During UNSW Semester 2 2014 and Semester 1 2014, AGSM Social Impact teamed with Nura Gili (the Indigenous education institute of the UNSW School of Business) to recruit members of the AGSM community for their undergraduate student tutoring scheme.

It is hoped that facilitation of studies for these Indigenous students will preempt a greater progression of Indigenous students into leading business positions within Australia, and on to further postgraduate studies.

AGSM students were sought to assist in the tutoring of undergraduate students in UNSW Business School subjects such as:

ECON1102 Macroeconomics 1
ECON1203 Business statistics

MARK1012 Marketing Fundamentals

TABL1710 Business and the Law
TABL2741 Business Entities
TABL3732 - International Franchise Law

ACCT 1511 Accounting and Financial Management 1B
ACCT 3583 Management Accounting 2
ACCT3610 Business Analysis & valuation

FIN 3637 Wealth Management advice
FINS 1613 Business Finance

INFS2603 Business Systems Analysis
INFS 2621 Enterprise Systems

MGMT3102 - Asia-Pacific Business

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One of the tutors Ankit Kothari documented his experience with the program:

I was offered the role of a tutor for Indigenous student of the UNSW Business School by Nura Gili for the Accounting and Financial Management 1B course due to my past academic background and work experience at PwC. Within a week of my application as a tutor, I was recruited and assigned a student who was a first year student doing his Bachelor of
Commerce. Before starting tutoring, on my request, Nura Gili provided me with the student’s
academic background in the course and I realised that the student had only just managed to
pass this course in the previous semester.

I met with the student and discussed with him his strategic goals for the semester and the
course and wanted to help him achieve these objectives. The weekly time commitment for
the tutoring as per the guidelines provided by Nura Gili was 2 hours, with not more than 4
hours over a fortnight. Nura Gili offered a payment of AUD 52 per hour towards the time
commitment.

I had about seven 2-hour long sessions with the student where I tried to revise what was done in the lecture for the week and we solved a few exercises and homework together. The
student I realised was bright, however, was lacking only on the commitment front. Working
with him, I personally picked up a lot of teaching and communication skills along the way,
which will help me in the future in a leadership or training roles.

The student’s semester was 5 months long, however, after the first seven weeks, he said that
he followed what was being done in lectures and did not require further help. I did not stay
on in Sydney until the end of the semester and hence, could not check on the student’s
progress in grades. However, I had already seen a difference in his knowledge from the first
session to the seventh.

Overall, for me this was a great experience and a fine way of polishing communication skills
whilst training.

Ankit Kothari
ITAS Tutor 2014
AGSM MBA Class of 2015