinking. This will provide an opportunity for you to reflect on your own ideas and beliefs about the purpose of personal tutoring, which will help us to develop a tool that is both meaningful and truly representative of the perspectives of those involved in personal tutoring. Engaging in this reflection will encourage you to adopt a more intentional focus in your professional development to help you become the kind of personal tutor you would like to be.

Bibliography

Campbell, S. (2008). Vision, mission, goals and program objectives for academic advising programs. In Academic advising; A comprehensive handbook (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Drake, J. K., Jordan, P., & Miller, M. A. (2013). Academic advising approaches: Strategies that teach students to make the most of college. John Wiley & Sons.