Provision of individual academic skills advising services in Australian institutional Academic Language and Learning teams: A snapshot of the current landscape

Abstract

Individual consultations or 1-1s, face-to-face appointments between an Academic Language and Learning (ALL) advisor and a student have long been part of the higher education advising context in Australia. Nevertheless, individual appointments represent a contested space, particularly in regard to the emergence of generative AI platforms that seek to perform a similar role to that of the human advisor, but also due to questions concerning 1-1 feasibility and scalability. Despite a great deal of interest in 1-1s as a core part of the advisor role, a gap was identified in terms of current information regarding their delivery among ALL teams in Australia. Therefore, this research, undertaken in the early months of 2025 with 41 ALL teams, sought to shed light on how 1-1s are delivered across the country. Examining a range of delivery aspects including role and team naming, staffing, team location, numbers of 1-1s delivered in 2024, trends, ratios, advantages of and challenges to human facilitated advising, the paper concludes that, even in the face of clear and ongoing questions concerning its existence, the individual consultation is still very much a present and valued part of ALL work.