Personal Tutoring

At Manchester Met relational pedagogy is central to our approach to learning and Teaching. One vehicle for this is our personal tutoring system which has been designed to provide an integrated, student-centred experience, in line with the University’s Education Strategy.

We have recently updated some of our personal tutoring approaches and introduced a student engagement team to facilitate a more collaborative approach between academic and professional services colleagues in the delivery of personal tutoring. The student engagement team will signpost students to specialist services, where required, or refer students to their Personal Tutor where there are academic concerns. This approach is supportive of a model that will result in the co-delivery of Personal Tutoring by Professional Services and Academic Tutors to allow students to benefit from the expertise that both partners can bring.

Personal Tutoring can be provided in a flexible and accessible way, with opportunities for students to engage either face to face or via Microsoft teams, in groups or individually; although we would recommend that the first meeting with tutees is in groups.  Faculty spaces are used as a bespoke Personal Tutoring Hub to ‘check in’ or signpost opportunities for students making this the primary point of access. Each Faculty will have two Senior Student Engagement Advisors that will spend part of their time in the faculty space, providing support and assistance to Personal Tutors where necessary.

Please note our central policy remains the same, and we would encourage colleagues to explore this alongside the resources on these pages for further support and guidance. 

Personal Tutoring

  • Personal tutoring framework and activities

    The role of the Manchester Met personal tutor is to work with tutees to support them in progressing through their time at university. Activities will come under three categories we call the 3Cs. These are: 

    • Course: Course-focused support for academic progress.
    • Community: Community building through encouraging participation in a learning community and signposting to support services when required.
    • Career: Career planning support towards an identified career path.

    Here are some suggestions for activities that will tend to happen in each year of an undergraduate degree.

    Year one

    Course  CommunityCareer

    Appropriate check-in points around assessment and feedback and support for resits (where appropriate)

    Pre-arrival welcome. Establish contact with all students (Home and international students) once they have a confirmed place. Share contact details and details of arrangements for initial personal tutor meetings

    Review of career readiness material

    Advice point around option choices

    Induction – Plans for establishing personal tutor meetings in the first two weeks

    RISE opportunities

    Support for attendance (at appropriate place in Attendance Monitoring System)

    Ongoing communication or contact throughout the year, signposting to other services where appropriate

    Future me plan

    Year two

    CourseCommunityCareer

    Appropriate check-in points around assessment and feedback and support for resits (where appropriate)

    Pre-arrival welcome, contact details and information on first meeting

    Continued development of Future me plan

    Advice point around option choices/dissertations

    Ongoing contact and communication throughout the year, signposting to other services where appropriate

    RISE opportunities

    Year Abroad or Work Placement

    Course  CommunityCareer

    Advice regarding option choices/ dissertations where appropriate

    Plan for ongoing contact throughout the year

    De-brief meeting to ensure reinforcement of career benefits

    Final Year

    Course  CommunityCareer

    Appropriate check-in points around assessment and feedback

    Pre-arrival welcome, contact details and information on first meeting

    Continued development of Future me plan

    Support for attendance (at appropriate place in Attendance Monitoring System)

    Ongoing contact and communication throughout the year, referral where appropriate

    Introduction to alumni schemes/networks

    Post-graduation

    Course  CommunityCareer

    Potential to connect to current students as mentor

    Connection point for alumni activity where appropriate

    Provide references on request, potentially inform of career support opportunities post-graduation

Student sat with a drink in hand, speaking to someone else

Personal tutoring is relational

Eileen Pollard explains Manchester Metropolitan University's personal tutoring policy and its impact.

Personal Tutoring Resources

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Overview

The personal tutoring framework at Manchester Met

The Personal Tutoring Policy (staff only) sets out foundational values, principles and expectations of personal tutoring at Manchester Met. The personal tutoring framework used in the policy is based on findings from an Office for Students project, and identifies the systems and processes required for the creation of a personal tutoring system that provides an integrated, student-centered experience, in line with the University’s Education Strategy

Watch Marta da Costa give an overview of personal tutoring at Manchester Met. 

Personal Tutoring Projects

  • Manchester Met-based research 

    The OfS funded (2017-19) ‘Intervention for Success Personal Tutoring Project’

    Personal tutoring is often seen as ‘the answer’ to a question that is in fact ill-defined and that has a myriad of different interpretations by students and staff. From our institutional-wide work (underpinned by a soft systems methodology), we proposed the following actions that were implemented:

    1. An institution wide purpose statement for personal tutoring as a starting point for local adaptation as needed.

    2. A set of design and evaluation questions that can be applied to existing or proposed personal tutoring models to interrogate their likely impact.

    3. A set of resources that support programme teams in designing Personal Tutoring Systems for their context.

    4. A Personal Tutoring Policy that sets out the executions for Personal Tutoring at a high level across Manchester Met.

    Detailed findings:

    1. In this institution, there are no clear descriptions of the purpose of personal tutoring or collective understanding about what the purpose is, making it hard to ‘sell’ to tutors and students, and to evaluate for impact.

    2. Personal tutoring is often seen as the ‘answer’ to a myriad of key higher education challenges such as progression, employability, and differential attainment but to address these issues it is under-resourced.

    3. Personal tutoring is seen as a low status activity by academics that they feel ill equipped to perform and that is under resourced.

    4. Students value and want the Academics that teach them to be their Personal Tutors.

    5. Some personal tutoring models are judged by staff to be effective, based on reflections of their own experiences of delivering them, but with little empirical evidence to support evaluations.

    6. Successful Personal Tutoring Systems designed and operationalised for particular subject and discipline specific contexts.

    7. A sample of 130 Manchester Met students reveals that: 11% did not feel they needed or wanted a personal tutor; 18% felt the personal tutoring ‘system’ they experienced gave them what they needed and was not in need of specific improvement; and 71% of students suggested some improvement was required with half of these perceiving no or limited value in the personal tutoring system they experienced.

    8. Meaningful interactions between students and their tutor can enable students to feel supported, motivated, and sometimes, inspired.

    9. Students can spot when the personal tutoring offer is insincere, this could be because staff are not committed to the role or because it is under resourced relative to its stated aims.

    10. It is unclear how personal tutoring and auxiliary support services provide a cohesive experience.

    11. An analysis of data from the Manchester Met Student Awards for teaching staff for the category of Best Personal Tutor identified three facets of a fruitful relationship that can make students feel supported, motivated, and sometimes inspired:

    • The tutor cares about me.
    • Helps me improve my work.
    • Values me as a learner.

    Publications:

    Prowse, A., Vargas, V., and Powell, S. (2021). Design considerations for personalised supported learning: implications for higher education, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 45:4, 497-510.

    Powell, S., and Prowse, A. (2022). A framework for personal tutoring: system and activity. In: B. Walker, A. Stork, and D. Lochtie (Eds.). The Higher Education Personal Tutor’s and Advisor’s Companion: Translating theory into practice to improve student success.