Faculty-academic support collaboration: Practical experience

This Community Exchange Session will demonstrate the framework of structured collaboration between faculty and an academic support center as practiced at the American University of Central Asia. The traditional model of learning support, based on students attending tutoring sessions on an ad hoc basis, is no longer sufficient to address serious lacunae in students’ academic and classroom skills resulting from almost two years of online study. The AUCA model connects students, tutors, faculty and the center’s management on a pre-planned basis, providing regular and structured auxiliary support to address the challenges of post-pandemic teaching and learning. To ensure that students receive the necessary support in their studies, (1) the faculty includes the use of academic support center in their syllabi and (2) enrolls the tutors in their courses on the LMS and trains the tutors, with (3) additional training provided by the staff of the academic support center. Crucial to the process is (4) collaboration between the academic support center and the faculty in organizing group study sessions on specific subject areas. The academic support center also (5) offers individual sessions in additional to group ones and (6) gathers student and tutor feedback. The poster shall feature the outline of this collaboration framework, with an AUCA faculty member and a representative of the AUCA academic support center on hand to provide in-depth explanations and details to attendees of the Community Exchange, as well as evidence of the benefits of this collaboration model to teachers, learners, and tutors.