Session Outline

Belonging By Design

Elaine Brown (Anglia Ruskin University)

Belonging is variously defined as relatedness, connectedness, feeling accepted, valued, and supported (Tinto, 2017; Strayhorn, 2012; Thomas, 2012; Goodenow, 1993). Personal tutoring supports belonging (Yale, 2019) by forming relationships with tutors and facilitating relationships with peers (Grey & Osborne, 2018; Thomas, 2012).

The nature of these relationships seems removed from strategic drivers such as continuation and auditable proxies of success (Tinto, 2017) through which personal tutoring is reduced to a system of processes enacted by staff – i.e., personal tutoring as a service (Gilmore and Pine, 1998).

Perceiving personal tutoring as a service is not uncommon (e.g., Yale, 2019; Stuart et al, 2021) but tends to focus on the what and typically overlook the why (Hassenzahl, 2010).

Subjective feelings of belonging are not objective outputs of process - experience matters (Yale, 2020; Thomas, 2012). Explicitly framing belonging as the outcome for students offers the opportunity to constructively align personal tutoring with its why rather than its what, but to do so requires a student-centred approach.

User Experience Design (UXD) is human-centred philosophy and a set of tools used to create interactions with software interfaces; UXD focuses on the experience of the interaction rather than the functions of the software.

A review of personal tutoring at Anglia Ruskin University proposed an institutional model of proactive Personal Development Tutoring (PDT) to create relationships, feelings of value and support (Taylor et al, 2018) for all undergraduate students and their tutors. This presentation will describe a case study in which User Experience Design (UXD) was used frame the implementation of an institution-wide system of Personal Development Tutoring (PDT) constructively aligned to belonging.

Developing Dialogue: a collaborative project of student and staff colleagues to improve the student experience for care-experienced students at Edinburgh Napier University

Pamela Calabrese, Peter Tormey, Sharron Vass, Thomas Dalli, Thomas; Tom Evans (Edinburgh Napier University)

Universities across the United Kingdom deliver outreach and widening access initiatives to promote greater representation of the student community. Typically, such initiatives are set out within respective institutional Access and Participation Plans or Outcome Agreement publications as is the case in Scotland. The central aim of these documents is to publicly state an institution’s commitment for underrepresented groups to access, participate in and successfully progress within higher education. Traditionally, however, the monitoring of success for widening access initiatives are commonly limited to the quantitative reporting of data which, although an important and effective evaluative measure, without qualitative inputs from learners can be deemed incomplete.

The Developing Dialogues projects brings together students, teaching and support staff representing the personal development tutor community and widening access team with the shared aim of learning from those with lived experience to improve the learning experience and academic engagement of learners from one particular widening access group, namely learners from care-experienced / care leaver backgrounds. Paid interns with care-experience shaped the project from the initial inception stage and through methodology and analysis stages.

In this lightning talk, we explore the advantages of student-staff collaborative working in the context of tutoring learners and how using biographical inspired inputs from current learners with lived experience enriches traditional approaches to evaluation and enhancement of student support. This talk will outline the benefits and challenges of student-staff collaborations from student intern and staff perspectives and will share project findings relating to accessing and participating in higher education for care-experienced students.

Evidence based empowerment in advising and tutoring

Iris Burks, Dominique Waterval (Maastricht University)

We signal that an increasing amount of students experience low self-authorship over their learning process and career path. With sky high ambitions, the increasing demand to develop an individual path and little idea of how to reach those ambitions, students experience high stress levels.

During the spring of 2022, Maastricht University will be conducting a literature study in a wide variety of academic fields (education, HRM, psychology) with the intention to identify effective tools to assess students’ empowerment and interventions that can be used in a one-on-one mentoring, advising or tutoring setting to enhance student self-authorship. During this Lightning Talk, we will share with you our first preliminary results.