YEAR 4
SUPPORT

Personal Academic Tutoring

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PROVIDING A REGULAR

SUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENT

TO DISCUSS THE PROGRAMME

Throughout the Betonica Medical Herbalist Training Programme you will work with a Personal Academic Tutor (PAT). From September to June, you will partake in up to 6 termly development meetings via telephone or online. The aim of these meetings is to provide a regular supportive environment to discuss the programme, your studies and clinical cases.

PLEASE NOTE

  • If you haven’t already been assigned a personal tutor to guide you through your studies, you will be assigned one after the first seminar weekend.

  • It is not possible to request a change of tutors except under exceptional circumstances.

  • Meetings, and the pro forma, provide general academic and pastoral support for students and are not confidential. Core admin staff can access these and are used for administrative purposes such as payment of PATs, and to track PAT use etc. Therefore you should not share confidential information at meetings unless agreed with your PAT in an appropriate manner.

  • Your final meeting of the year should be an Annual Review.

Please direct any queries to the Head of Personal Academic Tutors, Fiona Gannon.

WHAT TO EXPECT

  • A regular development meeting should take no longer than 30 minutes.

  • You are required to see your PAT at least once per term, and have the option of taking up to 6 meetings in an academic year.

  • A good way of preparing for your development meetings is to use the reflective learning questions to help you focus on the learning that you have completed.

    You may have been set tasks to complete or questions to answer by your personal tutor; have your previous development meeting proforma ready for your meeting.

    Please also ensure that you sign off your meeting pro forma after every meeting in a timely fashion.

  • Your PAT tutoring is part of professional development. As such you should respect your PAT’s time and cancel or reschedule at least 48 hours before the meeting, where possible. If you do not attend and have not communicated with them, you will lose one of your PAT sessions, as the PAT will still need to be paid for their time.

  • Depending on your personal tutor, and yourself you may have a particular way you would like to conduct the meetings, e.g. by landline as you have no mobile signal in your house. Or via Skype because you have a good Wi-Fi signal but no mobile etc.

    We recommend using a free form of communication, e.g. free minutes, a time of day when calls are free, or Facetime, WhatsApp Video, Google Teams, Zoom, or another free internet calling service.

    If a free service is not possible, it is the responsibility of the student to make contact with their personal tutor and therefore pay for that communication.

  • You do not need to save the pro formas unless you wish to. These are all recorded back of house. You are only required to save your final end of year review for your portfolio.

    • To do this, when the PAT sends through your email, send it to print and then in the options for printer, ‘save as PDF’

    • NB - you do not need to save your signed copy, just this initial one the PAT sends through.

  • You need to keep a list of meeting dates for your Portfolio. Access the record for this is in the button below. This is different from your PAT Pro Forma.

    You will also need to place your final ‘annual review’ PAT meeting pro forma into your portfolio. See next section.

    DOWNLOAD PAT TUTORING RECORD >>

  • PATs complete a form recording notes of your meeting.

    This helps you keep track of action points, and provides a record to reflect on over time.

    After the meeting they will send you the form.

    Please respect your PATs time and complete the following steps as soon as possible:

    1. Open the email

    2. Press the 'Edit Response' button

    3. This will take you to the completed form to check

    4. If you wish to make changes to the text of the form - email your PAT first

    5. Once happy, go to the bottom of the form, sign and date

    6. Press 'Submit'

    7. Keep the email for your records. Save as a PDF to your files.

      If you have not received your form, please check your junk mail box.

    1. Arrange your initial meeting with your personal tutor.

    2. Set an agreed upon timetable of meetings – it is important to stick to this schedule as your personal tutor only has a set amount of time to conduct development meetings. These are professional meetings and should be treated as such.

    3. Have your learning style and preference ready to share with your personal tutor – this will help them understand your learning needs.

    4. Your personal tutor will introduce themselves and you will be able to find out more about them.

    5. Introduce yourself to your personal tutor, tell them:

      • Where you live

      • What drew you to the course

      • Where you’ve studied before and to what level

      • If you have any previous experience that will be useful in your studies

    6. Think about what you would like to achieve this academic year, what are you particularly looking forward to? Is there anything you feel you need to work on or improve? These will be set as goals for you to work towards during the academic year.

    7. After your PAT development meeting, your PAT will send you the PAT development meeting proforma via google forms to read and sign.

    8. Record your meeting date on the PAT record log (find in the link above). This is important for your portfolio.

  • The last meeting of the year should be a review of your portfolio, a reflection on the past year and planning/intention setting for the next.

    Please send your portfolio to your PAT 2 weeks in advance so they can check that all bits have been completed and sign off.

    Some things to reflect upon could be the following:

    • How did you do?

    • What progress have you made?

    • What went well?

    • What are you proud of?

    • What areas/skills do you need to develop?

    • Revisit your goals from the first meeting.

    A summary of this meeting is required for your portfolio:

    • either write up a short few paragraphs on your reflections or save the pro forma as a jpeg and paste in to your portfolio.

    Your PAT will then sign off that your Portfolio is up to date.

A GUIDE FOR

PAT DEVELOPMENT MEETINGS

    • Have you enjoyed a particular area of study?

    • Have you found a particular area of study challenging? What did you do when faced with that challenge?

    • Did you have any difficulties during your clinical days?

    • How did you find your seminars?

  • You may be given questions or tasks to complete for your next PAT development meeting. The progress of these will be discussed.

    • The initial goals for the academic year that you discussed at your initial meeting may change during the year.

    • Do you feel you have made any progress with the goals set?

  • e.g. a particular difficult case you’ve observed, or something that may have been raised during a seminar or study time.

    This is the perfect point for an open and frank discussion on a wide array of topics, whether they pertain to anything that has recently happened or whether you have discovered something inspiring or found particularly challenging.

  • Your personal tutor will take the time to carefully reflect back to you the key points and important details that you’ve discussed during the meeting.