Plan a tutor training program
Clarify, in your School or Faculty, the tutors' roles and duties
Tutors continue to report that one of their main concerns is that they are unclear about their role and what is expected of them. Perhaps your School or Faculty has never identified precisely what you expect of your tutors. You might need to clarify this before you start organising your program. What roles do you want them to play? What responsibilities will they have? What actual tasks do you intend for them? What types of classes? What marking? How much of a time commitment do you expect of them? You could match this list of duties with skills needed for each of these. This amounts to setting final objectives for your tutor training program, and it will help you guide the course content and learning processes. These could be prepared to give to new tutors next year. The Sessional Teaching website has a number of case studies which outline how this is done in some Schools and Faculties.
It would be advantageous to include tutors in all of these discussions.
Identify tutor training needs from their perspective
Before planning your program, get a group of tutors together to decide what they feel they need to learn. Perhaps you could do this early, say, in the year preceding the proposed program, with a group of tutors who have had a year's experience, and you could do this also with some postgraduates who you know will be tutoring next year for the first time.
One way of doing this is to get the group into a circle with one of the tutors as scribe next to a board or flip-chart. They could brainstorm and list what help they think they need. The group might then reassess that list, and arrive at more detailed questions they need to address. Typical needs have been in the areas of:
- information about expectations Schools or Faculties have of their teaching skills and responsibilities
- administrative matters: who to report to. how the payment system operates
- how to teach: how to plan a tutoring session
- marking: is guidance given to tutors by the lecturers? Content and criteria for marks
- giving feedback: how much can be written on assignments etc?
- consultation: how much access can students have to their tutors, outside designated times.
- how to manage groups: motivating student interaction. how to deal with problem students.
NOTE: Be open to tutors' needs, but assume that some needs will be unexpected and unpredictable. You can then explain in the workshops which you run the following year, that the planning involved the tutors themselves.
Consider what is educationally necessary
The educational needs of your tutors need to be addressed. Consider their interest in, and knowledge of, teaching and learning. What are their perceptions of learning? What do they need to know about the teacher's role in facilitating learning? Their attitudes to this role will probably be as important as or more important than their skills; if they give significance to valuing students and respecting them, their teaching methods at least will accord with their attitude. Some time should be given in the tutor training workshops to consideration of teaching and learning theories. There is a pack to help you with this part in the resources for developing tutors section.
Also, to raise awareness of improving teaching skills, some aspects of tutors evaluating their own teaching needs might be incorporated. Individuals could use the usual pick and mix TEVAL questions, or you could try to devise questions that are especially suitable for your School or Faculty's tutors, to use as a source for feedback. For those who will be tutoring over several years, and who see tutoring as the possible beginning of an academic career, feedback will be important for development.
Write some aims for your course
Just as when you are planning any teaching,
you need to clarify what you need to do by identifying the purpose of
your tutor training program.
Try to describe how you would like your tutors to be.
Some general aims of tutor training seem to be to:
- develop tutors' confidence and enjoyment in their tutor role
- increase tutor effectiveness in tutorial/practical techniques
- develop tutors' skills in marking and giving feedback
- foster growth in interpersonal skills.
Each one of these aims could be written as objectives, according to your School. For example, do you want your tutors to become competent at marking essays, or are lab reports more applicable to your tutors?
Identify the course content
Content can be planned after the above seeking out of needs. Tutor training sessions in this University and elsewhere have included:
- roles and expectations
- health and safety
- teaching/learning theories
- teaching skills, practice running a small group
- marking
- problem students
- evaluation of tutor effectiveness.
Plan to address tutors' feelings towards the job, as well as intellectual development. Consider the MEANING the content will have to the tutors.
Select teaching/learning methods appropriate to the workshops
Set a good example by making the workshop as personally meaningful and as active as possible. Try to have a very limited time when tutors are being 'talked at'. Look at each session. How can tutors be more fully engaged and active? You can use methods in the workshops that tutors themselves can use in their own teaching.
Workshop evaluation
The workshop needs to be evaluated in order to refine the course for next year. You will almost certainly want to make changes each year. This also sets a good role model.
General ideas
Hold the tutor training session in a pleasant environment. Include a social event at the end of the day. Ask an important person (HOD, or member of T&L Committee) to open the workshop, to add to its significance.
