Thanks for the explanation Paula. It is a rather disappointing turn of
events.
I think we all ought to lobby the HEA strongly. All evidence points to the
fact that retention and achievement for HE students are maximised by an
effective tutorial provision, especially when it comes to Widening
Participation.
Is there possibly any funding available from Universities UK? Or HEFCE under
the WP agenda?
________________________________
From: A list to facilitate discussion between personal tutors on behalf of
Paula Hixenbaugh
Sent: Tue 13/11/2007 1:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: FW: Second International Conference on Personal Tutoring and
Academic Advising
Hello,
I can understand the concern about travelling to the USA. Perhaps a little
background would help shed a little light on the current situation. Five
years ago, a few of us at the University of Westminster who were concerned
about the importance of personal tutoring thought it would be useful to get
together people from across the sector to share ideas. We approached the HEA
with this idea and they agreed to support the first conference by admin
support, advertising, bookings etc. We thought there would be a small group
interested in attending. In the event, we had over 130 and had to turn some
away.HEA continued to support personal tutoring. For our second conference,
we invited NACADA to participate and to provide a keynote speaker. This led
to discussions about holding joint conferences. All concerned thought this
would be an excellent idea in order to learn from each other. This was
realised last year with the first international conference (the previous two
had been national conferences). All of the people I have talked to about the
Edinburgh conference agree that it was a great success. It is therefore
surprising that the HEA decided that personal tutoring was NOT one of the
areas that they were going to support. What this means is that this year we
have no official backing from HEA for the conference - indeed if it were
taking place in this country there would be NO conference at all!
Individuals within the HEA have been excellent in providing some advertising
etc to help participation at the Pittsburgh conference.
I think we have clear evidence that personal tutoring is an important topic
within higher education. Although an excellent idea to participate with FETN,
I do think that many of the issues are different in HE. I feel very strongly
that we should have a national annual event - this does not need to take the
place of an international event. If others feel the same way, I would urge
you to contact the HEA and request that they support personal tutoring events
in next year's budget. Meanwhile our association with NACADA means that we
can have a conference this year. For those of you able to attend, I look
forward to seeing you in Pittsburgh.
Best wishes,
Professor Paula Hixenbaugh
University of Westminster
________________________________
From: A list to facilitate discussion between personal tutors
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Daphne Hampton
Sent: 13 November 2007 13:04
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: FW: Second International Conference on Personal Tutoring and
Academic Advising
Hi everyone,
I feel it can only be useful to extend this to HE to increase the range of
opportunities for colleagues to share ideas and good practice on personal
academic tutoring.
Daphne.
Sally Wootton wrote:
I agree that there needs to be a UK based network and opportunities
to share and develop good practice in personal tutoring, particularly as many
in the FE and HE sectors are unable to fund attendance at such conferences
abroad.
It may be of interest to know that the Further Education Tutorial
Network (FETN) held their first annual conference last year which was very
successful and the second conference is being held next week, Tuesday 20th
Nov, at the Sheffield Hilton. The conference is concerned with many generic
aspects of tutoring useful to both FE and HE institutions alike.
I would welcome your views on whether you feel it advantageous to
build on the work of FETN to incorporate Higher Education. Furthermore, if
colleagues would like information regarding the conference next week please
feel free to get in touch.
Sally
Dr Sally WoottonTutorial ManagerWakefield College Tel: 01924 789756
________________________________
From: A list to facilitate discussion between personal tutors
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Huyton, Jan
Sent: 12 November 2007 18:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: FW: Second International Conference on Personal Tutoring
and Academic Advising
I think we need to have some sort of UK-based conference to enable
networking to take place for those unable or unwilling to travel to the USA.
How can we ensure this happens via the HEA? (I'm afraid I am a bit
green on such matters).
Do others feel the same?
Jan
Jan Huyton
CardiffSchool of Education
UWIC
Cyncoed Campus
Cardiff
CF23 6XD
Tel: 029 2041 6499
________________________________
From: A list to facilitate discussion between personal tutors
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Hubert
Sent: 12 November 2007 18:04
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: FW: Second International Conference on Personal Tutoring
and Academic Advising
It seems the HEA's work on Personal Tutoring has left the country!
Last (calendar) year my colleague and I travelled to York for the conference
and found it fruitful. Last (academic) year it was held in Edinburgh in
conjunction with NACADA. As someone whose job-share role is to do this kind
of work and nothing else, I pointed out the difficulty involved in having to
travel approx 475 miles and therefore take an extra day each end of the
conference for people low down the food chain like us. This academic year it
seems from Helen's posting the option is to travel to Pittsburgh for a 3-day
event, and it is not apparent from the HEA personal tutoring web-page that it
is currently planning anything else!
The purpose for the conferences apparently was to "allow academics
and others to discuss key points such as:
what personal tutors are and what they do
what makes them effective and how they work
their relationship to the University and student services more
generally
the history of personal tutoring in the UK."
I guess there was always a tension between role support and the
academicisation of the conferences. Arguably publication is needed for status
reasons in HE. However even if I wanted to fly to another continent or submit
myself to US security clearance, which I don't, I suspect the best I could
hope for if I asked to go to this conference (3 days plus time to travel
between continents plus travel costs plus hotel costs plus conference fee
[not specified]) would be laughter.
We certainly need some training and support for people carrying out
this work as a main or freestanding role - I have a new colleague starting
out next week. If it it exists I would like to know what and where it is.
This list is barely active and the conference seems to be for something else.
Please can someone tell me what I'm missing?!
Paul
Dr Paul Hubert
Student Advisor (job-share)
KentLawSchool
EliotCollege
University of Kent
http://www.kent.ac.uk/law/currentug/lawadvisors/index.html
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