Effective academic tutoring should be proactive and focussed on helping students set and achieve their goals within the confines of the time available for meetings. The R2:D2 process is a four-step process which helps make individual academic tutorial meeting effective and places insights from ASCEND learning analytics at the heart of the process.
REVIEW
Before the meeting, you should take a few minutes to review the notes you made in the previous tutorial meeting and any actions or targets that were set for the student. You should review the student’s engagement profile on ASCEND and, if relevant, their assessment results since the previous meeting. You might also want to review the student’s career plans and recent HEAR activity.
DISCOVER
At the start of the meeting, ask the student if there are any specific areas of concern or issues which they want to explore. If there are, you should make sure that you address these in your discussions.
You should review the actions which the student was set in the previous meeting to identify those which they have completed. Using insights gained from your review of the ASCEND engagement data, identify with the student any behaviours that are detrimental to their learning and progression.
The key to the success of this process is ensuring that students come to the tutorial meeting prepared with a list of actions they have completed/targets they have met, concerns and issues they want to raise, and an idea of new targets they want to set for themselves. How you encourage students to prepare for meetings depends on your discipline. You and your colleagues in your subject area should adopt a consistent process in setting and upholding expectations for students to come prepared.
REFOCUS
During the meeting, your aim is help the student to explore their concerns and engagement behaviours, suggesting appropriate resources and referrals which they can access to help address these. Where appropriate, you should use ASCEND to make appropriate referrals for the student.
You should also guide the student to identify the targets they would like to set for themselves to achieve by the next scheduled meeting.
You may find it useful to adopt a solution-focused coaching approach to addressing both of these issues.
DOCUMENT
At the end of the meeting you should use ASCEND to record the interaction and brief notes of the meeting, along any new actions or targets agreed with the student. You should also ensure that you record the completion of any targets set in previous meetings.
In making notes, remember to respect the student’s confidentiality and that all notes are automatically shared with the student.
The infographic below provides an overview of the R2:D2 process.
