Engaging with the weekly readings through student-led tutorials

Synopsis

Getting students to engage with the weekly tutorial readings often seems a never-ending struggle. As the tutor, you spend hours reading the weekly tutorial material, then you plan the tutorial. You think about which activities will work best to enable the students to ‘engage’ with the week’s material, only to turn up to the tutorial to discover that the students haven’t done the readings or if they have, they’ve only skimmed them. This presentation stems from an experience as a history tutor and details a tutorial activity – student-led tutorial – that elicited strong student engagement. It started as a fun tutorial exercise but then revealed itself to as a way to get students to engage with the weekly readings. The results were astounding, not only did the new ‘tutors’ devise ambitious and interactive activities but the rest of the class actively participated. Curiously, there seems little literature on this activity, but I would argue that student-led activities should be employed more. For humanities students especially, not only do they offer the opportunity for that generic skill – group work – but more importantly they encourage a meaningful engagement with academic writing, arguments, and primary source evidence.

Kathryn Smithies