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The goal of this paper is twofold: first, it aims at presenting the operation of the Law Degree's final dissertation at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra; and second, it seeks to analyze the experience accumulated over the past two years and to draw some lessons that – specially with regards to its organization and coordination– may prove helpful to other institutions and universities. After a short introduction, the paper sketches the complex normative framework surrounding the course "Degree's final dissertation" at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Following this, the paper describes those constrains and initial considerations that informed its design. This brief analysis provides the necessary context to the following pages, which focus on the several stages the course includes and the main coordination activities attached to them. The paper concludes with a reflection on the main lessons that can be drawn after two years of experience and with some suggestions. Among others, three deserve special attention: first, the need to adopt a flexible, proactive, close, continued and anticipatory style of coordination to ensure the success of the course; second, the convenience to elaborate a course guide as clear and concise as possible; third, the relevance of creating a brief manual that helps professors in their tutorial activities and the ulterior evaluation of papers, particularly in those cases that involve a large number of professors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a review of the university tutoring, we find it reappears in Higher Education, with the new European guidelines, as an element of quality and innovation that facilitates the process of accompaniment required to contribute to the integral formation of students, favoring the new educational approach centered on the students and their learning. This paper focuses on the perceptions, beliefs and relationships that students and tutors of different Degree studies belong to a University Tutoring Special Plan have on it in the first year of admission. The analysis and discussion of basic aspects of tuto ring allows its protagonists, students and tutors, raise a feedback and suggestions for optimal development. This paper concludes with the need to consider tutoring as a process characterized as systematic, planned, integrated, intentional, ongoing, dynamic and, above all, recognized, responding to a right of the EHEA and a quality factor of the same. Given this fact, tutoring can't be left in the hands of willful people, but it should be seen as an institutional matter. This requires the creation of an organizational structure to ensure its performance and the appropriate response to specific demands. Therefore, it is to provide content tutoring, to give it meaning, coherence and continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the new challenges which, in the context of the European Space of Higher Education, the legal studies are facing at the present moment, specifically Roman Law. The different ways, through a teaching resource like the group tutorial classes can be very useful for this project, have been studied. Very special attention has been dedicated to its role in the preparation of the Final Project. Many competences, generic and specific, acquired during years of study must be used in his development. In consequence, from which its importance as a thermometer of the quality of the given formation and the learning actually achieved. Tutoring developed in small groups of four or five students as maximum, in accordance with the methodological structure of a seminar, increases each of the papers and allows the tutor to make a more realistic evaluation of the educational proceedings. The necessity of proposing appropriate instruments for a more efficient management of the Final Project has led us to adopt this resource, based on previous experience of innovation teaching that we have successfully been applying for more than ten years. The results obtain greatly benefit both the students, who learn to work in a cooperative way, and the tutor, who is therefore able to provide them counselling of a more integral and complete nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a software tool designed to enhance the tutoring assistance in the context of the European Higher Education Area as a way to improve the service offered to students in their learning process. This tool, named Tutorial Action, allows to the students the online booking of face-to-face tutoring with their teachers, and allows to these teachers the management of tutoring schedules and registration of the issues addressed in each tutoring session. The research conducted in this work has aimed to determine the usefulness of the developed tool for the student attendance at tutoring. The sample analysed corresponds to grade students in Software Engineering Degree from the Technical University of Madrid. The instruments used in the research have included a questionnaire to know the opinion of the students who have composed the sample. The obtained results indicate a greater attendance at tutoring sessions in the students under study, and a positive perception of the designed tool used and the influence that these kinds of tools can have on the academic performance. These results suggest that the use of tools designed to facilitate student attendance at tutoring can contribute significantly to the student performance in their learning processes and the improvement of the service offered by the University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The School of Medicine of The University Walter Sisulu trains competent doctors to serve South Africa's rural communities with a view to improving the health conditions in historically impoverished areas. The admissions policy caters for students from schools where teaching materials are scarce, which is a challenge for both, students and tutors. In this paper we share experiences tutoring basic sciences medical students as well as explore the skills that these students value more in their tutors. Small tutorial groups are cooperative learning units where an educational environment encouraging students to learn may be developed. The problem challenges individual knowledge because it generates the need to improve it; this cognitive dimension of the process occurs in and as a result of students' interactions, which add a powerful social dimension to this learning approach. The tutor, with her/his actions, should ensure that the enthusiasm engendered by the problem is channeled into the search for its solution, the quality of which, depends on each individual's effort and responsibility to achieve this collective goal. The students rated important the skills that they regularly assess in their tutors, their favorites being those that facilitate the development of cognitive strategies favoring the quality of learning (horizontal and vertical integration). Tutor's skills regarding the collaborative component of the tutorial process were given less importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of this century, University has been experiencing a profound transformation. In this framework, the guidance and tutoring are a major issue in Higher Education. The modern Life designing conception highlights two fundamental factors: the commitment of the person in the construction of the life-project through systematic reflection and the need for professional support in different forms and contexts: a challenge for reflection and creative response of guidance and mentoring at universities. This is why innovations in tutoring are so numerous, promoted at universities either by teachers or by governance in order to achieve the implementation of guidance and tutoring systems, based on new technologies and scientific developments that respond to identified needs. This is generating an innovative dynamics and a structural renovation at universities, achieving a better Higher Education quality. Thus, the studies included in this paper constitute a mosaic of intervention practices in University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is part of the PhD thesis entitled "Meanings of university tutoring from the teachers' perspective", completed in 2012. The purpose was to understand the sense of tutoring at university through the teachers' perceptions. For it, we tried to know this scenario in order to understand its influence on the tutoring. Finally, we tried to understand further the teacher-student relationship in this context. Methodology: qualitative research, instrumental and multiple cases study method. Cases studied were public and private Universities. Results: the analysis produced six interrelated domains: being and practicing as a teacher in my university, a discussion about Higher Education reform and its implications on tutoring activities, the multiple meanings of tutoring, being and practicing as a student: the part ignored by the system, being and practicing as a tutor and, tutoring as a teaching and relationship space. The domain "being and practicing as a tutor" is presented in this paper as it is one of the most relevant issues of the study. Elements that impact on the meaning of being and practicing as a tutor are identified, as well as the roles, strategies and actions in the tutoring activities. Conclusions: "being a tutor" is influenced by the type of university, "being a teacher" and the sense of tutoring for teachers. Tutoring role is acquired, it can't be improvised. Teacher Training programs should be a powerful tools in order to change the meanings about teaching and to encourage attitudes towards tutoring action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) universities have integrated their tutorial projects into their teaching and learning processes. The evaluation of the impact of these projects shows the need for their continued improvement so that they can become even more effective. After analyzing annually the results of tutoring activities in each of the six years since San Jorge University's tutoring project was implemented, a descriptive research has been carried out which analyses the appraisal of various aspects of university tutoring activities from the point of view of San Jorge University's undergraduate student. These aspects include the consideration of the university tutoring project as part of the learning process, the identification of needs that this project should cover, the most valued factors in a tutor and a number of proposals for improvement based on the experiences of other national and international universities. This paper presents a general descriptive analysis of the mentioned variables across the University. Results show that students consider professional development issues to be more important than both academic and personal development issues, close personal contact as the tutor's most widely valued aspect and personal interview as the most effective form of communicating with tutors. In addition, most valued proposals for improvement have been the incorporation of final year students as tutors (peer-tutoring) and the possibility of maintaining the same tutor throughout the whole student's stay at University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish universities are experiencing profound changes in every sphere and aspect, which call into question their customary approaches to teaching and learning, as well as university tutoring and guidance, making these a need which cannot be met by traditional methods. Creating guidance units at a specific centre or faculty within a particular University is an initiative which is not yet widespread. These units require a planning, a design and a subsequent execution of guidance activities for all the students and teachers of a specific university centre. This particular way of counselling organising is characterised by the support for the teaching staff, the coordination among the different university actors who may be involved in a given type of actions, and optimum leverage of all the available resources. This paper describes the Guidance Unit of the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Granada, the legal, political, conceptual/ideological and institutional context in which it emerges, its organisational structure and the actions carried out through a model of functioning by programmes. Finally, there is an evaluation of the limitations and potentials found in the first two years of implementation, concluding in favour of the importance of increasing the dynamism of guidance in the centre, coordinated work by the teaching staff, and the meeting of the needs which arise among students, the need to deal with different types of resistance which are natural to university life, and the value of centre guidance units as a quality element in Higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2002-03 academic year, L'Escola Superior d'Infermeria del Mar (Nursing University School) implemented "Practicum," a core curriculum designed to facilitate the acquisition of nursing skills from clinical settings. The paradigm shift in the teaching-learning process is based on two fundamental pillars: the changing role of educators and the introduction of teaching strategies developed in clinical settings, facilitating the connection between theory and practice. One of the programs introduced is the Special Care Practicum (PCE) in the field of Mental Health. This paper presents the roles of teachers involved, the didactic strategies used, and the most relevant results from the past nine years of experience in the PCE. The educators are comprised of both clinically practicing nurses and an academic staff (responsible for teaching the core subjects and tutoring). The confidence and dynamics between the two groups is essential. Among the various teaching strategies implemented, students value the workshops based on real case studies from the healthcare unit where they are directly participating. The use of reflexive strategies in the teaching-learning process creates an enriching experience for both student and teacher on personal and professional levels. Furthermore, this learning process influences future therapeutic interventions regardless of each nurse's settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, following a review of the literature that justifies the importance of the external tutor role of teaching practices in university education teachers, shows a training experience had as a main objective the improvement of teaching practices throw a course for external tutors implemented on Faculty of Education and Humanities of Ceuta (University of Granada) with more than 60 teachers (external tutors and academic tutors or supervisors). The formative experience, for 80 hours, combining different training methods (lectures, conferences and workshops) structured in four phases: 1) Reflection on teaching practices today, 2) Conferences and lectures on what and how to improve it, 3) Applying the knowledge to the design of "Welcoming plans for trainee in external centers of Child, Primary and Secondary Education in Ceuta city, and 4) Evaluation of training throw teachers feedback. The results show a high positive reaction from external tutors with the training activity and a quick implementation of process to trainee received by the external centers. There have also been detected others needs and how to approach them to be tackle in future courses for improvement of teaching practices, factors, moreover, also reflected in different tendencies and models analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Practicum is defined by the degree of reflection between theory and practice. During this time, future professionals will find the difficulty, and the importance of knowing theory and practice, checking whether they have learned to move from the theoretical to the practical. The action performed by the tutor during this period of time is key because, in addition to checking this transformation, shows a reflective learning opportunity (Cid, Dominguez and Raposo, 1998; Martinez Figueira, 2007; Gutierrez 98 et.al., 2009, Martinez and Raposo, 2011). Thus, the tutoring that is done during the Practicum goes beyond that complete a specific task or a program. The purpose of this paper is to explore and understand the beginnings of performance in the role of tutor, the mentoring model implied that develops, and particularly the responsibilities taken on their performance. The information has been obtained following the two-phase model of Creswell (1994) cut qualitative and quantitative, with a sequential data triangulation (Morse, 1991), using semi-structured interviews and online questionnaire, these have been the data collection techniques. The information shows essentially that the tutor makes a reality about the future professional and acting with a model based on "laissez-faire." Their main responsibility is based on to promote learning situations that favor the development of students in practical training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]