UKAT offers conferences, webinars and other events throughout the year, both online and in various locations around the UK. These events provide professional development opportunities for personal tutors and academic advisors who are invested in helping students achieve academic success.
The UKAT Annual Conference is the major event of the year and provides an opportunity to learn in general sessions from experts in the field, gain knowledge and review best practices with colleagues in concurrent sessions, and participate in interactive workshops. The variety of learning formats also may include poster sessions, exhibitor presentations, and formal and informal networking opportunities.
Thursday 21 March 2024, 14:00 - Thursday 21 March 2024, 15:30
Online
Alison Raby, University of Lincoln
The webinar focuses on a study of Chinese students in UK HE and the relationships that they have with their personal tutors. It explores the experiences of the relationships between Chinese students at a post-1992 UK university and their personal tutors.
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was chosen to explore the lived experiences of the students and their personal tutors in depth. Ten Chinese students were interviewed (most twice) using semi-structured interviews. In addition, three personal tutors, one Chinese tutor in a Chinese university and one international administrator were interviewed. The themes considered in this webinar are the nature of the personal tutoring relationship, expectations of the relationship, barriers to the relationship, other supportive relationships, experiences of culture, and tutor and tutee emotions.
The findings of the suggest that Chinese students typically enjoyed a beneficial relationship with their personal tutors in China; however, on transitioning to the UK, many had a less beneficial relationship, and some were unaware of the function of the personal tutor, or even that they had one. The reasons for this will be explored in this session and new models will be proposed for the relationship networks between Chinese students and their personal tutors. The implications are that personal tutors may need to be more proactive in their support of Chinese students, and practical suggestions will be offered on how the relationship could be made more beneficial to both students and tutors.
Monday 8 April 2024, 08:00 - Tuesday 9 April 2024, 15:30
University of Greenwich, London, UK
Our students need good personal tutors and advisors like never before in these challenging economic and social times. We therefore want this to be a radical and constructive conference in setting a vision for the future of personal tutoring that will place it at the heart of student success strategies in UK Higher Education.
The overarching theme for the conference is Personal Tutoring in the Spotlight. Contributions are being invited that will speak to our specific ‘spotlight’ themes:
1) Spotlight on… Student voices. Contributions produced by and/or with students who can share their perspectives on and views of personal tutoring and advising, what they value, and what they need.
2) Spotlight on… Collaboration. Contributions considering personal tutoring and advising as a collaborative practice between academic and professional services colleagues, for example focusing on professional boundaries, policies and systems, and case studies of transformative collaborations.
3) Spotlight on... Student core skills. Contributions reflecting on how personal advising and tutoring can shape and develop students’ core academic. professional, and personal skills, and in doing so address study skills and awarding gap issues.
4) Spotlight on… Professional development. Contributions thinking about how we can better prepare academics and professional services staff to be the best tutors and advisors they can be, whether through in-house training programmes or other institutional or grass-roots schemes.
5) Spotlight on… Advocacy. Contributions demonstrating how individuals, teams, departments, or institutions have advocated or might advocate for the centrality of personal tutoring within UKHE, for example through innovative policies, embedding tutoring into recruitment procedures, cutting-edge scholarship and digital materials, or any other ways in which personal tutoring and advising is advocated for on the local, national, or international stage.
Tuesday 11 June 2024 - Wednesday 12 June 2024
Abertay University, Dundee
The European Access Network (EAN) conference 2024 has now opened its call for papers. Scotland will welcome the first EAN conference since the pandemic with an event entitled 'New Beginnings for European Access - Designing Equity, Transitions and Student Success'. Dundee will be the host city and we invite proposals for talks, workshops and posters for this engaging and welcoming international conference that will run from 11-12 June at Abertay University.
The conference asks you to share your practice and/or research excellence across one or more of theses themes:
Preparation - how we prepare, set expectations, support and enable our students to successfully transition through well designed processes.
Diversity - how we reach out to and enable students from all backgrounds to progress to and succeed in tertiary education.
Partnerships - how schools, colleges, universities and other agencies and organisations are working together to support student and institutional success.
We hope to welcome talks from schools, colleges, charities and universities who are innovating and learning from their work in the access space as we all strive to enable student success. We really look forward to reading your proposals and to welcoming you to the sunniest city in Scotland - Sunshine is guaranteed!
Events in italic typeface are not provided by UKAT but are 3rd party events which may be of interest to UKAT members