Abstract:

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 (Bryson & Andres, 2020; Bozkurt, 2022; Marinoni et al., 2020). The pandemic probably contributed exposing to the biggest education crisis in human history (Karakose, 2021): not only the teaching-learning processes had to be rethought, redesigned and readjusted to cope with the new needs and requirements of health crisis times (Perla et al., 2020; Arora & Srinivasan, 2020), but also all the extracurricular activities in higher education, including guidance and tutoring programs (Passalacqua & Zuccoli, 2021; Di Vita, 2021; Aznam et al, 2021; Dato et al., 2020), had to reinvent themselves in order to continue existing and be 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” (Aznam et al, 2021), 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 (Maré & Mutezo, 2021). The 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 (Motaung & Makombe, 2021).

That being said, this contribution presents the experience of re-designing, after the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, of the “Tutorato Formativo” (TF) (Da Re, 2017), a tutoring program, proposed at the University of Padua, that aimed at supporting academic success of students enrolled in the first year.

The TF 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 Tutors, people who are in charge of coordination and organizational 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, these evidences 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).

Keywords:

University tutoring, redesign practices, Higher Education, Covid-19 pandemic.