The benefits of good tutor-student relationships in the first year

Abstract

Teacher-student relationships (TSR) are an important influence on the student experience at university. Existing research, predominantly with lecturers, highlights that these relationships have academic and affective dimensions. Studies demonstrate good TSR increase student motivation, engagement, and learning. The current study adds a student voice to this topic, focussing on their views of tutoring staff, who undertake much of the face-to-face teaching in universities. The qualitative study followed 19 students through their first year at an Australian university. The students identified four characteristics of a ‘good’ tutor: helpful, caring, likeable, and hands-on. Students talked about multiple benefits of having a good tutor including increased help-seeking, studying harder, more interest in class, and improved well-being and belonging. The importance of the tutor role is underestimated and institutions would do well to better support these valuable staff.

‘A sense of community and camaraderie’: Increasing student engagement by supplementing an LMS with a Learning Commons Communication Tool

“…The findings also illustrate how easier communication with staff and other students fostered engagement via the pathways to engagement. An increased sense of belonging, to the course itself and the wider discipline, was most evident, aligning with other studies which have found that interaction and relationships foster belonging (Kahu and Picton, 2019;Maunder, 2018;Picton et al, 2017). Our findings support McInnerney and Roberts (2004) who argue that greater use of synchronous communication tools is necessary to effectively build community in online spaces.…”

Lost in transition: Student journeys and becoming—Deliberations for a post‐COVID era

“…Not surprisingly this sense of approachability was most apparent when cohorts and class sizes were small but when the class sizes grew students felt more alone and struggled to find support within the academic maze. These findings resonate with those of Kahu and Picton (2019), who identified that the good tutor supported student engagement and fostered a stronger sense of belonging.…”

Undergraduate business students' learning experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic: Insights for remediation of future disruption

“…In many universities, while students have access to lecture recordings ( Dona et al, 2017 ), it is the face-to-face tutorials, workshops, practicals and studios that facilitate more fruitful opportunities via real-time discussions with educators, and which strengthen and contextualise students' learning and application of content and concepts ( Fang & O'Toole, 2023 ; Kahu & Picton, 2019 ; Senali et al, 2022 ). Face-to-face tutorials also facilitate interactions among students where they learn experientially from each other and together, participating in conversations and designing and resourcing group work ( Topping et al, 2017 ).…”