Session Outline

In this session we will explore the organisational enhancement of personal tutoring and advising based on our experiences of leading a university-wide Personal Tutor Review at University College London in 2023.

We will start by discussing our experiences of different approaches at other universities, before considering what has enabled some initiatives to be successful, as well as the reasons why many of these initiatives fail to achieve their intended impact. We will focus on the themes of leadership and organisational culture, providing examples of ‘what works’ that we have gathered from across the sector.

As part of this section of the presentation, we will invite colleagues to share their experiences and collate responses and insights through a series of short Mentimeter questions around who was involved in the review design, steering group, key stakeholders, and how stakeholders were engaged, for example. We expect to conclude the first section by suggesting that successful initiatives share common characteristics in that they utilise business management and leadership theories and practices that are effectively adapted to universities, as public sector organisations.

In the second part of the presentation, we will discuss the Personal Tutor Review we have undertaken at UCL in 2023, focusing on the project approach and methodology. We will show how the project has sought to achieve change by encouraging collaboration between academics, professional services, and central services staff and students, and by engaging the entire UCL community in identifying issues and solutions. We will also discuss the value of a practical evidence-based approach for achieving change and how this is often more successful than a focus on advocating for one sort of personal tutor model or pedagogic approach. We will share some of the early insights of our work to date, focusing on our recent Personal Tutor Review Report. We hope this discussion, and personal insights from us as project leads, will be useful to UKAT members who are also currently thinking how they might enhance personal tutoring across their organisations.