Personal tutoring
Personal Tutoring
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 framework and activities
To support transition, students should be seen by their personal tutor during Welcome Week or the first week of teaching at university. To implement this model, the Deputy Director of Student Services, Nahida Shabbir, is leading a workstream on personal tutor allocation and is working with senior planning and operations managers and relevant faculty colleagues to ensure that this happens in a timely manner.
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.
A dedicated student engagement team will actively monitor student engagement rates, and where there are concerns, should be the first point of contact with students. 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.
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 Community Career 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
Course Community Career 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 Community Career 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 Community Career 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 Community Career 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
Personal tutoring is relational
Eileen Pollard explains Manchester Metropolitan University's personal tutoring policy and its impact.Personal Tutoring Refresher
Personal Tutoring Five-Minute Explainer
In this five-minute explainer, Dr Eileen Pollard gives a brief overview of resources available for Personal Tutoring at Manchester Met.Please note that My Five Year Plan has changed to Future me plan.
Personal Tutoring Resources
Report and Support
Report+Support
Manchester Met is committed to providing a safe and supportive campus environment. Report it here if you experience, or someone else experiences, any form of discrimination, hate incident or sexual violenceUKAT
UKAT
The UK Advising and Tutoring Association (UKAT) is the sectoral voice and leading association for personal tutors and academic advisors. To find out more about the UKAT Professional Framework for recognition, visit their website.And why not find out more about UKAT’s Top 10 Tips for Advancing Equity in Personal Tutoring! Developed collaboratively by Josie Gabi, Manchester Metropolitan University and the UKAT Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity Special Interest Group.
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:
An institution wide purpose statement for personal tutoring as a starting point for local adaptation as needed.
A set of design and evaluation questions that can be applied to existing or proposed personal tutoring models to interrogate their likely impact.
A set of resources that support programme teams in designing Personal Tutoring Systems for their context.
A Personal Tutoring Policy that sets out the executions for Personal Tutoring at a high level across Manchester Met.
Detailed findings:
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.
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.
Personal tutoring is seen as a low status activity by academics that they feel ill equipped to perform and that is under resourced.
Students value and want the Academics that teach them to be their Personal Tutors.
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.
Successful Personal Tutoring Systems designed and operationalised for particular subject and discipline specific contexts.
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.
Meaningful interactions between students and their tutor can enable students to feel supported, motivated, and sometimes, inspired.
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.
It is unclear how personal tutoring and auxiliary support services provide a cohesive experience.
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.
Personal Tutoring Contact
Personal Tutoring Contact
If you have further questions about Personal Tutoring, please contact Eileen Pollard. Click on the profile card for more details.