PAL Academic Course Contact Guide: Promote Sessions

Academic Course Contacts (that's you) can be a good place to go when leaders are having trouble promoting PAL. Below are some things you can suggest or do, to help Leaders (we also give this advice from the Central PAL Team when Leaders come to us):

• You can recommend topics for PAL Leaders to cover based on wider student feedback, trends in areas that students struggle with each year, etc.
• Encourage Leaders to look through our blog. We post attendance and engagement tips here, as well as other relevant content such as session ideas, career opportunities, common questions and answers, and lots more. You can view our blog (and subcsribe to it) here: https://libguides.bournemouth.ac.uk/palcentral/palblog.
• You can invite your PAL Leader(s) into a L4 programme seminar or lecture to promote PAL themselves to the students face to face.
• Encourage them to reflect on their PAL practices (including what they are doing well, and what they could improve on and how).
• You can signpost them to the PAL Leader 'Improving Attendance' guide - see below.

We have developed a section on our PAL Leader guidance (PAL Central) with a thorough list of steps for Leaders to work through to imrpove their L4 attendance. As an ACC, being aware of this guide will be of use for you to signpost them to.

This guide can be found here: https://libguides.bournemouth.ac.uk/palcentral/challenges, under the 'Improving Attendance' box.

PAL sessions are not compulsory to attend, and as soon as most L4 students learn this they stop attending.

Of course, PAL Leaders shouldn't advertise the sessions as being mandatory but you should encourage the students to treat the sessions like lectures and seminars. Below are a few ways to encourage this:

• directly informing the students that the sessions are optional will not contribute to attendance.
• PAL sessions are timetabled
• Their attendance is likely to help their academic progress!
• The leaders will cover what students want, and tailor the session topics to their needs.

If PAL Leaders have multiple sessions with no attendance, the registers will be empty and we will assume they haven't been running sessions. This may lead to leaders not being paid.

Constant low attendance means they should contact the Central PAL Team and yourself as an ACC for guidance. It may be worth you as an ACC emailing your PAL Leader(s) once or twice across the year to check how their attendance is, and making sure they know where to go for advice. We also encourage PAL Leaders to create an informal 'action plan' on what steps they should take, but this would be for their own viewing. 

The box on 'Encouraging attendance with PAL Leaders' on this page has lots more information.