Any local support offered by you, as a Personal Academic Tutor, and your department is reinforced by a wide infrastructure of support services available across UCL. You should feel confident to refer and signpost to this support as appropriate.
Supporting students as a Personal Academic Tutor
Be an accessible point of contact
Aligning with our organisational values of care and respect, providing regular opportunities to check-in can help ensure student welfare and put in place support if needed.
You will offer and organise at least one meeting (minimum of 15-minutes) per term with your tutees. These can be individual (1-2-1) or in small groups, taking place in-person or online. You might wish to do this using MS Bookings.
You will monitor attendance and keep a summary record of meetings with tutees. You should also make yourself available to tutees, outside of termly meetings, during Office Hours and via email.
Provide academic and professional development support
As a Personal Academic Tutor, you play a vital role in supporting students, the delivery of education and student experience.
You might provide advice on the following:
- Academic (programme/disciplinary related) support – module selection, module and assessment marks, goals, and how to improve.
- Academic skills – study skills, time planning, revision/assessment skills, using previous feedback, writing, presentations, plagiarism and academic integrity awareness. Specialist support is also available on the Student Academic/Study skills hub.
- Professional skills – discipline specific career planning and networking, applying for further study and/or internships. For specialist careers advice, students should consult UCL Careers.
- Engagement and making the most out of their time at university and making friends - how to participate in department social activities; how to become an Academic Representative or join a Department Society or club in the Students' Union; how to find out about research, volunteering and other development opportunities.
Students can expect to receive academic references from their Personal Academic Tutor on request.
Understand the wider support network available to students
You should be aware of support and resources from central UCL services to signpost students where appropriate. For example:
Support for Personal Academic Tutors
UCL HEDS (Higher Education & Development Support) offers a range of training, workshops and resources to staff who are involved in Personal Academic Tutoring.
You can also join the Personal Academic Tutoring at UCL Community of Practice on Microsoft Teams where colleagues share knowledge of and activities for engaging with and supporting tutees.
Personal Academic Tutoring Dashboard
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Personal Academic Tutors across UCL can access a new digital platform to support their role from the start of the 2024/25 academic year. The dashboard will help you to easily find relevant data to help support students and their academic progress. It will pull together data such as tutees’ attendance and academic progress to allow staff to review it in one place.
The dashboard is one of several recommendations arising from the Personal Academic Tutor Review. Read the Personal Academic Tutor Review conclusions and recommendations in full here. We anticipate that, in time, the dashboard will also monitor Personal Academic Tutoring meeting attendance, store meeting records and student references.
Personal Academic Tutor/tutee allocations are managed through Portico. Speak to your departmental professional service education team to check your tutee assignments are correct to get access to your tutee dashboards.
The video below provides a short demonstration on how to navigate the dashboard.
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Template Personal Academic Tutor and Department role descriptors
These template role descriptors are provided to give an indication of the typical responsibilities of Personal Academic Tutors and Department Tutors/ Heads of Academic Support and Student Welfare.
The descriptors aim to help you understand what these roles entail and what their expected activities may include, including to help establish what falls out of scope.
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