The Academic Advising Toolkit

Academic Advising provides support to students during their period of study at Manchester across three areas:

• Academic - providing academic guidance on where and how to improve;

• Wellbeing and pastoral care - acting as a point of contact for students experiencing personal difficulties, and signposting students with particular needs to support services;

• Employability - helping students think about their future career and writing references.

Log into the video portal to hear staff and students discuss the benefits of Academic Advising.

An online training module is provided for all staff acting as Academic Advisors at the University of Manchester.

Video Guidance on the importance of advising, signposting and advising on employability, mental health and more.

Information on the Counselling service webpages for Academic Advisers to refer to in case of a mental health crisis.

1. Signposting Students

This 2-page document - Advising Roles and Responsibilities - is a quick guide on the advising relationship and contains links to key sources of student support. You might like to share it with your advisees when you first meet them.

The student-facing flyer Academic Advising explains how they can benefit from academic advising at Manchester, and is a also good introduction to share with students when they join the University. 

Thereafter, the following areas will take you to useful links and materials that you can use in your advising sessions with students.  

My Learning Essentials, UCIL, academic malpractice, complaints and appeals and further study

Pastoral care for students

Career-related support 

All academic advising topics

Locating links

All links are listed alphabetically in the A-Z topics on the left or grouped up in the following areas:

• Academic - brings together all key links
• Employability - information on the careers service and links to support
• Wellbeing - collates all services and self-help links for pastoral care

2. Supporting Academic Advisors

Go to the following areas for information on the roles, details of formal training and advising model to help support you in your role.

All about the roles and responsibilities for staff and students

Learning and development support for advisors

Academic advising model

Information for Advisors on how to approach advising in an online or blended environment and how to manage virtual meetings.

An online forum for Advisors and Student Support and Wellbeing Managers to share practice about engaging students and supporting students’ development.

Senior Academic Advisors support Advising in schools, discipline areas and on programmes.