Role of Personal Tutor in Professional Education - Introduction

Discussion section of unpublished research - 

Williams M, 1999, ‘Exploring the Role of the Personal Tutor in Nurse Education, Department of Education, University of Surrey, unpublished.

Research into the understanding of the needs of students and perceptions of the tutors (within nurse education) helped to tease out the issues that are important to both students and tutors, with regard to this role (Williams 1999).

The main influence on the tutors’ perception of this important role is the past experience, both as a tutor and as a student. Both, the positive and negative experiences of support from a personal tutor, have been mentioned, along with the development of personal philosophy of education and commitment. Very few tutors look on other tutors as role models for the development of this role. The other big influence is the time constraints, particularly with regard to differing needs and motivation of students. This means that the provision of this service is based on the demands of individual needs. This, though a suitable approach, is based on reaction to the situation rather than a proactive approach and decision to provide individualised support. Some point out the influence of changes within nurse education and the nursing profession itself. This includes the move into higher education and the use of modular system in delivery of courses.

While the role appears to have developed through experiential learning on the part of the tutors, learning through role models has been limited. It is interesting to note that lack of literature is obvious, as that has not been mentioned as a factor influencing perception of the role. It appears that changes have been made in a reactive approach to role development, instead of using proactive methods to develop what is stated as an essential service by both the tutors and the students. This is surmised through the changes made in the functioning of personal tutors. In the past, the personal tutor had both academic and pastoral support roles to play. The personal tutor was generally available and accessible on site. 

With the move into higher education and amalgamation of different schools, the tutors travel between sites so availability and access have decreased. The introduction of a modular system brought about a split of pastoral support role from academic support role. For, the academic support, the part relating to the actual knowledge base, is now referred to the module operator while the personal tutor supports academic skills. This split, however, cannot be made in reality so students hold tutorials with module operators, and obtain complete academic support. This, along with time constraints, has brought about a change in the way we support our students. Philips (1994) agrees that, the academic support is the main role of the personal tutor, however it stems from some pastoral care of support and friendship. This will mean bringing back together the pastoral care and academic support within the role of the personal tutor.

The role as identified by the university does not to take into account this dichotomy. Therefore, there is likely to be a conflict generated between what is asked of the tutors, their own perception of the role and the limitations due to afore mentioned changes. So the high response rate, to my research, can be taken to be an interest by the tutors to have clarification and guidance regarding their role as a personal tutor as suggested by Earwaker (1989a, b).

The changes have thus affected the service the students get, and when students from various sites meet, there is an exchange of ideas, regarding the course as well as the support provided. So interest of the students can stem from two factors. First, the students could, have noted a difference in provision of this service, between sites. Second, students are unsure of what support the personal tutor can provide to them because for academic content they have to see someone else. The provision of support is generally discussed with students during tutorials and evaluation of the modules.

Preparing for Viva

Submitting the thesis was a very moving experience. Actually seeing the size of the hard copy had me stunned. I mean I am finding it hard to pick one copy and walk around! OK OK I know that is because I still have problems with my muscles but you know what I mean. Also never having handled such a big document as an e-copy I found that my editing was not as good as I had assumed it to be. So I got stuck right into editing on the hard copy. It was also an opportunity to read the complete thesis and re familiarise myself with all the important points.

Then I had my mock viva ...... while I do know my work inside out and the mock was being carried out by my supervisors it was still a daunting process. They were familiar with the research projects where i worked collaboratively to gather my data and so in my mind much more likely to find weaknesses. But then I do know that the examiners were most likely to find issues to clarify as they are not familiar with the projects. I also find that collaborative approach to PhD is not so common with the UK universities but much more common in Europe.

There are many advantages of carrying out collaborative research. It allowed me to work with an experienced research team on real projects. It gave me the confidence of working within the team while developing my research skills. The collaborative approach further allows for strengthening the findings of my research as they get incorporated into project reports and also publications related to the two different projects. This approach also makes it feasible to carry out those kinds of researches for a PhD which would otherwise not be possible to do due to reasons of financial and logistical implications. This approach allowed me to compare two very different synchronous online learning tools which are cutting edge software.

What came as a good surprise that when answering the questions in the viva I was to make extensive reference to my thesis. I was not expected to answer from memory. Rather my memory was more to ensure I got to the appropriate parts of the writing. This will mean the need to at least have a few tags for the key points so I can go right to the answers. That will be done with the second reading of the thesis. Then I think I will be as ready as I ever will be. I just hope there is not a lot of re writing suggested by the examiners. Most likely it would be with regards to clarity of linking the findings to examples and of explanations. Fingers crossed......... So another week to have butterflies and anxiety before the d-day...

Preparing the thesis for submission

Yes there has been a big gap between my last blog and this one but I have been busy getting my thesis ready for submission. The art of good writing is repeated editing and rewriting of the work.... Rupert's words of wisdom. I had to return to the methodology chapter as now even I could see the flaws in the structure of the chapter and lack of connection to the process of research it was supposed to show. I returned to the original idea of choosing the methodology and then identifying major issues that arose through use of collaborative approach to carrying out the research.

I also went on to identify how each type of data gathering tool and analysis approach was going to be addressed in each experiment. The brief discussion was then linked to the relevant chapter. This actually made the links that were missing, and which actually improved the continuity of the writing. The next issue of linking arose during the discussion chapter where the links needed to be made back to the experiment chapters so that the statements could be traced back to the findings. It is hard to do that without repeating the information from previous chapters. Also Rupert felt that some sort of summary was necessary in relation to each question. Already I had reached the allowed word limit. After some thinking I developed key findings bullet points at end of each research question and then used those key findings to show the similarities and differences in the comparison chapter.

This collaborative approach to developing a PhD is fairly new to my education institution. Also using two ongoing research projects made writing of the thesis unconventional. It just does not follow the regular steps of thesis writing. However, I finally managed to complete it and submit it for examination. I am very happy about it and also a little surprised when I actually saw all that writing in print. Hard to believe I did it all. I am proud that I have completed this work. I feel I have managed to overcome all the odds thrown at me. Personally, I have been ill for all the time I have been doing the study. Social and emotionally I have had problems of sisters getting cancer and dying, as well as family not understanding my own health problems. Work colleagues also were not very supportive except my then manager Mary. When I asked for sabbatical to complete my writing the management decided I could not possibly be at the stage of writing and refused to give me time. So I feel proud that no thanks to my near and dear and work colleagues I have survived and achieved so much.

The next step is the viva. I have a mock one soon and will then put up about preparing for the viva. The basic understanding is to know what you have written and can identify examples when answering the examiners questions. Right now I am chilling as I have had the flu and its snowing outside.

Learning by Doing - carrying out research

The literature review carried on through most of the next year or so. The next phase was writing my research methodology chapter. Now of all the writing this was the one I was dreading the most! Why? Am not sure but it could be that I always thought research methodology theory was dry and complex and hard to grasp. Maybe I had set up barriers for myself. I had difficulty with this chapter even when I did my masters. I used to shy away from teaching the research process as well. However I did make effort and support masters students and so kept myself from totally avoiding research.

I was thinking that I would be using the action research process as the plan was to roll of the online workshop I had developed. It would be evaluated and redelivered. The initial pilot would allow me to see if the tools of real time discussion as well as the data gathering were appropriate. But Rupert suggested that maybe I should be looking at the design based research approach as I was specially developing the experiments to gather my data. The idea was that this would be a formative experiment and then a series of workshops as further formative studies with the final summative one. I went around asking colleagues if they knew anything about this research methodology as this is comparatively new approach having been first developed in 1992. I found a few papers and started reading about it. Having made up my mind to learn about the research process and various theories I managed to read and understand various literature. Generally I found that I carried out lot of learning by myself and used my tutorials to clarify my understanding with discussion with Rupert. It was liberating to find that I did understand most of what I was teaching myself. I wrote up the chapter and left it to one side mistakenly thinking I had done a good job!!! Little did I know. But at this time I got engrossed in carrying out the experiments and coming across difficulties which mean that I had to rethink not only for my research but also in terms of the Argunaut project.

The workshop got participants from all over the world but things came unglued when people and to download and install specific tools which were MSN and Digalo. The workshop was of a short duration and so time could not be spent in preparing the participants to use the tools and to form a learning community. Despite these limitations it was a useful pilot and helped in developing further experiments. It also helped to gather initial information about my research questions. Again working in a research team was helpful in understanding how research projects are developed and gain the skills of carrying out research.

I took part in developing the experiments and data gathering. This participative approach within collaborative research is very good as I truly learnt working with the experts and took on more and more responsibilities. I found it helpful to write the first draft report of the analysis. Getting feedback from my supervisors who were team leaders for the research allowed me to gain confidence in my writing and analytical skills. During the Argunaut project I had yet another change of second supervisor as Maarten went to work in another university. I was introduced to Nasser Mansour who took over the research project from Maarten. Nasser is meticulous about detail and has passed on this obsession to me. The reports were written up and a lot of my thesis form parts of various reports of the Argunaut project.

Then I had to begin to think what linear text display tool would I use instead of MSN? Luckily at this point the research team got involved in another project called InterLoc. This was a linear text display tool and was ideal for my research. It had formed part of my literature review but at that time I did not have an opportunity to implement it. But with the InterLoc being run as a research project I could again use the opportunity to gather data relevant for my research questions from the experiments set up. I followed the same process as for the Argunaut experiments to gather and use the data for my research. The report writing followed and this time felt a little bit easier as I had got more skillful at writing. Not that I did not need the feedback for polishing the reports before submission.

These experiments formed three of the chapters of my thesis. These were written and rewritten a few times. The data is fairly wide and address many issues. How do I organise and structure the chapters to provide an easy read of the findings and also which will ensure all the research questions are addressed?

Baby Steps on the Road to PhD

The biggest hurdle in starting a PhD is finding the topic. This has to keep you interested, motivated and also be something that is worth pursuing and needs to be researched. Remember that the research has to make contribution to many areas such as knowledge, practice and research methodology if possible. So just having a topic is mind was only the first part to getting myself registered on a PhD.

Then started the delicate and difficult part of working through what exactly I wished to research within the topic. I am interested in so many things and there is a limit to what can be achieved within a PhD. This is where I needed the support of my supervisors. Rupert Wegerif was my first supervisor and Patrick Dillon was the second supervisor. This initial period is important also in developing a relationship with your supervisor. You need to be able to understand each other and appreciate the each other and so know give and get support that is beneficial. It was interesting to meet and talk about what I wanted to do, write up drafts of proposal and keep reworking the research questions to get a better focus. I was able to get across to my supervisor that I was not a scatterbrain but just interested in too many things. I needed the discussions with him to work out the specifics. The writing also had to be discussed as my style is totally different from my supervisors. At one point it was an eureka moment when we understood that I was very much grounded in praxis while he was very much theory oriented.

Also a new thing for both of us was that I would do a collaborative PhD. There was a research project being carried out in the School of Education. This was the Argunaut Project an European collaborative research project set up to develop software that would support facilitator in moderating synchronous online tool called Digalo. I was to work with the research team and participate in the development of the experiments, data gathering as well as analysis and report writing. The data that was relevant to my research questions could be collected at the same time as some of the data gathered for the project was also necessary for my research. Then there were some aspects of research questions which had to be specifically incorporated into the data gathering.

This was a very challenging and exciting new experience for me. Working at a completely different level from what I was generally used to. It suddenly made me realise that I had not been intellectually stimulated in the last few years. I had got into a rut intellectually and academically. The first stirring of interest was when I started teaching myself the concept and principles of using technology in learning and teaching. I was invited to submit a proposal for an international conference. Presenting at that conference seemed to click on a switch and I knew what I needed to do to improve myself and challenge me.

The first thing I had to do as the research team member is develop an online workshop with two different tools to carry out the real time discussions. At this point my second supervisor was changed to Maarten De Laat as he was the research project leader in the department and was better placed to support me. This started my exciting journey into the world of research. Strange how I always thought research to be boring…… I think I was naive. The developing of the workshop as a pilot study was not very difficult as I have developed similar modules in my work. The refining of research questions and beginning of literature review was what had me tearing my hair out… There was so much to read and so much to include in the literature review – pedagogies of online learning and teaching, facilitating learning online and the tools available both linear text display tools and graphically and spatially displayed text tools. I actually learned so many tools during this period and realised it was fun to learn about these different software which I could use in my work.

Writing the literature review was the next important hurdle. It is easy to be descriptive and just identify what different theories explain. Having to be clear about what the theory says and what are the strengths and limitations of each one is where the critical thinking needs to be applied. You need to bring together all the literature and arrive at your own theoretical conceptual framework to show your understanding of the theories. This part has always been hard for me as I need to spend a lot of time thinking before I can develop a conceptual framework. This writing had to be refined and revisited and reedited many times….. Rupert says rewriting is the secret to good writing!

Embarking on a journey of PhD

When I finished my MSc many of my colleagues and friends asked when are you going to start you PhD? Well my immediate response was that I needed a rest after 5 years of part time student to complete my MSc as a distance learning student. Most of that time, I was also working full time with a very heavy workload. I just wanted a break from studying and chill out. During the fourth year of my degree I had a bad car crash. Luckily I did not have a lot of physical injuries but the car was a write off. This made me look at life differently and I decided to work part time. So the last year of my masters was actually pleasurable and easier to do. So you can see I was not in a great hurray to get into another intensive course of research right away.

Also I know that I needed to have a topic for my research that would hold my attention for at least 3 to 4 years. From experience I can see that I have managed to change what I do about every 3 years. I like a challenge and working on something new. To get the new course or learning and teaching strategy going, work out the problems and get it running smoothly is so very satisfying. Once it is running smoothly I find it becomes a routine and I get restless to find something new to sink my teeth into. So I started keeping an open mind for a topic that was gripping.

A few years ago I became involved in the development of a flexible learning health and social care degree. The flexibility was of choice of modules based on their individual professional development needs, flexibility of choice of learning and teaching strategy and flexibility of time to do the degree. This was an exciting time as I was bringing together varied skills I had achieved during the masters program. Having studied at a distance I was well aware of the needs of students learning at a distance and also what was required as a tutor supporting these students.

I started running modules as open learning, some as blended learning and some eventually as e-learning. This required understanding the technology used to support online learning courses. One of the things I found hard was the lack of student motivation to carry out asynchronous discussions using the course activities and discussion board in the virtual learning environment. I had experience with using social networking tools and so decided to see if I could use the chat tool in the virtual learning environment to get students to discuss issues as well as provide support and point of contact between the students and with me. This was something most students were unfamiliar with but they were willing to try it. My familiarity with use of chat tools like ICQ, MSN and Yahoo messengers allowed me to facilitate a discussion in the chatroom for the virtual learning environment.

In 2005 I got an invite to submit a paper for the International Conference of Technology Knowledge and Society. It was going to be held in Hyderabad India. Now this was exciting as I used to live there for years and did all my basic education there. I also had trialled this new online real time discussion and support for my students so I decided to submit a paper which got accepted. So far I had gone to conferences but they had been in UK with the higher Education Academy and Nurse Education Tomorrow. So this was going to be my first major International Conference. The whole experience gave me a tremendous confidence boost and sowed the seeds of the start of my PhD.

I wanted to carry out research on synchronous online learning discussions tools and facilitation of learning when using this approach. So off I went to my colleagues who were supporting PhD programs excited about my finally finding an area of research that would keep me motivated and interested. Sadly I think I caught them on a bad day but I saw firsthand how a teacher can de-motivate someone in one sentence….. ‘so what if u have finally found a topic to do a PhD?’ I was very disappointed and left feeling totally disheartened but my husband said to look at other universities where I could do my studying.
I talked to our friend Andy who works at Exeter University and asked him if he could introduce me to someone who I could talk to as they did run PhD as a distance learning course. Thus I met up with Patrick Dillon who was enthusiastic about my research topic and felt it was a good and new area of education which needed research. I filled my forms and became a part time student again. The first meeting with my supervisor Rupert Wegerif was good even though I was nervous. It was nice that I felt comfortable and found him to be friendly. Thus started a long relationship with Rupert, Patrick, Maarten de Laat and Nasser Mansour (the last three being my second supervisors in that order).

I will continue with this journey which was exhilarating, scary, stimulating, motivating and intellectually challenging from start to finish in the next blog………….

EARLI 2009 conference

We flew into Amsterdam on 23rd of August in an 8 am flight. The weather in Amsterdam was beautiful warm and sunny. We were staying at a hotel near the museumplein. Since the film wasn't ready we sat at an outdoor cafe having hot chocolate, some lunch and warming ourselves. After that we walked down the museumplein towards Rijksmuseum and sat on the benches outside watching the world go by. According to the sightseeing books Rijksmuseum is closed for renovation for the next two years. The room in a hotel and large windows and the sun came in all day making it extremely hot which meant keeping the windows open fully all the time. In the evening we had dinner at an Indian restaurant called Mayuar just on the edge off Leidesplein. The food was fairly good but the best thing was the desert which combined kheer and kulfi.

On Monday we checked out the route to Vrije University where EARLI 2009 conference was being held. Since it was warm it continued on a lazy day. In the evening we found yet another Indian restaurant called Dosa. The food was reasonably good as this was the first time I found dosa in Amsterdam.

On Tuesday I got to the conference and got my pack and badge. The session started from 8:30 AM and finished at 6:45 PM. This is a very long day but I managed to attend many sessions. Most of the time an early start was difficult as I need time and medication to get moving in the morning. It was good to meet and talk to people with similar interests and thinking. I was part of a team presenting one paper and leading a second roundtable discussion as well.

While I was attending conferences Paul did some sightseeing of open-air large sculptures, ArtZuid exhibition, one of which could be seen on our way to the University. most evenings we found different restaurants, an Indian called Anmol where the food and service where average, a Mexican the food was okay but not actually Mexican as I understand it. on the last day we went to a Spanish restaurant just a block away from the van Gogh Museum with the service and the food were very nice. On Friday and Saturday nights there were massive thunderstorms which brought the temperature down a little bit.

Sunday came too soon and 10:30 AM saw us back in Stansted. At least we had sunshine for the morning. Now it is back to work and daily life with no plans for any more traveling in the near future.