Since 2006, Liverpool Hope’s Writing Centre, with the support of the Write Now CETL, has run a writing tutorial programme. The programme is staffed by both professional tutors and peer tutors and has, in the three years since its inception, run over 2,000 tutorials and worked with 1,200 writers. With each tutorial averaging sixty minutes, the tutorials provide an invaluable window through which to explore student writers’ engagement with academic literacies.

Highlighting conflicts of voice and identity, uncertainties over the purpose and handling of source materials, and epistemological insecurities as evidenced through discussions of task interpretation, as well as the more prosaic question of citation protocol, the tutorials have enabled the Writing Centre to feed back to departments as a means towards developing curriculum based solutions. In order to formalise this strategy, a systematic analysis of tutorial records was conducted in order to identify aspects of the student writing experience which could be addressed institutionally and within departments both at Hope and, potentially, across the HE sector.

In particular, the research is seeking to:

1. profile students using the tutorial programme, with a view to developing a typology of writing centre users and an analysis of self-perceived writing development need
2. identify and quantify themes emergent through the tutorial process
3. identify trends in respect to student satisfaction/dissatisfaction with tutorials
4. analyse any correlation between 1, 2 and 3 above

SPSS was employed to establish correlations between student profile and identified needs, tutorial focus, uptake and feedback; emergent themes were then explored through thematic analysis of open-form comments on feedback and tutorial record forms in order to provide a richer interpretation of student satisfaction and tutorial focus.

Preliminary findings suggest that the one of the main foci for tutorials is task interpretation (30%). This information has helped explore a number of staff development initiatives as well as a Writing Programme Design Initiative aimed at improving student experience with regards to task briefs and task interpretation. For more information on this programme see Assessment under Staff Development Programmes.