Not everyone can necessarily dwell in possibility (a fairer House than Prose), but March can often feel like a time of new possibilities and new opportunities.
The inexorable march of spring typically invites us to reflect on our own professional growth and ambitions, as well as the loosening of the strictures of winter.
At the University, it’s a time where different spaces on campus may come to life, where the accumulations of the academic year can look to be released, and where newly established capabilities can coalesce.
Our two Picture This scenarios this month explore the boundaries of support and agency, inviting consideration of personal tutoring and assessment design.
Scenario 1
It is a bright March morning (the clocks are not striking thirteen), and Alex is attending a personal tutor session. Alex is in their first year of their undergraduate degree programme and has attended a number of personal tutor sessions and found the sessions are useful to them.
Their personal tutor has covered some of the practicalities around transition to university, expectations around the course and has now suggested that the focus of their sessions is on embedding aspects of disciplinary thinking.
The personal tutor has encouraged Alex to focus on some of the leading theorists and practitioners in the discipline and think about the skills which their programme is trying to develop in the course of their study.
Alex describes their situation as:
Since I came to the University I’ve had time to practise and apply some of the skills which we’ve developed in the units so far. I’m not really sure what my plans are for in the future after my degree. Obviously I want to do well on my course, but I wonder whether I have a sort of general-skills approach, rather than the view of ‘oh I wish I could see that concept in the way that person is able to intuit it’. There are some people on the course who just seem to have a feel for the subject, so while I appreciate the intentions of my personal tutor, I don’t know if it’s better to focus on some other topics in personal tutor meetings.’
Scenario 2
Nadia is an academic member of staff who is in their second year of working at the University and has a role as a Programme Director for an undergraduate programme. Students have completed BLUE unit evaluations and Nadia has their own reflection from having taught units on it and conducted annual reviews of the programme.
Nadia says:
The first year I would say I was very much focussed on the operational aspects of my role, addressing quality frameworks and ensuring the delivery of the programme was smooth and effective. If I was being honest, I’d say I leaned more into the managerial aspects of the role rather than the leadership side of things.
We’ve had a number of changes coming through with Gen-AI and the new Structure of the Academic Year. In the second year, I’m looking to be more strategic in my approach. There are a number of areas of best practice which I think we need to sustain and we need to consider more of the current pedagogical research in our discipline. I seem to spend a lot of time in my mind reflecting on terms like ‘distinctive, innovative and competitive. I have a supportive School Education Director, however a lot of the thinking about different assessment approaches is complex and I wonder what will happen if I start pulling at that thread…’
We’ll follow up on these scenarios with a reflection blog in a few weeks’ time from different people with different backgrounds from across the university.
If you would like to share any of your reflections on these scenarios to this blog, you can contact us to share your thoughts, or post any comments below. Further details about different ways to contribute are outlined in our ‘call for contributions’. With thanks to Julian Kendell and Dr Joel Ross for the advice on this month’s scenarios.
We’d also welcome any suggestions of scenarios to our April edition, which has the theme of ‘ambition’.
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