Aftertheawayday… 1.Intro 2.Enhancing 4 th year projects (Terry) 3.The Personal Tutor system (Roger) 4.Next steps

Introduction ‘When academics talk, good things happen’ Awayday generated/unearthed many good ideas Need for follow-up Can’t leave this to School Committees Proposal:  Regular informal meetings of academics across group boundaries  Consider in depth 1-2 ideas with someone leading discussion  Refined ideas (maybe) written up and submitted (to School Board?) for formal consideration

Personal Tutors Idea: Long term link between student and staff. Student has one person who knows them long-term, can guide, write references, etc.

Personal Tutors Reality: Which one’s s/he? Personal tutors know few of their tutees. 12 is a large number

Arrangements There are supposed to be 4 meetings / year Week 0. Relic of old days when school registered students. Now done by student online. Need vanished/changed ‘Guidance’ in choosing options largely superfluous Very hard to arrange. Week 0 full for students and staff Other 3 meetings tend not to happen (50%?).

Scrap it? No! Fix it.

Proposal 1.Allocate 4 students/year, not 12/3 years. 2.First meeting in Week 1, not week 0. 3.Meetings in group, individually on request 4.Personal tutors = 1 st year Academic tutors

Problems?Plusses 4-year expertise Elitism Efficiency Personality clashes Harder to level teaching loads More info available Commonality More status for tutorial There are other safety valves. Need to ensure they work Probably a good thing. Giving many tutorials is soul-destroying

Where next? Do we want to do it again? Do we want a blog as well/instead? How often? (Weekly/monthly/termly…) Time and day of week? Next meeting date/time/venue and topics