UNIVERSITY TUTORING BEFORE AND AFTER COVID-19: AN EXPERIENCE OF REDESIGN FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF PADUA (ITALY)

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the personal, social and professional lives of all citizens, and the context of higher education has been, as well, fully invested in the upheavals that Covid-19 brought with it [1] [2] [3]. The pandemic probably contributed to expose us to the biggest education crisis in human history [4]: not only the teaching-learning processes had to be rethought, redesigned and adjusted to cope with the new needs and requirements of health crisis times [5] [6], but also all the extracurricular activities in higher education, including guidance and tutoring programs [7] [8] [9] [10], had to reinvent themselves in order to continue existing and being effective. In particular, as far as tutoring and guidance activities are concerned, the use of technological tools and devices has been fundamental for the adaptation to our “new normal” [9], and the e-tutoring/e-guidance activities grew a lot during this pandemic times. In this scenario, interactions between e-tutors and online students have been a powerful resource for universities, as they provide a learning community environment that reduces feelings of isolation and can improve student performance [11]. E-tutoring could also have the potential to reinvent the old practices and to open new ways of teaching and learning in higher education, especially in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic [12]. That being said, this contribution presents the experience of re-designing, after the spread of the Covid- 19 pandemic, of the “Formative Tutoring” [13], a tutoring programme proposed at the University of Padua that aimed at supporting academic success of students enrolled in the first year. The programme was always held in presence until 2020, when the format had to be changed due to the health crisis. In particular, we analysed the experiences of the Coordination Student Tutors (CST), people who are in charge of coordination and organisational aspects of the programme since the a.y. 2019/20. The aim of our research was to deepen the redesign practices that were put in place to keep the programme effective in pandemic times. We explored the difficulties, but also the opportunities and good practices, that arose during the emergency. The results helped us to learn about redesign processes and their impact on the programme. Moreover, this evidence could be important, in the future, to deepen some of the dynamics, both positive and negative, that emerged during the pandemic era (e.g. difference in participation and engagement, satisfaction etc).