Session Outline

Establishing an effective personal tutoring system is one of the top priorities in the education strategy of many higher education institutions. There are different models of personal tutoring systems prevailing; each of them comes with their own specific challenges (see e.g., Lochtie, D., McIntosh, E., Stork, A., & Walker, B., 2018). One common challenge often faced by the authorities and the practitioners are to balance between different needs and resource constraints. A lack of research in this field (Grey, 2021) means we don’t even know the evolving needs of our students in this changing era of online learning.

In connection to our ongoing recearch project (Khatoon, R. & Spencer, C, 2022) on exploring the perception and barriers of accessing academic advising that postgraduate, mostly international, students face, we managed to get some insight on students specific needs assessment. The research is based on a set of students who experience a ‘team of personal tutors’ model, designed initially as a result of resource constraints. Combining this with the existing literature on different models of personal tutoring, it seems very timely to organise a roundtable discussion exploring what are the key factors we should consider while adapting a specific model.

The session will highlight different types of models in action from the literature and some questions that arise from our ongoing research on the needs from students’ perspective. This part of the session will take no more than 10 minutes. Then the delegates will share their own practice and each identify one key challenge of their practice in the present blended learning environment. This part of the session will be for about 15 minutes, where the delegates will note their key points in a collaborative tool (Slido). All delegates will be asked to rank these issues as they are presented. The final part of the roundtable (20 minutes) will be in the form of an action learning session (Mumford, 1996). A couple of the top ranked issues will be presented in the group by the idenifying delegates. Everyone else will participate in the action learning by asking non-leading, open questions, and help the presenters to come up with some actionable outcomes.