Rethinking Tuition: Reflections from the Staff Tutor / Student Experience Manager (SEM) Symposium, 4-5 December 2024

By Max Ward and Charlotte Luckhurst

Introduction 

Retention remains a core focus and continues to drive teaching and learning initiatives within The Open University's Faculty of Business and Law. 

Student Experience Managers (SEMs) and Staff Tutors are regional academics who are responsible for the support and development of Associate Lecturers teaching on undergraduate, postgraduate, and apprenticeships modules. They also undertake a key role within module teams by contributing to teaching, learning and assessment design, online pedagogy, and effective student support. It was in this latter aspect of their role that we turned our attention to tutorials, and their role in keeping students motivated, engaged and on-track to succeed. 

A data analysis of tutorial attendance habits didn’t reveal any particular patterns of attendance, nor did it show any link between tutorial attendance and success on a module. In order to try a different approach, a project team was created consisting of Student Experience Managers and academic support coordinators to project-manage, organise and host an online cross-faculty SEM / Staff Tutor Symposium focusing on our practice and activities to increase “bums on seats” in tutorials. 

Our aim was to bring peers together to discuss their attendance and engagement strategies, as well as providing a richer professional development experience, and a more practical focus for our research into tutorial strategies. This blog reflects on our experience of doing this.

Organisation

The success of our Symposium was underpinned by a clear structure and purpose with clear goals – why we were doing it, what did we want to achieve, when it should take place, who was it for, and what impact we hoped to achieve.

The Symposium was a collaborative effort driven by collective leadership and organisation shared between the SEMS, Staff Tutors and academic support coordinators. 

It worked well because everyone understood their role and the value of their contribution (Batenburg et al., 2013). Tasks and ideas were delegated to smaller teams. Members of the Student Experience Academic Coordinator (SEAC) team, who provide project management support within faculty, supported each team member, creating working groups. Regular check-ins ensured we stayed connected without the need for micro-management. 

Reflections on the event 

Organising the Symposium was an ambitious exercise. It was the first online, cross-faculty conference for regional academics since the 2020 pandemic. From the outset we faced a number of challenges, particularly around securing representation from each faculty, attracting a sufficient number of presenters, and generating interest to maximise attendance. However, through consistent promotion, and collaboration across our working groups, we felt the event exceeded our expectations. All four faculties were represented and we welcomed a diverse line-up of SEM and Staff Tutor speakers over the two days, demonstrating the depth and breadth of the scholarship taking place. 

Maintaining interest across two days was potentially a concern. A simple but effective initiative, advertising upcoming sessions in the chat, helped to maintain momentum from one presentation to the next. Attendance was strong throughout, peaking at 38 during the keynote address on day 1 and maintaining a strong showing for the remaining events. It was notable that attendance tapered towards the final session; this may reflect the challenge of the late afternoon slot rather than a lack of interest, especially given the high attendance in earlier slots. 

The post-event evaluation also presented a challenge. The Christmas closure delayed our evaluation, and the response rate was lower than we had hoped. Even so, the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive and provided some insight into the event’s impact and areas to consider for a future cross-faculty Symposium. 

Finally, the development of an online repository of resources, something we had planned from the outset, proved more technically challenging than we had anticipated. We worked closely with colleagues managing the Staff tutor / SEM Liaison Group site to overcome technical and logistical challenges and the repository is now live, providing a platform for knowledge-sharing beyond the event itself. 

Evaluations

Our post-event evaluations provided useful insights. The feedback highlighted interest in scholarship and the value of cross-faculty collaboration:

77% of respondents supported hosting a similar event. Respondents suggested a variety of themes for upcoming events, including:

Other responses suggested broadening the focus to different aspects of the academic role, including: 

Scheduling of the event emerged as a key issue, with one respondent noting:

Looking ahead / next steps 

The success of the Symposium has informed our thinking as we plan our next event, ‘The Stamp of Quality’, scheduled for 3 and 4 December 2025. Feedback from participants and organisers have highlighted several important lessons that will guide our approach. 

As regards timing and format, while December can be a quieter time in the academic year, we’ve learned that events scheduled earlier in the month are more likely to generate strong interest and engagement. We also recognise that offering more asynchronous content, such as recorded sessions, may better accommodate flexible working patterns. 

Keynote speakers: we secured a keynote speaker with an established reputation in driving access, participation and success within the university. This was well attended and set the scene for a series of high quality and relevant research-focused presentations throughout the Symposium that kept participants engaged. 

Targeted approaches are essential to securing cross-faculty representation. We will contact colleagues on a school-by-school basis using our internal networks of contacts and making use of communications such as faculty newsletters to raise awareness and encourage participation. 

Looking ahead, we are determined not only to improve participation and attendance, but also to establish a framework for capturing and evaluating the impact of the projects shared at the Symposium. This will help to demonstrate the value of the Symposium beyond the event itself and ensure support for future events. 

These reflections will help us build on what worked well while planning to address these key challenges to make our future events even more successful in terms of engagement and impact.