Personal Tutor perspectives on the implementation of academic families within the personal tutoring structure to encourage near-peer support and build a sense of community

Personal Tutoring is key to supporting students in Higher Education. The Personal Tutor supports their tutees through meeting individually or in groups, resulting in lone working of the tutor. A new mixed group meeting was implemented within the personal tutoring structure, where two or more tutors collaborated to support their tutees in their ‘academic families’ group meeting. Semi-structured interviews with eight out of 47 Personal Tutors ranging from new teaching fellows to senior academic staff, revealed this collaborative approach was beneficial. Personal Tutors found reassurance in their approach to tutoring tutees and shared valuable insights. The academic family structure offered an opportunity to share facilitation, enabled getting to know other staff members and led to additional insights to their tutees from their paired tutor that could not be offered alone. However, with more participants to the meeting, scheduling and larger group sizes posed challenges. Overall, the academic family structure fostered a positive experience and the tutors valued sharing practice and building a tutor network. With time and learning from the experience it was felt this was an opportunity to develop a sense of belonging for both staff and students within the programme.