In all these activities, the University is aware of the importance of its graduates being able to act as professionals right from the start of their careers. This means that they must be aware of their own skills and abilities, and be able to reflect on their own personal development. Accordingly, City University places an emphasis on students’ personal awareness, and the use of personal tutorials with experienced and professional staff members is a key part of this. The University’s record in student support is good, and the opportunity to further develop this in conjunction with the experience gained on the PADSHE project was welcome.
The University has strengths in students’ interactions with experienced and professional members of academic staff. Involvement with the PADSHE project gives the University the opportunity to develop a framework for Personal and Academic Records (PARs) to supplement this and to strengthen students’ own awareness of their skills and abilities.
In both areas, members of the internal working group have met with staff and students to discuss the components of the present tutorial systems and have considered how PARs could be tailored to meet their specific needs. Both areas have identified that PARs will be of benefit to both staff and students, fusing many elements that already exist into one coherent system.
PARs in the Department of Radiography is a particularly interesting area as students are involved in meetings and assessment with both academic staff within the Department and hospital-based lecturers during clinical sessions at their placement. The Department clearly has strong established support systems, but PARs will be of particular benefit to both staff and students in this Department in compiling one clear overview of student progress throughout their time at the University. The Department is currently piloting various documentation and after further review, will bring this together to form the Radiography PAR.
The School of Mathematics comprises two departments: the Department
of Mathematics and the Department of Actuarial Science and Statistics.
Again, each Department has strong support systems for it students but the
documentation element of PARs will bring a further sense of coherence to
the systems. The need for some staff support and training has already been
identified by members of staff and students within the School and workshops
will be scheduled accordingly. Each Department operates a slightly different
personal tutorial system and one of the challenges of the PARs pilot is
to provide more unity within the School while still maintaining the element
of flexibility required in each area. To this end a common framework has
begun to be developed and will be further considered within the School
in the coming weeks. Each Department will also be piloting individual pieces
of documentation at tutorials before the end of term which together with
the framework will be brought together to form the PAR.