UKAT’s free monthly webinars, Tutoring Matters, are designed to support all those engaged with personal tutoring and advising, whether that be as a practitioner, leader or in a related support role. They will also act as key professional development for those undertaking tutoring and advising roles. Facilitated by various key professionals associated with UKAT and collaborative in nature, the webinars will cover important issues for academic advising. 

If you would like to facilitate a webinar, please get in touch. We are also open to suggestions from members about topics they would like to see covered. To make a suggestion, or for any other queries regarding the webinars, please email webinar@ukat.uk. 

You can book onto the webinars and find out further information by clicking on the webinar titles below (booking will go live approximately one month before the webinar is due to take place).

A Practical Toolkit: Eight Steps to Identifying, Supporting and Celebrating Students who are Parents -  Thursday 15 June 2023, 14:00

Andrea Todd, University of Chester

For the first time this year, for 2023 entry, UCAS forms are asking students to identify whether they have parental responsibility.  We will, for the first time, have consistent data on our incoming student-parent cohorts.

 But how will we support them?  What will we put in place to ensure our student-parents feel they are a genuinely valued cohort, whose wellbeing, sense of community, retention, progression and success matter to us?

 Unlike many cohorts attending university under the Widening Participation agenda, student-parents are not considered by the Office for Students to be an underrepresented group. They are not, therefore, required to feature in institutional Access & Participation Plans, meaning that student-parents, and their needs, frequently go undetected by their institutions and departments.

During this webinar, Andrea Todd from the University of Chester will take us through the findings of her research project, undertaken during 2021 and 2022, which (a) sought to understand what student-parents need from their institutions, (b) devised interventions to support these needs, and (c) garnered student-parents’ views on whether these interventions worked for them.

Andy will take us through the thinking behind her practical, yet research-informed, publication ‘A Practical Toolkit: Eight Steps to Identifying, Supporting and Celebrating Student-Parents’ (available on the Resources page of the UKAT website) and will share her personal experiences of providing student-parent specific tutor support and of establishing and moderating a departmental peer support group, both of which have been welcomed by student-parents.

Participants will leave the session with practical ideas as to how personal tutoring and related interventions can assist in identifying, supporting and celebrating this highly motivated cohort.

Do you have an idea for a webinar topic?

We want these webinars to be interesting and relevant to practitioners, so if you have an idea for a topic you would like to see covered in a future webinar, please use this form below to send us your suggestion. All suggestions are reviewed and consider by the webinar team.

You must supply a suggested topic for the webinar
Please supply a valid email address