Personal Blogs

A year ago, my colleague Alexis Lansbury gave a great presentation entitled ‘A Year in the Life of an AL’ at a STEM new tutor induction event. 

I have sometimes been asked ‘what exactly is it that associate lecturers do, other than marking assignments?’ when helping to recruit new tutors. It was at this point that I wished that I had a neat summary of Alexis’s presentation. With Alexis’s permission, I’ve prepared this summary of her talk, whilst adding my own flourishes, drawing on my own experience of tutoring for a decade.

A point to bear in mind is that this blog has been broadly written for tutors who teach on a single module which starts in October (which is known in OU speak as a ‘J presentation’; ‘A’ presentations begin in January, B in February, C in March…). 

This ‘year in the life’ for other ALs may, of course, be slightly different to the one that is depicted here. Also, there may well be slight differences in how things are run between tutors in different schools and faculties.

Another thing to bear in mind is that things are always changing. If this post is read in five years’ time, some bits may look slightly different; there might be references to new emerging processes, such as a ‘skills audit’ and ‘workload planning’. This said, the core aspects of the role should pretty much remain the same. 

An important question to begin with is: how do I become an associate lecturer with the OU? It begins with an application form.

Application, interviewing and appointment

The OU has an AL recruitment site. This site usually advertises tutor roles that are specifically linked to academic modules, but this may change in the next few years.

If you see a module that you think that you could tutor, you need to follow the following steps:

• Download the ‘generic’ person specification which is about teaching skills, and the module specific person specification. Take a few minutes to decide whether you can meet each of the points on the person spec.
• Download the application form.
• Complete said application form.
• Send completed application form to the email address that is given in the application form.

I was once offered a bit of really good advice about completing application forms: “do everything you can to convince whoever is reviewing your application that you should be interviewed”. This can be rephased to: “make everything blindingly obvious”.

The first bullet point above suggests that the AL application form has two parts: a generic bit (which is about teaching), and a module specific bit (which is about the academic skills and abilities).

The application form has two sections: a bit that is about teaching, and a bit that is specific to a module or topic. To make things blindingly obvious, a recommendation is to copy each point of the generic spec, and paste it into the generic section, and then do the same for the module specific person spec. When this looks okay, provide between two and four sentences of evidence about how you meet each of these points. 

After the application has been submitted, two staff tutors will read each application form and decide whether someone has met most of the points on the person spec, and will then be invited to interview. Interviews can take place either face-to-face, or over the phone. Depending on the role, applicants may also be sent a short task to complete. This might be a short marking exercise, or a plan for a tutorial. 

The aims of the interview are to further and more thoroughly assess whether a candidate meets all the person spec criteria. Each interview is carried out by two staff tutors. If successful, a candidate will be considered to be ‘appointable’, which means they have met all the selection criteria and are potentially eligible to receive a group of students should they be available.

Getting a group always depends on a number of different factors: the number of students who have applied to tutor on a module, the number of other tutors who have applied, and also the interview score (which is sometimes combined with the test score). 

When recruiting for new modules, interviews typically take place in July or August, but in some cases, they may well take place in September, which is very close to the start of the start of a module.

September:  Appointments, FED, TSAs …

September is a busy month. For modules that start in October, September is when the FED is, which is short for the student Final Enrolment Date.

A week or so after FED, the university will know roughly how many students have been recruited to a module. Staff tutors can often only make new appointments around or after this date. If you’re a new tutor, September is the month when you find out whether you have a group or not.

During September, your staff tutor (or assistant staff tutor) will get in touch and ask you for your timetable dates. If this is a new module, a good idea is to study the module calendar to see what happens when, and have a good look at the module Group Tuition Strategy (GTP). The GTP roughly sketches out what is in the head of the module team in terms of student interaction.

After appointment, there is something called TSA. TSA is an abbreviation for Tutor Student Allocation; it is the process where the students are assigned to tutors (it’s also a part of the year when the university is exceptionally busy!) When the TSA has been completed, you will receive an email telling you that your group of students is now available to you.

The next step is to look through your student list, paying particular attention to any flags that might be against student records. Look out for students who might have disability markers, or alerts, such as whether they might be younger students, on their records.

If you see a student who is on a degree apprentice programme, there might be the possibility that someone called a practice tutor might be in touch. Don’t worry about this; this is just someone who supports an apprentice student through the period of their studies whilst they work within industry.

Another good thing to do during this month is to make sure that your computer is all set up and ready. The university uses Microsoft Outlook to provide you with an email address, and Skype for Business to enable you to make outgoing telephone calls and easily speak with other tutor colleagues. Before the start of the module, it’s important to make sure that your IT setup is working and ready to go. 

A week or so before the start of the module, you should be contacting your students to say hello to them. This could take place by email, by text, or by phone. It’s important to make a note of who gets in touch with you. 

Every new tutor will be allocated a mentor, who is usually an experienced tutor who has taught the module a number of times before. So, in September it’s important to reach out to them to say hello. They are paid to help you throughout your first presentation of a module, and can offer a lot of practical advice.

If you are joining a new module, new module briefings typically take place in September, usually on a Saturday or Sunday, and often at the university head office. This said, sometimes briefings are also online. If you’re joining an established module, it is worthwhile asking whether there are recordings of briefings.

A really important point is: don’t feel that you need to know everything.

October: Getting organised and prepared

From what I remember, modules that begin in October tend to start on the first Saturday of the month. This sometimes gives a tutor a few days to get organised. A really important thing to do is to look through all the assessments and put all the Tutor Marked Assessment (TMA) dates in your diary. These dates (along with the timetable dates that you agree with your tutor) are really important; your students will be working to these too.

It’s a good idea to also note down the iCMA (Computer Marked Assessment) cut-off dates, and any dates of any module-wide tutorial dates that might be taking place. This way, if you see that students haven’t completed the iCMAs, you can gently chase them. Also, knowing the dates of the module-wide events can be useful too since you can encourage students to attend them.

October is also a month for getting organised with the various OU systems. As a new tutor, you might want to complete some various bits of mandatory training (TutorHome). These include learning how to use the eTMA system (electronic TMA system), completing GDPR (data protection), Safeguarding and Prevent (terrorism awareness) training. It’s also a good idea to work through the equality essentials training, since completion will be recorded on your tutor record (and this is necessary for completing your AL probation).

If you haven’t used it before, it’s also a good idea to sign up for some Adobe Connect training, which is used for online tutorials. There are some very good short introductory courses that not only introduce the practical aspects of working with the software, but they also introduce some important concepts of online pedagogy.

By the middle of the month, all your students should have responded to your introductory email. If you haven’t heard from them, a suggestion is to first send them a short text message (always remember to write ‘hello studentname’ at the start of the text, as otherwise you might not easily know who the replies are from!) If you don’t receive a text, a suggestion is to give a student a ring. Students are invariably really pleased to hear from you, so please don’t worry about calling. 

If you can’t get hold of a student, you should submit something that is called a referral to the SST (Student Support Team) to let them know that you haven’t been able to get in contact. It’s important to do this, since if a student isn’t able to study despite being registered, the longer they leave it, the more significant the fee implications for the student are.

By now, you should be becoming more familiar with the module website. If your module has a tutor group forum area, find it and subscribe to it. When I get to that area, I post an introduction. In this introduction, I ask questions like: what do the students hope to get out of the module, and whether they have any fears or concerns about anything?

During this first month, you’ll also be planning and delivering your first introductory tutorials. In these, a recommendation is to introduce who you are, get students to introduce themselves to each other, and introduce the module to everyone. A key part of this will be to explain the assessment strategy that the module uses.

To prepare, you might have a meeting with a fellow tutor, if you’re going to be running an introductory session together. You might also have a look on the tutor version of a module website to see if any useful hints and tips have been posted, and maybe use some bits out of other PowerPoint presentations that other tutors might have posted.

A recommendation is to also record bits of the first tutorial so there’s something for students to listen to if they were not able to attend. The day after a recording, it’s important to make sure that the recording is visible to students. 

November: Everyone gets going…

November is the month when everything gets going and also when everything settles down a bit.  By November, you should have completed all your mandatory training.

November is the month when the ALSD, Associate Lecturer Staff Development, cycle starts. The university ALSPD, meaning ALs Professional Development, prepare and run a series of events and professional development conferences for tutors. In November, you might want to look through the list of conferences that are scheduled throughout the year (which you can find published on TutorHome), perhaps adding one date to your diary.

There are other staff development opportunities that you might want to look into. The STEM faculty runs (or used to run) a programme called “By ALs for ALs” which is about a peer staff development and training. Sometimes there might be faculty or school specific events in this month. One year, there was an AL conference that was run for all ALs in the School of Computing and Communication. 

November may also be the month when the first TMA arrives in your eTMA inbox. You will know about this because there will be an email when students submit their TMAS, and you’ll be all ready for them because you’ll have an entry in your diary. A point to note is that you’ll have to return them within ten working days. During that time, you will have to mark them and offer some detailed correspondence tuition to help your student move forward through a module. 

December: A small amount of relaxation

If you tutor or teach on any B modules (modules that begin in February) it is possible that your staff tutor (line manager) may be in contact to ask you about tutorial dates towards the end of November and the beginning of December. A university principle is that tutorial dates should be made available three months in advance; sometimes staff tutors do this earlier, but sometimes they may ask for dates closer to the start of the module if student numbers are a bit uncertain.

During this month there may be some ALSD conferences. I remember going to a couple of AL development conferences that have taken place in December.

December is also a month for a bit of rest and relaxation. The university typically closes down for Christmas, and then opens up again in the new year, and tutors are not expected to work during this period. This said, many students will still be studying, so they may well send the occasional query from time to time. Also, even though the university might be officially closed, staff tutors (tutor line managers) are a dedicated bunch, which means that if you have any issues, you might still be able to contact them to ask for a bit of advice. 

January: Enrolments and studying

For modules that start in February, there will be a Final Enrolment Date for students which is typically in the middle of January. To prepare for a February presentation, there might be late tutor appointments (to take account of changes in student numbers) and the completion of the tutor-student allocation.

To support students who started in October there may be further TMAs submitted (depending upon the module schedule), tutorials, and the need to respond to various questions and queries from students about the module materials or the assessments.

Towards the end of January, depending on the TMA schedule, you might see your first monitoring report. A monitoring report is an assessment of your marking performance. To ensure quality, your marking and feedback is assessed by either a member of the module team, or an experienced tutor. They will look at the tone of your comments and the effectiveness of your marking. All this will get signed off by your line manager.

February: Continuing to receive and mark TMAs

If you tutor on a module that starts this month, you will need to look through your student list and write to them, and make sure that you have made a note of all the TMA and tutorial dates. 

If you are teaching on a module starting in April (D) then your staff tutor will be asking for a timetable from you. If you’re unsure what they are asking for, do ask them. Some rough guidance is available from the module Group Tuition Policy. A good rule of thumb is: try to do, roughly, what happened for the previous presentation.

During this month, students will be doing their study, and this means that there might be some TMA marking. There may also be the need to plan and run a tutorial. If you’re delivering a tutorial with a fellow tutor, you should try to get in touch with them to come up with a plan about who does what and when. One tutor might want to present half of a session, or one might be a lead presenter and the other might be a support presenter who may look after the text chat, or one tutor might ask the second tutor some questions about the module material. Tutorials are opportunities to be creative. 

March: Study progress

For modules that start in April there will be the student Final Enrolment Date, the possibility of late appointments and last-minute timetabling before you are then assigned your group (the completion of the TSA).

During all these months, it’s important to keep in regular contact with your students. If you haven’t heard from them for a while, a suggestion is to send them a quick note to ask them how they’re getting along. You can do this by sending them a group email, making a post to the discussion forum, or ideally both.

The longer a module goes on, the more tired students may become. This means that you may have to record the occasional TMA extension using the TutorHome webpage if students need a bit more time to complete their assignments. 

During March, there might be some AL development conferences running somewhere. These conferences move around the UK to different locations; you should go to the event that is closest to where you live.

April: Easter

April should be a relatively quiet month, except for those tutors who have modules that start this month. For students who started in October, everyone should be now thoroughly settled: you should have a good idea of how everyone is doing through the TMA scores, and know some of your students through the different tutorials. 

In April, a suggestion is to revisit your module calendar to remind yourself about what everyone has been doing for the past few months, and what there is to do over the final two months. The reason to do this is that your attention (and those of your students) should be gradually turning towards the exam or EMA.

May: Exam preparation

May is the month of exams and exam preparation. Exams can take two different forms: they can be either a three hour written exam, which takes place at an exam centre that is as close as possible to where a student lives, or they can be an EMA. An EMA is known as an End of Module Assessment, which is a bit like a extended TMA which takes the place of an exam. 

During May, you may be called upon to run an exam preparation session. To help with this challenging task, the module team will have provided what is known as a Sample Exam Paper, or SEP. The SEP gives a set of questions which look like the kind of questions you may be asked during the real exam. If a module has been running for a few years, students can also download some copies of past exam papers.

During the exam preparation session, you might want to talk about not only the types of questions (and topics) that students might be asked about, but you might also want to talk about exam strategy. This may be especially important if students haven’t taken written exams for some time.

One thing to be aware of is that students may sometimes ask for extensions for their final TMAs. University policy says that extensions to final TMAs are not possible. There are two main reasons for this: the first is that all the assessment dates have to be recorded by a certain date to make sure that the module results collation processes work okay (an administrative reason), and secondly students need to have sufficient time to study and prepare for their exams (a study related reason). 

May also usually means a little bit of time off or away, due to the May bank holidays.

June: Examination time

June is the month of exams. Before the exam, expect a few queries about module materials, but if you receive any queries about where students should go, do direct students to the student support team.

Depending on the module that you’re tutoring, you may also be able to sign up to do some exam or EMA marking. At the time of writing, exam and EMA marking is covered under a separate contract (unless your module uses something called a ‘single component assessment’ model).

If you are down as an exam marker you will be required to participate in what is called a co-ordination exercise. What this means is that all examiners will be required to mark a number of exam scripts that are chosen by the module chair and attend a co-ordination meeting where everyone discusses and compares their scores. The idea is that any marking scheme will be thoroughly tested, and differences in markers and marking can be ironed out before the marking takes place. 

A personal reflection is that exam or EMA marking is hard work. Markers have to pay very close attention to a marking guide, and also enter exam results into a marking database. With both EMA and exam marking, a constant supply of tea is a necessity.

There are other things that happen in June. If you’re teaching on a J (October) module, you may receive a confirmation of an appointment if it looks like there will be sufficient numbers of students registering on that module. If student numbers have fallen substantially you might be sent a letter that might warns about the possibility of redundancy, but this very much depends on the current terms and conditions of your tutor contract. 

During some of these months, you may also be working on different bits and pieces, depending on your relationship with your staff tutor and the module team. Some tutors might be doing some peer monitoring, whereas other tutors might be asked to carry out some other academic tasks, such as critical reading, checking and writing of assessments, or even the writing of new exam questions.

July and August: Holiday time (for some)

The summer means holiday time (non-teaching time) for tutors, but not for staff tutors.

The summer should also be decision time.  Every module is different. Sometimes there is a perfect match between a tutor’s skills, knowledge and experience. On other occasions, tutors might realise, after a presentation, that a module isn’t quite right for them. If that is the case, you need to decide whether you wish to continue. The best time to make that decision is in the summer time, since according to one version of the tutor contract, tutors have to give three months’ notice. Plus, this gives your staff tutor sufficient time to try to find a replacement.

If you have applied to tutor a module, tutors might be invited to interviews in the summer. Also, if you are appointable and there are sufficient student registrations for new modules, AL services may be in contact to offer you a contract.

Not only are the staff tutors thinking about recruitment, they are also starting to plan for the next presentation. Staff tutors may be in touch with you to get your ideas about timetables for the modules that start in October. To prepare for this, it’s worth considering what worked well, who you would like to work with, and what your holiday plans for the year might be.

September: Appointments, FED, TSAs …

It all begins again in September; it’s always a busy month. For modules that start in October, September is when the FED is, which is short for the student Final Enrolment Date.

In addition to everything that was mentioned earlier, there’s a couple of extra things that are important to mention. After the first year of tutoring, your line manager will be in contact to organise a first year probation meeting. The is usually pretty informal and shouldn’t be anything to worry about. The tutor probation period lasts for two years. This means after the second presentation, there will be a further meeting to finalise everything. In this meeting your line manager will check to see whether you’ve completed all the mandatory training, and if you have any worries about anything.

In addition to the probation meetings, there is something called a CDSA that takes place every two years. CDSA is an abbreviation for Career Development and Staff Appraisal. Its purpose is to facilitate a discussion about how the university might be able to help with regards to supporting you and your tutoring work. In the meeting, your staff tutor might offer some advice and thoughts about AL development opportunities. In turn, your staff tutor can influence the direction and aims of various AL development groups.

Towards the end of September, tutor-student allocation will happen. It’s time to say hello to your students again.

Closing thoughts

I started my career as an OU tutor back in 2006. The first year was tough because everything was new to me: the university, the module, where the module sat within a wider programme, the systems, and correspondence tuition. I think it is fair to say that you need to complete at least two presentations of any module before you feel completely comfortable with its aims, objectives, and what is in the heads of the module team members.

Whenever speaking to anyone who is considering becoming a tutor, there is something that I clearly emphasise, and this is: there is a lot of support that is available. Every tutor has a friendly line manager whose sole purpose is to help you with your tutoring. There are also fellow tutors, who are a great bunch of people. There is always a tutor somewhere who is able to answer your questions. Finally, there is an entire module team who is behind you, and these are represented by someone (on the tutor side) by someone who has the job title of ‘curriculum manager’.

Being a tutor can be tiring, sometimes frustrating, but undeniably rewarding. Tutors make the difference. If you’re curious about the role, do try to find the time to speak to a staff tutor. More importantly, though, do try to find the time to speak to an OU student. 

Finally, in some respects, this post complements two earlier posts which were on a slightly different topic. The first post has the title Day in the life of a MCT staff tutor and was written in 2015. A follow on post, entitled Day in the life of a STEM staff tutor (reprised) was written a couple of years later in 2017, following a series of university changes. I hope these additional posts add  to this summary of ‘a year in the life of an AL’.

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to Alexis Lansbury who took the time to review this blog post, and has kindly saved very many grammatical and typographical blushes.

This post is a quick summary of a requirements workshop that took place at the Manchester student support and resource centre (SRSC) towards the end of January 2019. Also, at the end of his blog post is a short summary of a discussion and presentation that took place at the School of Computing and Communications away day, that took place in February.

The January event was originally called a ‘participatory design workshop’, but if the truth is told, we didn’t actually get as far as doing any significant design; we had way too much to talk about. The aim of this workshop was to figure out a couple of things: 

1. to learn more about how we might gather requirements about an AL workload management system, and 
   
2. to try to gather some of those requirements.  
   

Since this was the first requirements gathering event (that I know of), arguably the first point was the more important of the two objectives.

One of the things that I’ve learnt from teaching interaction design for ten years is that it’s really important to involve people (especially if those people you’re speaking to are going to be affected by a system that you’re going to be introducing). It’s also important to identify which groups of people are going to be affected by the introduction of a system through a process that is broadly known as stakeholder analysis.

The stakeholders who were involved at this workshop was a group of staff tutors from the school of Computing and Communications. It’s important to say something about this group of awesome people: they work within a number of different organisational cultures. They work within a particular school and within a particular faculty (the STEM faculty), and (of course) within this particular university. 

My point is that different staff tutors (and stakeholders) may well have different needs and requirements. The needs and requirements gathered from this one group of staff might be different to those gathered from another group. I’ll put it another way: to get a real understanding of what you need from a system means that you’ve got to go and ask different groups of people. What the tutors will need (and tutors are, arguably, the most important stakeholder in this system) will be very different from what the staff tutors need.

Another point to remember is that you can’t just buy a ‘work management system’ for tutors off the shelf. The reason for this is pretty simple and obvious: the OU tutor contract is specific to the OU, and that the OU is pretty unique amongst institutions, which means that an off the shelf ‘talent management system’ (or whatever they might be called) is unlikely to suit our needs. This said, this important reflection shouldn’t stop us looking at other products to gain inspiration and insights.

The question is: how do actually go about specifying a new system? Actually, there are a couple of subjects in computing that can help us: interaction design (which I’ve mentioned earlier), and requirements engineering (I know more about the former than the latter).

What follows is a summary of the plan for the day, a brief summary of some of the points that were gathered, followed with a quick summary (and a suggestion about next steps). A more detailed document (complete with more pictures and text) will be prepared from all the resources that has been captured.

The workshop plan

The workshop was (roughly) split into thirds. 

Part 1

The first third was all about context. Steve Walker (who was involved in the contract negotiations) began by introducing the contract. Steve said that he was being asking two types of questions: type A questions were questions about the detail about the contract; type B questions were questions about how the new system would work. The aim of this workshop was, he said, to answer some of those type B questions that everyone was asking. These questions were, in essence, about the detail (and when it comes to system design, details matter).

After Steve had completed his introduction, he described the connection between the new tutor contract and the replacement of some university systems. The timing of the negotiations were such that they are not connected or linked to each another. The point is that the new tutor contract represents a set of additional system requirements that need to be taken into account (somehow).

Next up was yours truly. I described some tools and principles from the subject of interaction design (which is all about the designing of interactive systems). I spoke about personas, scenarios and use cases. 

Importantly, user personas have already been used by the contract team to understand different tutors who might move onto the new tutor contract, but personas didn’t exist for other stakeholders (such as staff tutors, academic services staff, HR people, and central academics). 

Some further points were: there is the need to explore the problem space, and the importance of iteration and prototyping. An important point was: the later you make changes in an IT system, the more things cost. The obvious solution for risk mitigation is that it is really important to understand what you’re building before you go ahead and build a system.

Part 2

This was the part where staff tutor colleagues got themselves into small groups. The brief was kept simple: think about the challenges that you face in your day to day work as a staff tutor, and use the different interaction design tools to try to create something. That something might be: personas, narrative descriptions of tasks, or rough sketches that illustrates how the tutor management system needs to work (and what the different stakeholders need to do). 

Part 3

This final part was where all the different groups shared something about their discussions with each other. This bit was very informal, and led to a group discussion about some of the various issues and challenges that were exposed. After the discussions, all notes (and scribbled on flip charts) were gathered up in anticipation of the next step: analysis. 

Outcomes

Two related questions that interaction design students can ask is: (1) how much requirements gathering should you do? And, (2) how do you analyse and make sense of all the data that you’ve gathered?

The answer to the first question is: “you should keep gathering requirements until you spend your budget and/or find that you’re no longer gathering any more new requirements”. Regarding the analysis question, I feel that it’s very much an inductive process: you look at everything and try to figure out what it all means. As you do this, you can begin to write everything down and start to use some of the design tools that I’ve mentioned earlier.

By way of a start, what follows are some broad themes (and questions) that have emerged from our workshop discussions. One thing that I should be clear about is that that the identification of the themes is influenced by my own experiences as both an AL and a staff tutor. Different colleagues could easily identify different issues.

Stakeholders

There are loads of stakeholder (more, perhaps, than we had realised): there are ALs, AL exec and assembly members, staff tutors, lead staff tutors, cluster managers, Academic services (AL services), module team members, module chairs, curriculum managers, people services (HR), IT, Associate Deans and Executive Deans, and finance people. I'm sure there are others too.

In addition to there being loads of stakeholders, another really important point is that different stakeholders will have different perspectives. 

The perspectives of (and experiences) ALs from the STEM faculty will be different to the perspectives of WELS ALs, and these will be different to the perspective of business school ALs. There are important differences between other stakeholder groups: STEM has staff tutors, FASS has staff tutors and faculty managers, and FBL has student experience managers. Different modules, programmes and disciplines may point to differences that need to be thoroughly understood and appreciated.

Implications for stakeholders

An important question to ask is: how will the stakeholders feed into decisions about any system that supports the operation of the new contract? There are other important considerations and implications that need to be taken into account:

• How will or should different stakeholders understand the system? Will they see it in terms of managing people, or about managing work or workload? (Or, in interaction design terms, what is the overall conceptual model?) 
  
• Does the new contract mean that there is a change from managing tutors to leading tutors?
  
• Which perspective is the most important: national, regional, cluster or module? Again, to what extent does this differ between different stakeholders?
  
• Will different stakeholder see a different dashboard or representation of the system that makes the tutor contract possible? If so, what might this dashboard look like?

Questions

During our workshop, we unearthed a whole bunch of important questions that we couldn't answer by ourselves:

• Who will be able to make decisions about the skills audit?
  
• Will the ALs be able to see their skills audit results through their TutorHome pages?
  
• How do staff tutors handle an increase in the student numbers? (And how does this link to HR procedures?)
  
• What happens when a tutor requests a leave of absence? 
  
• How can tutors and staff tutors manage holidays?
  
• What happens if a staff tutor can’t fill or top up a percentage of FTE? Does the system tell a staff tutor what percentage this is, and offer helpful recommendations?
  
• What are the recruitment procedures to use if everyone is maxed out on their FTE (or, what buttons might you press)? 
  
• If a stakeholder finds a need for a new work component, how do they get it added to the system?
  

Workshop Reflections

The aim of this workshop was to ‘bootstrap’ or to start the gathering of requirements for a tutor workload management system.

A key reflection was that the plan for the workshop was hopelessly ambitious. 

I had imagined that we would create some new personas and start writing a few scenarios, and then prepare a bunch of ‘straw men’ (or ‘straw person’) sketches that could form the basis of further discussions. In some ways, some groups did start to do this by sketching what bits of information staff tutors would like to see on a screen or 'data portal' or dashboard. Such a step represents the first steps towards a beginning of a design; one that could (and should) be criticized, reinvented and then redesigned.

The truth of the matter was that we were not at the requirements gathering phase: we still didn’t have a good understanding of the problem space.

I’ll share a pretty direct opinion: for a system to be a success you need buy in from its users and stakeholders. 

People like (and need) to be involved. A suggestion is, therefore, to roll out a version of this workshop to different groups of staff across the university: different groups of tutors, different groups of staff tutors, different groups of academics, and different groups of academic services administrators.

Requirements need to be gathered, and potential users need to be listened to. To get it right all this requirements and engagement activity will, necessarily, take time.

A change to the tutor contact represents a significant change to how the university operates. The systems that support that change needs to be right.

An important point to remember is that we’re not talking about a computer system, or a bunch of web pages: we’re talking about the need to figure out how a complex socio-technical system works. 

A concluding opinion is that: we shouldn’t rush the implementation and roll out of a workload management system for tutors. It is way too important.

Workshop Acknowledgements

A big thank you to Steve Walker who introduced the tutor contract during the first part of the workshop, and to all participants. Acknowledgements are also extended to Georgina Harris and Mark Slaymaker and other colleagues who reviewed earlier drafts of this post.

C&C Away Day Discussion

On 13 February I gave a short presentation about the new tutor contract during the School of Computing and Communications away day. The aim of the presentation was to introduce the ideas behind the new tutor contract to colleagues in the school. I based the presentation on a set of slides that had been presented during the Staff Tutor workshop event (thanks Steve!)

After the presentation, there was a short Q&A session, where I tried to answer questions (with help from fellow staff tutors helped). During that session I tried to be as clear as I could in terms of sharing what we knew, and what we didn't. Or, put another way, what the 'know unknowns' were. The most significant of these 'known unknowns' are: what system we use to record everything, how we practically go about carrying out a skills audit and what the HR processes might be for recruiting new tutors to the university.

Here are some key questions that were raised by colleagues in the school:

• Will we have a loss of control over who we give particular bits of work to? (My personal answer to this one is: I don't think so)
• Do we (module teams) need to specify what "additional duties" mean, and how does this relate to FTE points? (A related question is: how do bits of work translate to FTE units that we can fit into the work plan for an associate lecturer?)
• Will central academics be able to see an AL profile to get an understanding of what skills resources are available within a school, so we can try to plan for when we might need more capacity in particular areas? (Or, put another way: what information will module team members be able to see?)
• What process will there be for the fair selection of associate lecturers? This might apply to either recruiting associate lecturers into the university, or choosing bits of work. (An accompanying question is: what processes do we follow if our decision making is challenged?)
• Also, we may need to recruit some associate lecturers with specialist skills. Will the new contract enable us to do this?
• Finally, to what degree will central academic staff need to be (and should be) involved with the academic professional development (or upskilling) of associate lecturers?

After the discussion, I agreed to pass these points on to the project team.

A point I made at the start of the presentation was that the new tutor contract has the potential to change the character of some aspects of the university and affect the way that we all do things. With this in mind, I do feel that it's important that we engage with discussions that relate to its development and implementation.

Additional information

Messages about the new tutor contract regularly appear in my inbox. Here's a quick summary of some of the most important links I've found:

• New AL Contract pages (TutorHome)
  
• AL Line Manager FAQs (for staff tutors, PDF)
  
• Core FAQs (TutorHome)
  
• Podcasts and Recordings about the new tutor contract (TutorHome)

Just before the start of the TM470 project module, I asked myself a question: should I run a tutorial? Tutorials are not compulsory but I do know that some tutors run them. I had another question: what do other tutors do? These questions motivated me to ask my TM470 line manager another question: ‘could I run an AL development session to ask tutors what tutors do? This might be something that could help other tutors’. My line manager, Keith, agreed.

This document (or blog post) is a quick summary of the key discussion points that were drawn from that AL development session. Most of these points are from two activities. Tutors were put into four different break out rooms and asked to answer a set of questions. After the discussions, we all came back to the main room and discussed our findings.

The headings below represent the questions that were asked. The comments underneath are, essentially, a quick summary of the points that were discussed.

What would be the aim [of a tutorial] and when should you run one?

Run a tutorial early in the module to give students some guidance about the way the project should be approached (coding and creating versus recording).

Mixed feedback/feedforward and used student participation.

Tutorials seem to work better if they are studying similar subject: whole cohort sessions on specific topics? The challenge is that ALs have limited time.

To discuss key skills like research and literature: this can lead to fewer repeated emails about generic questions.

To save time repeating the same information to other students?

What would you do in a tutorial?

Setting out the approach for the module.

Getting students to generate 3 or 4 PowerPoint slides, and then discuss in tutor group (getting students to do the work). Tell us what they’re doing, and an issue that they have. Be positive.

Try to get them thinking less about the technical stuff: more about project management and reflection.

Try to get them to appreciate the need to address learning outcomes.

Talk about literature reviews.

Discuss deadlines and what is required.

A drop in session to allow students to discuss things. A learning outcome should be: students should be able to present their projects to other people.

In some situations, depending on what is taught, a video from the module team might be useful.

Discussions contribute to learning outcomes.

What are the challenges and what would help you?

Getting students to attend.

A tutorial can become a monologue (lecture)

Students without audio: most will say something in the chat window.

Recordings: will students turn up? Or will students be disadvantaged?

Privacy concerns about disclosing information about student projects in tutorials.

Having enough time to run the tutorials when tutors are busy answering emails.

How do you maximise attendance at a tutorial?

Use the forum, and the group email: allude to the benefits of the tutorials, saying that they will end up doing better projects.

Take every opportunity to encourage attendance: in every chat, email or piece of feedback (TMA!) refer to the next tutorial.

‘Put the fear of God into them’; tell them they must attend – it is there for their own benefit! This is a very difficult course! Don’t miss it.

Using a Doodle poll to set an agreed time.

What are the most difficult things for a student?

Working consistently, i.e. not trying to do a TMA over the weekend.

Managing time and deadlines.

Not understanding the requirements/components of a project.

Not having the patience to fully explore the background to the problem.

It is a module without a substantial calendar: students have to plan in their own time.

Reflection.

How to plan and structure.

Finding resources.

Getting started at the right place, and knowing when to stop.

Knowing their own limitations: they need a project that demonstrates their skills and knowledge.

What common mistakes do students make?

Trying to do too much, or under estimating time required.

Not reading what is required for the TMA: read the instructions! Look out for what the module materials are asking for.

Wanting to try new toys just to add experience rather than trying to engage deeper with the subject.

A literature review that is not deep enough.

When there are projects that relate to work situations, there can be too much focus on satisfying the client’s requirements rather than the module’s requirements.

Do the students have a backup plan if things go wrong if they have a ‘client’?

Students focus on assignments and not just projects.

If you could offer one bit of advice to a student, what would it be?

It’s not about writing code.

Stick with a simple system: don’t be too ambitious.

Don’t panic!

Use the full window of time and execute each stage completely.

Keep in contact with your tutor, no matter what is happening!

If you could offer one bit of advice to a new tutor, what would it be?

Tell students to keep evidence of what they’re doing e.g. a log of activities, which is very useful for report writing.

Application of common sense when it comes to keeping students on track.

Keep talking to your students; keep contacting them if they don’t contact you.

Keep discussing with other tutors: use the forums; there is lots of experience.

Final thoughts

From my perspective, I was really surprised with how many interesting, different and useful points came out from these discussions. This session has (personally) given me some really good ideas of things to speak about in a TM470 tutorial.

One thing that I should say is that there were two schools of thoughts about whether tutorials are needed or not. I think I remember reading (or hearing) one opinion that perhaps they are useful in terms of getting students started, but then the hours that the students have could be spent on a more personal or one to one basis.

There are, of course, many different ways to support students, and this session has helped to share some really great ideas between tutors.

A final question is: what next? I felt this session has been personally really useful. Does anyone have any ideas about what else might be useful? One thought is a ‘tutor drop in’; an opportunity to discuss interesting projects and situations. Another passing thought is the potential benefit of talking about marking or correspondence tuition. I think I’ll stop at this point, and hand this discussion back to all those TM470 tutors who are significantly more experienced than I am.

The first Open University module that I was a tutor for was called M364 Fundamentals of Interaction Design. I have some faint recollections of going to a module briefing which took place in Milton Keynes. When the module finished (and I found myself on the module team) I decided to run an unofficial module debriefing. This blog post has been derived from a set of notes that I made during the debriefing that was held in Camden Town on 16 July 2016. It is a part of a larger piece of work that I hope will be useful to inform university teaching practice across Computing and IT modules. Eleven people attended, most of them were associate lecturers. There was one staff tutor (a line manager for associate lecturers), and the original M364 module chair. 

Initial comments

A really interesting point was that the module doesn’t teach what is meant by ‘justification’. This is important because the TMAs for the module don’t necessarily have right or wrong answers (instead, students might present answers that are not appropriately justified).

A comment from tutors: students who are taking M364 as a first module may struggle, especially when it comes to the writing; they can also be shocked by the amount of reading that they have to do. The four blocks ‘dart around’ the set text, which can be disorientating. 

Marking

Marking is considered to be very time consuming because tutors need to understand the material very well. Anything between 1 hour and 3 hours per assignment is reported, which is at odds with the university guidelines of 45 minutes. In my own experience over ten years, I rarely got the marking down to an hour per assignment. 

Tutorials

The more students that attend the day schools, the more exciting they become. It’s important to offer real world examples (I regularly used door handles).

Exam marking

One tutor reported that they loved doing exam marking since it can inform other types of marking. An interesting observation is that the marking for M364 seemed to take longer than with other modules. It was also a challenge to try ‘to read their minds’ (in terms of looking for evidence of understanding).

Terminology

One observation was that there were occasional differences in the way that terminology was used within the module. There were also differences in terminology between modules, i.e. the terms ‘use cases’ and ‘scenarios’ are different in modules such as M256 (which is a Java module). Some English as a Second Language (ESL) students can find things especially difficult, since there are so many terms (especially in terms of the usability and the user experience goals).

Culture

Block 2 contains a section on culture and cultural dimensions, which hasn’t made it into the replacement module, TM356. Students sometimes took the section about culture very literally, but this aspect of the module did lead to some really lively discussions during tutorials. Even though the research about culture that is featured in block 2 can be criticised very easily, it offered a useful vocabulary.

Module team

The overwhelming view was that the module team responded to any problems and issues very quickly and efficiently. (This view wasn’t just expressed because a member of the module team was at the debrief meeting). 

Monitoring

During the module, monitoring was, by and large, allocated to a single monitor. Once that monitor had decided to move on, or wasn’t available, monitoring responsibility was handed over to another volunteer. There was the view that monitoring could have been distributed more widely across all the tutors. Key points were: ‘you learn more from monitoring than being monitored’ and ‘you see how others are marking’.

Tutor resources

One thing that I’ve noted down was that a roadmap of the course would be considered to be useful. Perhaps there could be more materials about the ‘mindset of correct, not correct’ answers. A challenge for new tutors is to understand the philosophy of the module, and it might be useful to convey the point that feedback to students has to be relevant to context of the tuition (or, put another way, tutor comments have to be aligned with and relate to what the students have submitted).

Something else that would be useful would be to have specimen TMA solutions: one that is very good, another that might be mediocre, to allow tutors to ‘align’ their marking.  In a similar vein, it would be useful to share different examples of marking practice.

Guidance to tutors is considered to be important: encourage new tutors to be flexible, and tell them not to be afraid of moving away from the module materials (if they find it appropriate to do so). Also, don’t expect to be perfect; this is a subject that doesn’t have perfect answers. 

Further work

During the debriefing event (which was, in essence, a focus group), I made a recording of all the discussions. My next step is to transcribe the recording so I can try to compose a distilled summary of what amounts to over 10 years of collective distance learning teaching practice of a subject that I feel is pretty difficult to teach. At the same time, I hope to present a short seminar so I can more directly share stories and experiences with some of my colleagues who teach different Computing and IT modules. I have no idea when I’m going to be able to do this, though; I’ll just try to fit it in when I can!

I spend quite a lot of time using on-line discussion forums that are used as a part of a number of Open University modules I have a connection with.  I also wear a number of different ‘hats’; as well as being an Open University tutor, I also spend time visiting forums that are run by other Open University tutors in my role as a staff tutor.

A couple of years ago, I was sent a copy of a book called e-moderating (book website) by Gilly Salmon, who used to work at the Open University business school.  The e-moderating book is really useful in situations where the discussion forums constitute a very central part of the teaching and learning experience.  Salmon offers a raft of useful tips and offers us a helpful five stage model (which can be used to understand the different types of interaction and activities that can take place within a forum).

Different modules use discussion forums in different ways.  In some modules, such as H810 Accessible on-line learning they are absolutely central to the module experience.  In other modules, say, M364 Interaction Design, they tend to adopt more of a ‘supporting’ rather than a ‘knowledge creation’ role.

Just before breaking for Christmas and the New Year, I started (quite randomly) to write a list of what I thought would be my own ‘killer tips’ to help tutors with forums.  This is what I’ve come up with so far.

1. Be overly polite

One phrase that I really like is ‘emotional bandwidth’.  In a discussion forum, we’re usually dealing with raw text (although we can pepper our posts with emoticons and pictures). 

This means that we have quite a ‘narrow’ or ‘low’ emotional bandwidth; our words and phrases can be very easily misunderstood and misinterpreted by others, especially in situations when we’re asking questions with the objective of trying to learn some new concept or idea.  Since our words are always ambiguous, it’s important to be overly polite.   

Be more polite than you would be in real life!

2. Acknowledge every introduction

The start of a module is really important.  The first days or weeks represent our chance to ‘set the tone’.  If we set the right tone, it’s possible to create momentum, to allow our discussion forums to attract interaction and conversation.

A good idea at the start of a module is to begin an ‘introduction’ thread.  Start this thread by posting your own introduction: set an example.  When other introductions are posted, take the time to send a reply to (or acknowledge) each one.

3. Use pins

Some discussion forums have a feature that allows you to ‘pin’ a discussion thread to the top of a forum. 

The act of ‘pinning’ a thread highlights it as something that is important.  Pins can be really useful to highlight discussions that are current or important (such as an activity that needs to be completed to prepare for an assignment, for example).  Subsequently, it’s important not to pin everything.  If you do, students will be unclear about what is important and what is not and this risk hiding important discussions. 

Use ‘pinned threads’ in a judicious way and regularly change what threads are pinned (as a module progresses) – this suggests that a forum is alive and active.

4. Tell your students to subscribe

There are a couple of ways to check the OU discussion forums.  One way is to login regularly and see whether anyone has made any new posts.  Another way is to receive email updates, either from individual threads or from whole discussion forums.  At the start of a module presentation, it’s a good idea to tell your student group to subscribe to all the forums that are used within a module.  One way to do this is by sending a group email.  When a student has subscribed they are sent an email whenever anyone makes a post or sends a reply (the email also contains a copy of the message that was posted).

One of the really good things about using emails to keep track of forums is that it’s possible to set up ‘rules’ on an email client.  For example, whenever a forum related email is received, it might be possible to transfer it to a folder based on the module code that is contained within the message subject.  This way, you can keep on top of things without overloading your inbox.

5. Encourage and confirm

Busy forums are likely to be the best forums.  One approach to try to create a busy forum is to do your best to offer continual encouragement; acknowledge a good post and emphasise key points that have been raised.  (Salmon writes about weaving together and summarising a number of different discussions). 

Another really great thing to do is to seek further confirmation or clarifications.  You might respond to a message by writing something like, ‘does this answer your question?’  This keeps a discussion alive and offers participants an opportunity to present alternative or different perspectives.

6. Push information about TMAs

Tutor marked assignments (TMAs) are really important.  As soon as a TMA is submitted, students will generally expect them back within 10 working days (which is the university guideline).  Sometimes TMAs are returned earlier, and in some situations (with permission from the staff tutor), it can take a bit longer.  A forum can be used to provide ‘push’ updates to students about how marking is progressing.  Once a TMA cut-off date has been met, a tutor could start a forum thread entitled, ‘TMA x marking update’. 

When you’re approximately half way through the marking, one idea is to make a post to this thread telling them.  Also, if your students have subscribed, they’ll automatically receive the updates.  This reduces pre-TMA result anxiety (for the students), since everyone is kept in the loop about what is happening.  (The thread can also be used to post some general feedback, if this is something that is recommended by the module team).

7. Advertise tutorials

Open University tutorials can be either face to face (at a study centre, which might be at a local university or college), or can take place on line through a system called OU Live.  A post to a discussion forum can be used to remind students about tutorials.   They can also be used to offer some guidance to students to help them to prepare for the session.  You could also ask whether students (in your group) have any particular subjects or topics that they would like to be discussed or explored.

After the tutorial, a forum can be used to share handouts that were used during either an on-line session or a day school.  It also offers students an opportunity to have a discussion about any issues that (perhaps) were not fully understood.  Also, during a tutorial, a tutor might set up or suggest a long running research task.

There are a number of advantages of connecting tutorials to forum discussions.  Those people who could not attend can benefit from any resources that were used during an event.  It also allows a wider set of opinions and views to be elicited from a greater number of students.

8. Provide links

A subject or topic doesn’t begin and end with the module materials.  During the presentation of a module, you might inadvertently see a TV programme that addresses some of the themes that are connected to a particular topic of study.  A forum is a great way to contextualise a module by connecting it to current stories in the media and one way you can do this is by either posting links to a news story (or series of stories), or perhaps by starting a discussion.

As well as sharing news stories, you can also use discussion forums to alert students to some of the study skills resources that have been developed by the Open University.  There are also some library resources that might be useful too.  Other resources might include OpenLearn resources, for example.  A forum is a great way to direct students to a wide array of useful and helpful materials.  You might also want to ask other tutors (using the tutors’ forum) about whether any other tutors have suggestions or ideas.

9. Visit other forums

Every tutor does things slightly different; no tutor is exactly the same, and this is a good thing.  If you tutor on a module, there’s a possibility that you might be able to view another tutor’s discussion forum.  If you have the time, do visit another tutor’s forum.  Some good questions to ask are: ‘at a glance, do the students look engaged?’ or ‘how busy is this forum?’  Other questions might be, ‘what exactly is the tutor doing?’ and ‘ how are they asking questions?’  This allows you to get a view on how well a forum is being run.  When you see a busy and well run forum, ask the question: ‘is the tutor doing something special here?’  If so, what is it?  Sometimes, of course, certain cohorts can just be pretty quiet; some years are more busy than others.

After visiting a forum, the best questions to ask are, ‘what have I learnt?’ and ‘is there anything that I could or should be doing with my forum?’

10. Form forum habits

The more that you’re active on a forum, the more useful a forum can become for students.  Find some time, every day, or every couple of days, to read through and respond to forum posts.  This will keep your forums fresh and alive; they may even acquire a ‘stickiness’ of their own and become pages that students are drawn to time and time again.

Summary

This quick blog post summarises a number of ‘forum tips’ that I’ve discovered over the last couple of years of working with different modules.  Some of these ideas have, of course, been shaped by the e-moderating book that I have mentioned earlier.  E-moderating is a book that is useful for some modules and not others since different modules use forums in slightly different ways.  Although a module team might use a forum in a particular way, it is always going to be up to you, a tutor, to take ownership of this important learning space.

Finally, if you would like to add to these tips (or even disagree with them), please don’t hesitate to let me know!