This webinar will introduce and explore the new Student Academic Personal Tutor (APT) Lead roles at the University of Leeds. This session will be co-delivered by Rachael O'Connor (Associate Professor in Legal Education and University Lead for APT at Leeds) and some of the current Student APT Leads. We will discuss why we have adopted this approach to community, student-centred leadership for APT at Leeds, how we got to this point and what we have achieved and planned so far, including some of the challenges and hurdles we have had to overcome. As this is a brand new role, we have had to adapt, be flexible and collaborate to get this work off the ground. Through this webinar, we hope to inspire and motivate other staff, leaders and university teams to consider how they might more meaningfully embed student voices into their own personal tutoring development work, through funded leadership roles.
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).
Students as leaders in personal tutoring: a community-centred model for transformation - Thursday 21 May 2026, 14:00
Rachael O'Connor; Danaé Sandoval Mendoza; Muhammad Hamza Shariq; Zak Kushner; Lewis Jones - University of Leeds
Charting the Path: Exploring the Professional Model of Academic Advising – Pros, Cons, and Best Practices - Thursday 18 June 2026, 14:00
Wayne Ramwell, Francis Joash, Caroline Hoyle - University of Manchester
Join us for an engaging and interactive webinar focused on the vital role of academic advising in fostering student success and institutional flourishment. In this session, we will touch upon the essential goals of academic advising, including supporting the development of ‘whole’ students (Grit, 2023), empowering decision-making (Ramwell and Farrell, 2023), cultivating student agency (Ramwell and Joash, 2025), and nurturing personal and academic growth (Grey and Osborne, 2018).
Through online activities, participants will explore the professional advising model by comparing and contrasting it with others, such as the pastoral and integrated institutional archetypes (Earwaker, 1992). Based upon our experiences, we will explore the professional paradigm’s potential advantages, including targeted specialist support and greater consistency, while addressing challenges, such as resource allocation and potential divides between academic and professional teams, among others.
This webinar will provide participants with a deeper appreciation of different institutional approaches to advising and will offer an exclusive inside look into the innovative professional approach being pioneered within the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester.