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Christopher Douce

STEM new tutor online briefing

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When I started with the OU back in 2006 I remember visiting a school or a sixth form college in Sussex to attend a new tutor induction day. I remember that it was a very busy event; it was for all new tutors across all faculties. Since the event was held at an unfamiliar school, I couldn’t shake that feeling of going to my first day at school. It was significant, fun, but also slightly unnerving.

Fast forward twelve years and things have changed. Almost all of the OU regional centres in England have closed, and I find myself co-hosting an online equivalent of an induction session with a staff tutor colleague from Science.

What follows is a very short summary of our presentation: ten top tips to becoming an associate lecturer, which took place on the evening of 3 October 2018 for all STEM associate lecturers who joined over the past two years. Much of the credit goes to Fiona Aiken who proposed the idea of the tips.

1. Understanding the tutor role

The module materials that do the teaching, students do the learning, and it is the role of a tutor to facilitate the student’s access to the learning. Tutors are an academic contact for the module; they answer questions that relate to the module materials, run tutorials, mark assessments and facilitate online discussions.

2. TutorHome

The most important website that you will use is TutorHome. Take time to have a look through the TutorHome site. You will find a way to get a summary of your student group, access the module website that you tutor, and will find a link to download and return TMAs. 

3. Introductory email

Introductions are important. When you receive your student group, send a welcoming email to every student. A recommendation is to personalise every one. Tell them something about you and your background (how long you have been a tutor for, and maybe something about your day job). Also, set some boundaries to say how they can contact you. Finally, encourage them to email you back so you can start a dialog. 

4. Setting up your Tutor Group forum

Different modules use tutor groups in different ways. Also, modules have different types of groups, depending on how they’re designed: there can be module wide forums, cluster forums and tutor group forums. Post a welcome message to your tutor group forum and subscribe to it. Encourage students to introduce themselves. Also, take a few moments to set up your TutorHome dashboard, since this is a nice way to get a quick overview

5. Adobe Connect

Like forums, there are different Adobe Connect online rooms for live online tutorials. Different modules will use them in different ways. Some key tips for the using of Adobe Connect are: take the time to complete some Adobe Connect training, make sure that you understand what a layout is and make good use of them, deliver sessions in pairs if you can (one tutor can manage the text window and another can present), consider recording your Adobe Connect session, make sure that you have a good understanding of the aims of a tutorial (refer to the group tuition strategy), gradually build up your expertise by using different features, don’t be afraid to get things wrong (since running online tutorials is hard), always try to include an an ice breaker, expect silence since it is hard to get students to speak, have very regular activities (between every 20 seconds and 2 minutes) and finally: be brave; try things out: we’re all learning!

6. Correspondence tuition

Correspondence tuition is, perhaps, the single most important thing that you will do as a tutor.  It isn’t just marking: it is where you do some teaching and help to facilitate student learning. In many cases it is your main point of contact with all your students, and think of it as a conversation between you and your students. Some points to remember: do return your marking within a ten working day period, make sure that you understand and thoroughly know the tutor notes that have been provided by the module team, and always ask your mentor for guidance.

7. Planning your Time

Since being a tutor is, mostly, a part time role, time is important; you need to plan carefully. Ask yourself the question: what are the constraints on your time? At the beginning of a module presentation write down all the tutorial dates and times. Also, if you’re going to be away for more than a couple of days, always remember to let your students and your staff tutor know. 

8. Looking through your Student List

When you have received your list of students, do take the time to look through your student list. Do pay particular attention as to whether they have any additional requirements (also known as a DA record). Also, you should be aware that there might be certain flags against certain students to highlight particular situations, such as whether they are young students or may be held in secure units. If you’re unsure about the implications or what any of this means, do ask your staff tutor. 

9. Where to get help

Although you will be working on your own for most of the time, it’s really important to remember that you’re never on your own; there is a lot of help and support available that you can always draw on. Key points sources of help and advice include:  your staff tutor/line manager, your mentor, fellow tutors through the tutor forum, the module team and curriculum managers, the student support team (advisors) for non-academic help and advice, and  disability specialists (visual impairment, mental health). Finally, all associate lecturers can become members of the University and College Union.

10. Continuing professional development

The university treats the ongoing professional development of associate lecturers seriously. Tutors can attend a number of online and face-to-face AL development conferences, can make use of something called a staff fee waiver to study OU modules and draw on something called the AL development fund for various bits of academic professional development. Finally, the university runs a scheme called Applaud which can help tutors become Associate Fellows and Fellows of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to Fiona Aiken who provided the ideas for more than half of this session, and also to Janette Wallace, who deftly managed all the text discussions.

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Christopher Douce

C&C AL induction 2018

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On 7 May 2018, myself and Richard Walker facilitated an online induction event for new associate lecturers who had recently joined the School of Computing and Communications.  What follows is a very short summary of some of the key points that were shared during that session. It then concludes some thoughts about what seemed to work well, what didn’t work well, and what I might change if I was running this kind of session again.

Introduction

The broad aim of the session was to introduce the role of a tutor, introduce tutors to some of the OU systems, to emphasise what tutors can do to support students, and also to offer some constructive pointers about the importance of correspondence tuition.

The session was opened by Arosha Bandara, head of the school of Computing and Communications. Arosha emphasised the breadth of the undergraduate and postgrad qualifications, and also mentioned that programmes were accredited by the by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, and the European Quality Assurance Network for Informatics Education.

The role of the tutor

The first main section opened with two questions: what is the role of an OU tutor?, and how is the role different to roles within other institutions? Richard then neatly emphasised the difference that a tutor can make.

Some key (summarised) points: the role of a tutor is to monitor the progress of students on their course including making contact with students who do not submit assignments, be a first point of contact for students for course and study related advice and support, to make pro-active contact with students at a number of defined points in the course (e.g. first TMA), to use ICT to teach and support students, access information in relation to students, and to facilitate contact with academic units and University.

Resources and tools

The key bits of technology that were emphasised included the TutorHome pages (which is, of course the tutor equivalent to the StudentHome pages, which every student has access to), the eTMA system which is used for marking, the virtual learning environment (which presents module materials, forums, online rooms and module calendars), and the office suite and email tools that everyone uses.

The TutorHome page was emphasised: it provides information about students, resources and information (including information about professional development), and links to other systems, such as module websites and the eTMA system.

It was important to emphasise the different types of forums and online rooms. Students have access to tutor group forums, module wide forums, but also cluster forums (a cluster is a group of tutor groups). Students can also access module wide online Adobe Connect rooms for module wide tutorials, attend cluster group online tutorials, or meet their tutor in a tutor group room (which can be used for one to one additional support sessions).

Importance advice

The session emphasised diversity training which tutors need to complete before they are able to pass their probation period. The presentation also contained some useful tips about the introductory letter that is sent to students.

The slides encouraged some discussion about the purpose of a tutorial before going starting to explore the importance of online communication. These were very relevant topics, but there wasn’t the opportunity to explore them in any detail; this is something that I’ll come back to later.

A number of big issues were emphasised: the marking of TMAs represented the most important part of the job. It is also important that tutors do what they can to retain as many students as possible, but it was also acknowledged that the student support team can do a lot to help. It was also very important to set boundaries, which is something that can be emphasised in the initial letter.

Scenarios

The session contained five short student support scenarios. When I helped to run my first ever online induction, I seem to remember that the scenarios were role played between myself and Richard: Richard was a student, and I was a tutor. The scenarios were familiar: you can’t contact a student for some reason, a student asking for an extension, a student asking for comments on a draft assignment (which isn’t allowed), a student disclosing a disability, and a student expressing concerns about their mark.

Since there wasn’t the time during this session, we both had to skip the role play and just talk through each of scenarios.

Correspondence tuition

A key point: correspondence tuition isn’t just about marking; it is about facilitating learning. Tutors are provided with a set of tutor notes from the module team which offers some guidance about how to allocate marks and to give feedback, and tutors have to return their marking within a ten day turnaround time. I think I emphasised the point that correspondence tuition is the most difficult part of the tutor’s job. 

Broadly speaking, correspondence tuition has two bits: feedback which is generally provided on the student’s script, and forward looking (feedforward) comments that encourage the students to move forward in a particular direction. Feedforward was defined as: comments that anticipate future ‘gaps’ and help the student to see how best to close those gaps. 

An important point is that there are three different types of comment: comments on content (or knowledge), comments on skills development, and encouragement.

There’s also a simple taxonomy of comments (which, I think, might have been formulated by my former colleague, Mirabelle Walker):  

Depth 1 comments: comments on content and skills that indicate that there is a problem (e.g. ‘more needed here’ or ‘Structure needs attention’)

Depth 2 comments: comments on content and skills that correct a problem (e.g. ‘you needed to mention why this is an important issue’ or ‘your structure would have been better if you had started with an introductory paragraph’)

Depth 3 comments: comments that not only correct, but explain the correction (e.g. ‘you needed to mention why this is an important issue because by doing this you would provide a clearer context for the next section’ ….) Build on the student’s attempt or answer.

Other stuff

There was a whole range of other stuff to get through. These included subject, such as: holidays, the AL mentor, TMA monitoring, tutorial ‘visits’, the two year probation period, additional support sessions, how to deal with plagiarism (which is a subject all of its own), the process for dealing with TMA appeals, and finally AL development events and conferences (which happen across the UK). A point was clearly emphasised: tutors have a lot of support; there are always people who can help.

Reflections

This is the second time that I have helped to run an online induction session for new associate lecturers (in they olden days, these used to be face to face sessions). The main difference between this session and the previous session was that the first session was split over two evenings, whereas this session was all in a single evening. My feeling is that we crammed in too much into this one session. Although we covered everything, one key thing was missing, and that was interactivity, and interactivity is important. I felt that there was an opportunity to really showcase how Adobe Connect could be used, and the density of all the materials made it difficult to have discussions.

Another thought is that although the induction resource was updated before its use, it does feel that it has aged and it requires updating. Since we last run the session, the university has introduced something called the group tuition policy, which almost demands a session of its own. I almost feel that there should be a series of induction sessions and not just the one. Perhaps this is what we need to do. 

Acknowledgements

I couldn’t have delivered this session without Richard, who did a brilliant job at not only delivering the session, but also making some really good decisions about the timing. He kept everything to time. Also, parts of this blog comes from a PowerPoint presentation which was created by someone, but I don’t know who that was! Thanks to whoever you are. I also acknowledge Mirabelle Walker’s work on correspondence tuition.

Permalink 1 comment (latest comment by Fiona Moorman, Wednesday, 16 May 2018, 12:48)
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