Ewelina Kośmider: What characterizes the Academy of Tutoring, a course at the University of Wrocław?

Prof. dr hab. Piotr P. Chruszczewski: For us, personalizing the process of education is the key! It makes the lessons more attractive and effective because both the tutor and the tutee focus their undivided attention on the discussed topic.

We are focusing on academic tutoring, but we have the qualifications and tools to provide developmental and professional tutoring, too. In a nutshell, in the course of academic tutoring, the tutee works with a doctoral student, seminarian, or master’s student on a research problem and learns the subject of research and research perspective, the methodologies for preparing research material, and many more things. Sometimes we have to start with learning how to read scientific books; I do not recommend reading them from cover to cover; they are not novels. I suggest practicing reading with the index, looking for elements that interest you. After you read them, you can proceed to the remaining chapters. Personally, I think it is crucial the tutor is an active scientist, who is able to get the tutee started in scientific work, step by step, from rudimentary reading skills to preparing texts for renowned scientific journals.

When it comes to developmental tutoring, we mainly focus on the tutee’s personal development, well-being, interests (both academic and not). Finally, professional tutoring – a preparation for a career. Within my discipline, it could be, for example, the profession of a translator of endangered languages or a linguist conducting anthropological and ethnographic research on changes taking place in the speech communities of modern contact languages for an international organization. We often pay no mind to contact languages, which are literally being born before our eyes. For example, in Poland in 2025, the phenomenon of contact languages is greatly influenced by immigrants’ cultural and linguistic richness.

E.K.: What makes tutoring special?

P.C.: Apart from the individual approach towards each tutee, what really makes tutoring stand out are alternative teaching methods, they eliminate boredom and make the teaching dynamic. Of course, no pain, no gain still applies; developing a conceptually good scientific project, building a solid scientific text on its basis, and then defending it as a great master’s thesis or an innovative doctorate requires a lot of effort. For a hard-working and capable person, a tutor can act as a catalyst and provide help. If you are lucky and get a grant, e.g., to conduct additional field research or research in foreign libraries, your success will be spectacular.

Creative and dynamic scientific work has always worked wonders combined with methods of personalized approach to the tutee. When we are sitting in an auditorium with a hundred other people, we can always hide and simply “mentally log out”, still maintaining eye contact with the lecturer who does not realize that we are no longer there despite our physical presence. On the other hand, this is not possible during a one-on-one meeting with a tutor because both sides devote 100% of their attention to each other. Tutoring may be based on the interdisciplinarity of combining many approaches to working with the tutee, but choosing the optimal method ultimately depends on the experience of the person conducting the tutorial.

The staff of the Academy of Tutoring at the University of Wrocław all agree that tutoring is the essence of modern, personalized, interdisciplinary teaching.

Interdisciplinarity also means ensuring that people conducting classes within the course represent different approaches to tutoring. That is why we have many researchers in our team who perfectly combine the most important elements of tutoring into an integral, original and effective method of interdisciplinary tutoring, which we have developed together at the University of Wrocław. For example, classes for our tutees are conducted by dr Ilona Iłowiecka-Tańska, a Program Director for Innovation at the world’s leading institution promoting science – the Copernicus Science Centre. About a million people come to Copernicus every year to receive knowledge in different forms, from perfectly prepared scientific performances to fascinating classes promoting and explaining science in an accessible way.

Prof. dr hab. inż. Marcin Kadej also joined the Academy of Tutoring’s team at the University of Wrocław. He is a model of interdisciplinary education as a biologist who also completed studies in management and heads the Laboratory of Forensic Biology and Entomology of the University of Wrocław. As a tutor, prof. Kadej talks about what management looks like, and he is inspirational. He knows what’s what as a biologist, as a legal expert, and as a former dean of the Faculty of Biological Sciences, in short, as a person who manages time, people, equipment, and resources. And he’s great at it!

We offer a short guide for the tutor to the world of law, classes on this topic are conducted by Professor Artur Kozłowski from the Faculty of Law, Administration, and Economics of the University of Wrocław. Knowledge of law is necessary for a modern tutor, who should know where to look for documents that both tutors and tutees can find useful in their work.

E.K.: The Academy of Tutoring course is addressed not only to research and teaching staff of universities, but also to teachers. Why is tutoring a good method for them, too?

P.C.: We have feedback from the Superintendent of Education in Lower Silesia, Mrs. Ewa Skrzywanek, as well as from the Ministry of National Education, that such initiatives as ours are very much needed by teachers. Tutoring is a teaching method that has great potential to maintain and strengthen the level of teaching in secondary schools, where, as we all know, it has never been easy for overworked and passionate teachers and still isn’t.

Even a partial introduction of tutoring to secondary schools would mean that the University of Wrocław would attract people who would find it much easier to learn and work independently. Getting acquainted with tutoring at the high school level would enable future students to acquire skills that would help them become more familiar with work methods based on the master-student relationship much faster. This would mean that outstanding students could start implementing their first research projects already during their studies.

Tutoring is also a method for significantly reducing or even neutralizing the stress associated with a new place, new responsibilities, and commuting, which can be difficult and emotionally exhausting in a big city. I am convinced that tutoring can have a positive impact on the well-being of young people, even at the very beginning of their studies.

By offering tutoring as a permanent additional teaching method at the University of Wrocław, but also, we hope, at secondary schools, we are thinking about the future. Moreover, we would like to offer our future staff new and effective teaching solutions that have already been implemented and tested. At some point, we are going to retire, and our future students will become the scientific, cultural and managerial new blood of scientific bodies, who, in the near future, will be using the resources left to them. It is now their responsibility to be better researchers, scientists, writers, educators, organizers, editors, and administrators than we are, because this is what development is all about, about being replaced by better qualified people with new generations taking up the torch. Therefore, we invite everyone, both people who care about personalized and dynamic modern teaching and those focused on development, to the Academy of Tutoring at the University of Wrocław.

E.K.: What are your long-term goals for tutoring at the University of Wrocław?

P.C.: Ideally, in a few years, we would like to be able to provide tutoring to about 2% of our students. It will not be easy, because tutoring is demanding – not only for tutees, but also for tutors. It requires time and emotional involvement, which is necessary to build a dynamic, but at the same time balanced relationship between the tutor and his tutee – which is something that prof. Tomasz Piekot discusses in his classes on effective and efficient academic communication. On the other hand, if we want to train future Nobel Prize winners, the effort is worth it.

E.K.: The participants acquire skills, but do they also learn certain values?

P.C.: There are many values we foster, we focus on scientific integrity, mutual respect, tolerance courage, and taking responsibility, but most importantly, we teach freedom. Freedom of choice: choosing the study, tutor, research topic or scientific school within which we will work, or even the freedom to abandon the beaten path and develop our own research approach, or propose a new scientific sub-discipline. Obviously, not everyone will like this type of freedom, but not everyone has to like it, the development of science depends largely on the clash of views. The tutor should encourage his/her students.

E.K.: What new things await the participants of the 5th edition?

P.C.: Because we care about equipping tutors with psychological tools that can effectively prevent burnout, and which are also going to help with developing emotional and social competences, we asked dr Magdalena Ślazyk-Sobol to prepare an entire block devoted to these important issues. She presents these topics in an incredibly engaging way, and she summarizes the discussed issues with a short slogan that is crucial for the survival of the entire species of Homo sapiens: “Keep calm and stay alive!” 

Starting from the 5th edition, we offer a guest lecture by prof. dr hab. Jerzy Żołądź, head of the Department of Exercise Physiology and Muscle Bioenergetics at the Collegium Medicum of the Jagiellonian University – who is an outstanding specialist in tutoring in sports. I think so because a physiologist’s work with a selected athlete to optimize their performance is tutoring in its purest form. Professor Żołądź has brought tutoring in sports to a masterful level, and contributed to successes of many medalists, including Adam Małysz.

E.K.: How many tutors do we have at our university?

P.C.: As of right now, the number of certified tutors at the University of Wrocław has exceeded one hundred.

 E.K.: How would you encourage people who are still hesitant to take part in the course?

P.C.: To put it briefly, we have excellent teachers, we have a great vision, and we are hoping for a breakthrough! We would like to invite everyone to find out for themselves by simply signing up for the Academy of Tutoring at the University of Wrocław.

It is worth emphasizing that in April 2023, the Rector of the University of Wrocław, prof. dr hab. Robert Olkiewicz, issued a regulation regarding teaching classes conducted in the form of tutoring. Most faculties of the University of Wrocław have already adopted internal faculty resolutions on the introduction of tutoring. This process is already underway and gaining momentum. We are overjoyed and thankful to the Deans of the University of Wrocław.

E.K.: Do you have any “trial classes” where people could get acquainted with this method?

P.C.: We regularly organize tutoring symposia, which are free and open to all. In the fall of 2025, we are co-organizing such a symposium together with the Copernicus Science Centre. Every year, representatives of teachers from high schools under the scientific patronage of the University of Wrocław come to our events, organized in the form of workshops or individual guest lectures. Of course, we invite you all to participate!

I will summarize our conversation by paraphrasing “Patrzenie,” one of the works of the great contemporary Italian poet – Franco Arminio. In tutoring we try to look at students as if all of them were talented and hard-working, and even if they are not, we try to look harder.

E.K.: Thank you very much for the interview!

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The 5th edition of the Tutoring Academy starts on January 25. There are still a few spots left! How to sign up? For more information, please visit the website of the Academy of Tutoring.

The next edition is planned for mid-September 2025.

Click here or here for inspiring videos about classes at the Academy.

The Academy of Tutoring course has been conducted at the University of Wrocław since 2023. The course is organized by the College for Interdisciplinary Individual Studies.

The graduates of the four completed editions of the course, 59 certified tutors, are from:

• 12 Faculties of the University of Wrocław,
• Teacher Education Centre,
• Foreign Languages Centre,
• Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies,
• Secondary School in Góra,
• College for Interdisciplinary Individual Studies UWr,
• State Archives in Wrocław.

Graduates’ opinions about the Academy:
– “professional and inspiring classes with the perfect balance between lectures and workshops”
– “useful tools and tips for tutoring”
– “creative workshops, allowing you to open up to non-standard forms and methods of conducting classes”
– “classes that help you get out of your comfort zone”, “tailored to the tutor’s needs”
– “classes that inspire and show new paths and an interesting perspective on the student and the problems they may face”
– “activities helping to bond with the group”

Date of publication: 20.01.2025
Added by: E.K.

Translated by Weronika Kucharska (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.