Inside an Oxford tutorial at the Museum of Natural History

It’s the start of a new term and as the doors to Oxford’s Museum of Natural History open, five first-year undergraduate biology students arrive for their weekly Biology tutorial.

Today they are meeting Professor Lindsay Turnbull, a tutor at The Queen’s College where the students all live and study. She is also Professor of Plant Ecology in the University’s Department of Biology and author of ‘Biology: The Whole Story’, published last year.

Founded in 1860 as the centre for scientific study at Oxford, the Museum holds the University’s internationally significant collections of geological and zoological specimens. It’s the perfect place to think about the animal kingdom – the purpose of this week’s tutorial – and the different phyla or groups that make it up.

On the Museum’s ground floor, in front of eye-catching displays of colourful butterflies, spiders and fungi, parades of mammals, and replicas of dinosaur skeletons, Professor Turnbull outlines the plan for the next hour. The group is given a quiz based around key areas of study for the term and the students split into two teams and head off to find the answers within the collections.

Tutorials – a meeting between an academic and a small number of students – are the cornerstone of the highly personalised undergraduate teaching and learning experience at Oxford. “A tutorial should be a chance for the students to air their views and to discuss openly what they don’t understand,” says Professor Turnbull.

“They allow tutors to interact regularly with students and to monitor their development closely and are different from other forms of university teaching because of their personal nature and the way that you can fine-tune your teaching to suit different groups. They encourage students to talk about their work and to share their ideas. Ideally, they also allow students to gain in confidence.”

So, what do students think of them? First-year Biology student Eunice says, “Tutorials allow us to explore a topic in much greater detail than lectures. A concept may only be briefly touched on during lectures, so the discussions during tutorials help reinforce our understanding, and also push us to think more deeply about the topic.”

For fellow student Austin, tutorials offer a more fun and conversational experience than a lecture: “What I enjoy the most is breaking down a big problem gradually as a group, bouncing off each other's ideas to solve something that you couldn't sit down and do in an hour.”

The five Biology students meet once a week, usually at The Queen’s College, but Professor Turnbull’s tutorial locations are varied. Last term they hunted for tiny tardigrades (or moss piglets) in the University’s Botanic Gardens; “although we completely failed to find them!” she says.

Professor Turnbull believes it’s important that the students get out and about and takes her group to gain a greater familiarity with the natural world: “In the practical tutorials I’m trying to achieve a few things. First, to get to know them better, because there’s no pressure on them to perform. Second, to give them exposure to natural history. Some of our students have incredible knowledge about nature, and others have very little. It can be a real advantage to have some of that knowledge, so it’s good to share it around.”