What is a tutorial? An exploration of ‘learning event literacy’ on student experience.

The OU’s Learning Design Activity Categories Review (Evans & Reedy, 2020) highlighted the need for learning activities to provide students with “learning moments that engage and excite – these can be very varied, so a range of activity types increases the likelihood of these learning moments occurring” (p. 8). Butler, Cook &Haley-Mirnar’s (2018) scholarship project outlined a variety of types of clearly defined learning events in order to maximise student engagement and provide a high-quality student experience. The suggested range included small group tutorials, drop in support, clinics, problem solving and skills focused sessions, assessment focused sessions, large scale, high production value (potentially previously recorded) ‘lectures’, live debates and student collaborative peer to peer ‘tutorless’ synchronous meetings. The OU projects outlined above form part of a wide ranging and well-established field of research which explores the challenges and opportunities associated with delivering effective teaching and learning in online spaces, a field which has expanded significantly since the enforced move to online provision linked to the COVID 19 pandemic lockdowns. This includes Okada & Sheehy’s (2020) study that explored the value of students’ enjoyment with online learning and highlighted the need for learning to embrace the ‘Butterfly of Fun’ framework (below) which demonstrates the range of experiences required to produce autonomous learners, particularly in challenging circumstances. Their study recommends that course teams and teaching staff should investigate students’ preferred ways of learning and provide a variety of learning activities for individuals and groups to choose based upon these preferences.

The studies presented here indicate that producing a clearly defined portfolio of learning activities could be beneficial in engaging with students’ differing ‘facets of learning experience’ (O’Shea, Stone & Delahunty, 2015) by outlining expectations around participation, content, delivery and outcomes which allows for more informed engagement. Whilst the literature shows the importance of providing a variety of learning activities and lists types of provision are given there is no discussion around how students know what these activities are and what their role in them is.