Session Outline

In 2021 as part of the University of Birmingham’s Framework for Educational Resilience (carefully designed to reduce student stress and increase student support during the global pandemic) 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 (2007) using ‘meaning making dialogue’ to direct change. This reconfigured group tutorial provided a unique shared academic social space breaking down barriers between students and faculty. Thus, creating an opportunity to introduce a series of co-constructed student and staff equality and diversity resources and activities for tutor and tutee to undertake together.

This session aims to:

• Explain the Framework for Educational Resilience, and outline the intuitional implementation dilemmas
• Provide some examples of online collaborative inclusive student and staff resources
• Share the comprehensive evaluation of the project
• Explore the potential of the group tutorial to create an inclusive learning community
• Consider next steps for the institution and sector

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
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 as a key component to create an inclusive education (Boyer, 2010; Matthews, Mclinden and Greenway 2021, Moffat, 2020)