One year after launching a new Academic Tutoring model, De Montfort University reflects on its journey from design and implementation to embedding and evaluation.
In this follow-up webinar, we share key insights from the first year of practice, exploring how the shift from personal tutoring to academic tutoring has influenced the student and staff experience. We will examine what has worked well, the challenges encountered, and the adaptations made in response to student and staff feedback.
Drawing on institutional data, evaluation findings, and practitioner experiences, presenters will discuss how academic tutoring has contributed to a more proactive, developmental, and learning-focused approach to student support. The session will also explore the ongoing balance between pedagogic and pastoral responsibilities, highlighting how clear referral pathways and partnership working can enable tutors to focus on supporting students' academic growth while ensuring appropriate wellbeing support remains accessible.
Participants will gain practical insights into leading and sustaining tutoring transformation, measuring impact, supporting staff through change, and building a culture of meaningful student engagement.
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 webinars-team@ukat.ac.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).
Academic Tutoring in Practice: Reflections, Impact and Lessons Learned One Year On - Thursday 17 September 2026, 14:00
Dr Dionne Barton and Erick Morataya, De Montfort University
When Capable Students Still Struggle: Using Behavioural Self-Awareness in Academic Tutoring - Thursday 15 October 2026, 14:00
Charles Vaughan, MindPilot Ltd
Many students enter Higher Education with the ability to succeed, but still find the transition to more independent learning difficult. Challenges with planning, prioritisation, task initiation, workload, focus and confidence can affect engagement long before they appear as missed submissions, poor attainment or requests for support.
Academic tutoring and advising conversations can play a powerful role in helping students make sense of these challenges. However, students are often given advice before they have fully understood their own learning behaviours. This can make support feel generic, reactive or difficult to act on.
This webinar explores how behavioural self-awareness can provide a more useful starting point for academic tutoring conversations. Drawing on research linked to executive function, self-regulated learning, cognitive load, flow and chronobiology, the session will consider how students can be helped to reflect on three practical questions: how they organise their work, how they manage workload and momentum, and how they protect focus and use their energy effectively.
The session will draw on the development and early use of the StudySMART Profile as a practical example of how structured behavioural reflection can support students and tutors. Early feedback suggests that this approach can help students describe their study habits more clearly, recognise unhelpful patterns earlier, and arrive at conversations with greater clarity about what might need to change. Tutors and advisers can also gain a more consistent, focused and developmental starting point for discussion.
Participants will leave with practical ideas for using behavioural reflection to support transition, strengthen academic tutoring conversations, and help students move from general study advice towards more personalised and deliberate action.
If you would like to try the StudySMART Profile for free before this webinar, please use the following link and enter the code: UKAT26W
https://studysmart.mindpilotconsulting.com