Structured personal tutoring to engage undergraduate students on professional programmes

The personal tutor has long been considered as pivotal to the student experience of higher education. Undergraduates on professional healthcare programmes with a practice (work) based learning component face the additional challenge of learning whilst working. For these students continuing personal tutor support is crucial. Indeed to maximise student retention and achievement whilst at the same time ensuring that students are offered opportunities to develop the requisite academic and professional knowledge, skills and attitudes, such support should be actively and strategically embraced. This seminar aimed to provide insights into the issues surrounding adoption of a structured model of personal tutoring in a research led university. Drawing on the experiences of academics involved in personal tutoring and using cases from undergraduate professional health care programmes as exemplars, the seminar explored the following key issues:* The challenges of personal tutoring in the era of mass higher education;* Supporting and operationalising changes in personal tutoring in a research led institution;* The aims and benefits of a structured approach to personal tutoring in professional healthcare programmes;* The 'emotional labour' (Hochschild 1983) of personal tutoring.