Tutorial Action Program

The Tutorial Action Program (TAP) was implemented in our Faculty of Biology in the 2004-2005 academic year, being one of the pioneers in this field in our university system.

Since its inception, the majority of faculty has actively participated in the follow-up work of students throughout their training development in the degrees that are taught. Currently, all students of the Degrees in Biology and Biotechnology and the Double Degree in Biotechnology and Pharmacy have a tutor teacher assigned at the beginning of the first year of the Degree and who will be their tutor in the 4-6 years of the career.

In addition, in the 2016-17 academic year the figure of the Student-Tutor was incorporated into the program: a student of higher courses has assigned classmates from the first year to make an accompaniment that helps them in their integration into the university community and facilitates their understanding of what is related to their corresponding Degrees from the student's point of view

This program has as one of its first objectives to avoid the disorientation that the students of the first courses have on the global conception of the degrees and their relevance in the professional future of the graduates.

As an example, it is common to hear, among the students who come to the Departments and contact the teachers in the last years of the year with the intention of focusing on their professional future, comments such as the following:
If I had known how important it was to have a good record, I would have thought things differently!
I believed that the notes of the ordinary calls had more value in the file than those of the extraordinary calls.
Can you inform me of a Master's degree that you leave with a job?
I did not participate in the Business Internship Program and now they ask me for minimum work experience and I don't have any
I don't know what lines of research exist in the Departments attached to the Faculty
And many other similar ones...
Avoiding that type of misunderstanding or misinformation is very easy if it is done in an organized and systematic way and that is what the Tutorial Action Program aims to do.

The second of the objectives of the program is to accompany throughout all the courses of the Degree in order to solve curiosities, problems, concerns ..., that may arise during the training development of the students and aimed at their good performance in studies and their future training / professional integration.
Many of the concerns expressed during your stay at the Faculty are:
Make or not an Erasmus outing. How and where?
To do or not to do a company internship. How and where?
What Master's degree is related to my concerns?
What kind of scholarships can I ask for to start research?
TFG: tutor, topic, experimental or not...
What transversal training is needed for... (English, computer science...)
University sports

Vice Deanship of Students and University Extension and Quality Assessment Unit of the USAL (June 2005 - June 2020 update

Definition
Tutoring is a process of support during the training of students that is concretized in the personalized attention to a student or a small group of them, seeking to favor learning, integral training and professional insertion of future graduates.

OBJECTIVES
The overall purpose is to improve the academic and personal performance of students. Within the tutoring program, it will be about:
Offer them comprehensive and personalized attention.
Systematically guide the training process, identifying the potential of the students so that they can successfully channel them in their passage through the Degree. Promote the development of attitudes and values such as commitment, responsibility, respect, solidarity, environmental sensitivity, critical spirit and all those that we consider constantial to the formation of a university student.
Promote the development of attitudes and values such as commitment, responsibility, respect, solidarity, environmental sensitivity, critical spirit and all those that we consider constantial to the formation of a university student.
Guide students in the administrative processes

Process
All students of the Degrees taught in the Faculty of Biology will have the academic supervision of a Tutor appointed by the Deanship. The Tutor, the main link between the student and the faculty, will be a professor who will facilitate students' integration and adaptation to the Faculty and advise them in their academic decisions (choice of elective subjects, business practices, extraordinary courses, etc.) taking into account the interests, skills and previous training of those.
The work of the Tutor is especially important in the first year to make the student aware of the differences between Secondary and Higher Education and stimulate their active participation in the educational process of the Degree. Likewise, it is necessary in the end to guide in the decision-making about the decisions to be followed with a view to more specialized training and a subsequent professional activity.
The figure of Student-tutor has been incorporated into the program since the 2016-17 academic year These students carry out their tutoring work on a voluntary basis and are responsible for accompanying the designated students in their first year of Bachelor's degree
The participation of tutors in the education of young graduates, supervision and guidance during a very important training period of their lives, can be very rewarding. The experience of Anglo-Saxon models shows that many students consider that their undergraduate tutors played an important role in their academic and professional growth.

ORGANIZATION
The Plan will initially be aimed at students who access the Faculty of Biology for the first time, to take the first course. For the following year, the teacher will be assigned the 2nd year students (whom he began to follow in the first year) and some new 1st year students. So on, in each course, new students are assigned and those who started first are maintained.
The desirable thing is that, during the 4 undergraduate courses (and the six of the double undergraduate), the assignment of students per tutor and academic year does not exceed the amount of 15.
The existence of the program is made known through its inclusion in the academic guide and on the Faculty's website, as well as in the reception sessions organized by the Decanal Team at the beginning of the course
First-year students will be provided with a file through a Forum on the Studium platform In this file, the corresponding personal and academic information will be reviewed and will be uploaded as a task within the platform on the dates indicated by the person in charge.
The number of first-year students will be divided by the total number of teachers, the corresponding groups will be made and both students and teachers will be informed of the resolution.
The group of students for each tutor will be homogeneous in terms of the degree. This will facilitate the topics to be addressed in the tutoring for both the students and the teacher.
Volunteers will be requested in each Grade to act as a Student-tutor and groups of 3-4 students will be assigned to each.
Each tutor will collect in the student's file the student's trajectory during the year and the possible recommendations for the future. Likewise, the student-tutor will collect the activity carried out during the course. The Faculty will carry out online surveys to know the degree of development and satisfaction of the Program by all actors: students, student-tutors and tutors.
activities
It is proposed that each tutor conduct three sessions, individual or in a group, of their choice, with the students assigned to them. In addition to this minimum calendar, the necessary meetings will be held, at the discretion of the student and teacher, throughout the course For specific questions, non-face-to-face tutorials may be used via email or telephone.
Dates of celebration
1ª meeting. Last week of October or first week of November: Making contact.
Justification: As a reception session will be held at the Center for 1st year students, it is advisable to allow some time to elapse before having a first direct contact with the students. In this way, the students will have had some time to get an idea of the Faculty and the difficulties they may encounter.
2ª meeting. End of February or first week of March: Follow-up. Justification:
Hold the meeting, once the notes of the 1st semester have been obtained, in order to be able to "pulse" the progress of the course. Possible actions can still be modified before the end of the course that results in a better performance
3ª meeting. End of May, before the exams of the 2nd semester: Balance of the course. Results.

Justification: Although the ideal would be to hold the meeting after the exams of the second semester to know the academic results, by criteria of operability it may be better to do it just before the exams.

Calendar and schedule:
The Tutor, in agreement with his students, will establish the specific dates of the sessions and the schedule Students must know in advance the dates of the meetings. The teacher is required to summon students to meetings through any of the following means: email, announcement or notice on the bulletin board or at the class door.

Content of the activities. . Possible topics:
At the beginning of each meeting, the tutor presents the topics that will in principle be addressed. . Leave the option for students to express if they want to additionally address a specific topic. Negotiate their treatment with them. . The meetings are fundamentally informative, but it is important that they establish a climate of trust and dialogue between the tutor and the entire group of students.

First meeting: Making contact
Knowledge of the group. Who we are:
Brief presentation of each of the students: average grade of file, option chosen in Baccalaureate, if you combine studies with some type of work, knowledge of language, motivation to study this degree.
Presentation of the tutor: the professional career, his role as a tutor, his views on the university
The Tutorial Action Plan: objectives, activities, operation (schedule, meeting place, email addresses, etc.). Differentiate it and complement it with the academic and disciplinary tutorials that every teacher performs (the 6 hours a week) which is also another resource made available to all students.
Students' expectations about the institution: the degree, the professors (the relationships with them), the tutors (the academic tutor and the professors as tutors of the disciplines), the university
How do you think you are going to organize your studies? How are you going to study? What study techniques do you plan to use? How are you going to organize your time (class attendance schedules, home study, practical work, library, laboratories, etc.).
Knowledge of the curriculum: structure, electives, itineraries, desirable requirements for the good use of the course, rules of permanence in the degree/university, etc. It is about detecting what knowledge the students have about this topic and that the tutor informs them about it.
Include information that is considered useful for the student and that is not part of specific subjects of the curriculum Por ejemplo: ofrecer orientaciones sobre la elaboración de trabajos en la universidad, sobre recursos y técnicas de estudio, etc. For example: offer guidance on the preparation of work at the university, on study resources and techniques, etc.

Second meeting: First academic results
How have the students' academic results been?: Each student states whether they have taken all the subjects and the number of approved (or failed) subjects.
Attribution of the causes to success / failure in the subjects
Difficulties encountered in the first semester (any type of difficulties can be found: personal, integration in the Faculty, integration in the city, in the residence, in the apartment, academic (follow-up of classes, knowledge), etc
How to face these difficulties, what can we do?
How has the organization of the studies gone.
Actions to be undertaken before the end of the course.
Inform about the curriculum. Inform about the training activities and resources offered by the university For example:

* the activities and courses carried out by the University Orientation Service (SOU): psycho-pedagogical guidance, psychological care, linguistic exchanges, etc.
* the activities of the Social Affairs Service (SA): care for students with disabilities, psychological and psychiatric care, support in social emergency situations, guidance for foreign students, etc.

Third meeting: Balance of the course
-How do you expect to finish the course?
-How are you approaching the studies?
-Information about the 2nd year of the curriculum: subjects, requirements, operation, etc.
-Guidance on the choice of electives.
-Activities to be carried out in the summer for students who finish their studies well.
-Review the training activities and resources offered by the university.
-Information about extracurricular activities related to the degree and carried out outside the University: congresses, language exchanges, conferences, scholarships, etc.
-Assessment of tutoring activities by students A short questionnaire can be passed to the students to know their degree of satisfaction with the tutorials. If the group is very small (2-5 people) the oral assessment can be made, always making sure that there is an atmosphere of trust.

Lines of action for the teacher
The tutor will be provided with all the necessary information about:
The degree: the subjects that present the most difficulty for students, the offer of electives, internships, languages, exchange scholarships That is, of all those elements that at a certain time can help give guidance on studies to students.
The administrative issues of the Center. This information usually comes in the Academic Guide of the Faculty and refers to the conditions of study, course calendar, etc.
The different services of the University of Salamanca: the University Orientation Service (SOU), the Social Assistance Service (SAS), etc
Events and activities not offered by the curriculum, organized by the University or another institution and related to the degree. For example, conferences, congresses, exhibitions, publications, stays, etc.
It is recommended to establish a relationship of mutual understanding and trust between the tutor and his group of students so that students can openly express what they think and what they feel and that between the tutor and the students reflect on what is happening and how to improve the situation posed.

The Faculty must...
Make the necessary efforts to match the interests (e.g. personality, research) of students and tutors.
Inform tutors and students of all the resources available in the Faculty and in the Institution.
Provide an effective support system for students and tutors to deal with any doubts or problems that may arise For example, guidance to tutors on possible changes in curricula, organization, resources..., so that they can adequately inform their students.

The Tutors must:
Offer information and advice on academic topics. These topics would include help in the choice of subjects, in the decision of research interests, in contact with professors for the direction of Final Degree Projects, as well as guidance on administrative processes.
Familiarize yourself with your students and their academic performance to provide them with the right information and help if difficulties arise throughout the course. To do this, they will have a folder for each student in which a file with a photograph is kept, a copy of the academic program in which the subjects enrolled and passed, applications for scholarships or any other information that may be useful to them are specified
Offer assistance or direct students to the right places to decide their professional future (Doctorate, Masters, employers).
Inform your students of the schedule and regime of tutoring (a certain day, prior appointment, quarterly meetings, etc.).
Take the initiative when it comes to arranging meetings with your students, especially with those in the first year, because most of the time, those who need the most help are the most reluctant to interview.
Create an environment of trust to favor the relationship with your students.
Respect the decisions of your students and support their objectives, while encouraging them to reflect conscientiously on their plans.
Worry about your students as people.
Communicate to your students the expectations you have about them.
Maintain confidentiality about the information you have about each student, as well as the matters dealt with with them.

Students must...
Have the availability of your tutors, at least by appointment, during the school periods. However, they should not expect their tutors to receive them immediately when they want.
Be aware that your tutors don't have to become personal friends
Expect their tutors to act as authentic counselors, not simply as "paper signators."
Take the initiative to meet with your tutors whenever they need it and on more occasions than in the scheduled initial meeting.
Consult your tutors in case of any academic difficulty.
Gradually assume greater responsibility in maintaining fluid relationships with their tutors, as they progress in the Degree.