It Really Made me Question and Pause to Think Supporting Staff to Support Students as Advisors of Studies: A Programme of Staff Development Sessions

TY - CONF

T1 - It Really Made me Question and Pause to Think Supporting Staff to Support Students as Advisors of Studies

T2 - University of Dundee Scholarship Conference 2025

AU - Einion, Alys

A2 - Smith, Julie

A2 - Duke-Williams, Emma

A2 - Holme, Richard

A2 - Srinivasan, Sundar

A2 - Spark, Gordon

A2 - Martindale, Linda

A2 - Kinnear, Susan

N1 - © 2025 The Author.

PY - 2025/10/7

Y1 - 2025/10/7

N2 - Advisers of Studies (AoS) in the School of Health Sciences play a key role in supporting students to stay on course, and to achieve their goals, whilst setting and maintaining standards for professional and academic behaviour (Tippetts et al, 2022). SHS recognises the great importance of this role, and the impact it has on all staff. Activities are underway within the School to support staff in order to support students, and improve the student experience, and one of these was a suite of Staff Development Sessions. Emergent issues and the complexity of student needs were identified as requiring staff to seek out and acquire knowledge on an ad-hoc basis to meet individual needs. This presented a significant time and work load for AoS, Year Leads and the SAoS. Promoting the quality of student experience was seen as a priority, through providing support to AoS to build confidence and efficiency in performance of the AoS role. This project was implemented using the Plan, Do, Study, Act Model (PDSA) (Taylor et al, 2014). These sessions were offered as an optional development activity to ALL Advisors of Studies within the School to build confidence in this role and offer the chance to refresh their understanding of the impact of this role. Evaluation Forms were created for every session, and the results of the evaluations analysed, collated and reported to the School Leadership group. Themes included: Shared Experiences; Empowerment; Thought-provoking; Practical Knowledge; and Mode of Delivery.

AB - Advisers of Studies (AoS) in the School of Health Sciences play a key role in supporting students to stay on course, and to achieve their goals, whilst setting and maintaining standards for professional and academic behaviour (Tippetts et al, 2022). SHS recognises the great importance of this role, and the impact it has on all staff. Activities are underway within the School to support staff in order to support students, and improve the student experience, and one of these was a suite of Staff Development Sessions. Emergent issues and the complexity of student needs were identified as requiring staff to seek out and acquire knowledge on an ad-hoc basis to meet individual needs. This presented a significant time and work load for AoS, Year Leads and the SAoS. Promoting the quality of student experience was seen as a priority, through providing support to AoS to build confidence and efficiency in performance of the AoS role. This project was implemented using the Plan, Do, Study, Act Model (PDSA) (Taylor et al, 2014). These sessions were offered as an optional development activity to ALL Advisors of Studies within the School to build confidence in this role and offer the chance to refresh their understanding of the impact of this role. Evaluation Forms were created for every session, and the results of the evaluations analysed, collated and reported to the School Leadership group. Themes included: Shared Experiences; Empowerment; Thought-provoking; Practical Knowledge; and Mode of Delivery.

KW - Shared Experiences

KW - Empowerment

KW - Thought-provoking

KW - Practical Knowledge

KW - Mode of delivery

U2 - 10.20933/100001450

DO - 10.20933/100001450

M3 - Poster

Y2 - 2 September 2025 through 3 September 2025

ER -