Tutor Roles & Time Management

Roles

Tutors have important roles to play in the online teaching and learning context.  Although there are many other functions that tutors can and do take on, below are key roles:

 Content “Expert” Role 

This is the ‘traditional’ role of university tutors which typically involves leading discussions, responding to content questions, marking, working with individual students, providing readings and references. In the online teaching and learning context, this will happen online and you will likely have to find new ways of working in this space. 

 Academic Support Role 

This role is related to mentoring students in helping them to develop the necessary academic literacy skills, finding and sharing academic literacy resources, engaging with students one-on-one, encouraging participation, modelling positive online behaviour and helping to build the online community.

 Administrative Role 

Tutoring often includes a level of administration which could entail monitoring student attendance and engagement on Vula course sites, posts in forums, WhatsApp groups, live synchronous platforms (Zoom, MS Teams, etc), following up on students who have not attended or who are not participating, checking if students are in the correct group, monitoring the submission of assessment tasks, entering marks (if required), calculating contribution marks (if required), liaising with the lecturer.

 Peer support/ mentoring role

This role pertains to general psycho-social support where the tutor provides advice to students about the support services available for managing stress and anxiety or identifies students at risk and refers them to faculty or university support structures. Some faculties have formally appointed mentors for first and second-year students. But even where there are mentors, tutors may still find themselves talking to students about personal issues or assisting in setting academic goals.

Time and expectation management

 Tutoring can be quite demanding on your time, therefore it is important to manage your tutoring responsibilities while meeting the needs of your students. Below are some tips to help you manage your time and student expectations.

Tips

• Create a schedule and routine. Establish clearly with your course convener what you will be doing, and how much time you are expected to commit on a weekly basis.  Make sure your course convener knows how you are planning to spend your allocated time. If your role includes consulting with and supporting students on a one-on-one basis, provide set times and preferred contact methods which need to be visible on the Vula site, so that they know when they can contact you.

• Managing student expectations. Make clear what kinds of queries and support you are able to offer students. This can be pointed out on Vula, through the lecturer making it known in the course outline or through course communications. Categories of frequently asked questions with pre-populated answers can be set up in the Q&A tool so that students have an idea of what kinds of queries you will be dealing with. It is advisable to discuss with the lecturer which kinds of queries you will deal with and which ones they would like to respond to.  In addition, let students know approximately how long it will take you to respond during your non-consultation hours. 

• Live consultation sessions. Let students know which days and times you are available for live consultations should they need a session where they can ask more direct questions. Please note that live sessions can easily become longer, so it is advisable to set time limits upfront, such as 20 mins. These consultations can be booked beforehand and can be done via WhatsApp, Zoom or MS Teams.

• Being there/ tutor presence. It is very important that students are able to get regular responses. Students may have queries that they need help with urgently, so being reasonably responsive provides reassurance for students who may be feeling panicky and isolated. But this should be reasonable for you too. Tip: Either discuss with your students the best ways they can get help quickly (Example: You will respond within 24 hours) or set up a roster with other tutors to be available for urgent queries.  Make yourselves available near assignment due dates and tests, when you can expect students to be under pressure.

• Allocate time for each task. Use a document like a google-spreadsheet to keep track of time spent on the different tutor activities (forum replies, marking, etc) so that you are able to attend to all the various tasks you have rather than spending too much on specific activities. This also allows you to monitor how long you are spending on your tutoring role. You can break down tasks such as spending 30 minutes doing admin-related tasks, 30 minutes doing peer-support and an hour for content and academic support.

• Use a to-do list. Use a document like a google-spreadsheet to note common questions, queries you need to follow-up on, etc. You can also make use of a to-do list which is helpful to keep track and work through tasks.