Tutorial strategies

Establish ground rules

Rules to govern the tutorial group are best established in the first meeting . This creates an opportunity for students to become familiar with each other and sets the tone for future meetings. Tutors and students can participate in the development of the rules that will govern civil class room discussion and active participation.

Ground rules should be developed by the whole group

This ensures that all will be committed to the rules and that they will be rules that students will adhere to. Offer advice and suggestions for ground rules if there are none forthcoming.

Revisit the rules periodically

The rules may need some changes made with regard to any specific problems encountered in a particular group or as a result of a particular topic.

Monitor the rules

Put the onus on the students for ensuring equal and fair treatment.

Debates

• Debates are a valuable tutorial tool for enabling exploration of complex and controversial topics.
• Each student presents a three or four minute talk based on research and has to convince the other students of a number of points. This requires prior reading, preparation and thought. At the same time other students are not falling victim to long, boring and often shallow presentations that can often be the case in student led seminar presentations.
• The entire class can have a productive role in a debate in chairing, time keeping and adjudicating. These are valuable skills to learn and develop. The more formal style of the debate ensures that preparation is done by at least some of the tutorial group. Students need to be appraised of exactly what is required by each member of the team. Those who are not initially actively participating can be asked to formulate some questions of the panel.
• Students an be assessed on a brief evidence-based written statement of "My opinion since participating in the debate". If the topic is controversial, students learn how to use evidence, learn how to make a commitment to a position using evidence, get to explore all the positions on an issue without feeling that the tutors is expecting them to arrive at a single position or their preferred position. A sense of pressure to think as the tutor does can engender resistance when ideas challenge a student's personal values and life experiences.

Groupwork

An important factor in student success in university studies is opportunities for students to work in groups. While many academics would like to include group work, they often hesitate because of bad experiences when groups fall apart and fail to complete the tasks or leave the work to one or a few students who then feel badly put upon. There are many advantages to including some group work in the assessment design, but it must be thoughtfully managed.

Increase in meta cognitive awareness

When students have to explain and negotiate their contributions to a group project it can assist them to develop and increase their meta cognitive awareness. That is, in low risk contexts they begin to know what they know and know what they have yet to learn or find out.

Development of generic skills

Group projects can provide opportunities for developing generic skills such as: organisation, negotiation delegation, team work, co-operation, leadership, following etc.

However, students don't automatically pick these up through being involved in a group project, these skills that must be explicitly taught and critically evaluated.

Students need to be explicitly aware of such skills to intentionally develop them and to include them in their personal attributes in job applications.

Development of social networks and relationships

A distinguishing feature of the history of successful university students is that they have strong social/learning networks with other students. Group work is useful for encouraging social interaction for new students who might be isolated; especially for shy, rural and overseas students.

Development and contribution of individual capabilities

Group work can be a means for acknowledging and utilising the strengths and expertise of individual students. They can contribute their unique capabilities in completing a group project or performance.

Greater depth and breadth in final products

When a small group of students explores a topic in a limited time frame there are opportunities for their collaborative efforts and the products of their studies can go to greater depth and breadth than if they work individually.

Authentic approach to learning

Learning and production of projects in the real world rarely requires individual effort. While individuals may have specific responsibilities most projects and enterprises require marshalling a mix of expertise and responsibilities.

Group work in university projects can be used for real world work on authentic real world projects and to harness opportunities to work in multidisciplinary teams as learning communities exploring specific themes or issues.

Field Trips

A field trip is a structured activity that occurs outside the classroom. It can be a brief observational activity or a longer more sustained investigation or project. Field trips offer an opportunity for students to see the relationship of theory to the real world. While field trips take considerable organisation, students can be involved in the process as a way of deliberately developing their organisational skills. They can also design their own individual field trip in their own time. Whatever the situation it is important to:

• be clear about what the field trip will accomplish
• consider the costs involved
• consider the health and safety issues
• prepare students for the learning
• account for the diverse needs and limitation of the students involved
• have a debriefing session for students to share their learning when they return to the university.