Session Outline

It is axiomatic that this academic year has been challenging for staff and students. The Higher Education sector has experience Covid-related disruption at short notice and this has led to students having a disjointed, isolating and somewhat confusing educational experience at times. In these circumstances, it is no exaggeration to say that that the role of Personal Academic Tutor (PAT) has the potential to ameliorate their students’ university experience. As part of the University of Birmingham’s Framework for Educational Resilience the institution introduced weekly online group personal tutorials for all taught students aiming to provide students with an inclusive, friendly, kind, familiar and reassuring regular weekly point of contact. One of the key aims of the revised approach was for the tutorial to be the focal point of an open and learning academic community, mirroring the work of Dahlberg, Moss and Pence (2013) using ‘meaning making dialogue’ to direct change extensive all stakeholder perspectives have been comprehensively canvassed during the planning and implementation of this pivotal project. The proposed interactive session will:

• Share the comprehensive evaluation of the project
• Explore the potential of the group tutorial to develop peer learning and mentoring
• Illustrate the alignment of potential tutorial model and revised graduate attributes using a reconsideration of Boyer’s models of Scholarship (1990, Hill, 2010)

Session Content

1. An explanation of the reconfiguration of the group tutorial, situated in a compassionate curriculum (Hao, 2011; Gilbert, 2017)
2. Stakeholders voices, a selection of vignettes portraying the student, PAT and Senior Tutor perspective : Interactive q and a session ‘hot seating’ stakeholders
3. Existing and potential models of peer learning within and beyond the reconfigured group tutorial (Clark and Andrews, 2011; Carragher and McGaughey, 2016; Lofthouse et al.,2020)
4. Using ‘meaning making’ dialogue and critical discourse analysis to reconceptualise the tutorial model in a research-intensive education (Boyer, 2010; Matthews, Mclinden and Greenway 2021)