Roles and Responsibilities
Roles and Responsibilities
Personal and Senior Tutors are crucial to the success of personal tutoring. Their roles and responsibilities have been agreed as below. Please note that in order to ensure the effectiveness of personal tutoring in their academic unit, the role of the Senior Tutor has been updated to have a more strategic role, recognising that this will also need support from Heads of School.
Personal tutoring is a vital element in the educational experience of our students. As a key element of the University’s Education Strategy and Access and Participation Plan, the following responsibilities have been approved by University Education Committee for personal tutors.
1. To support our students, each will be allocated a named personal tutor or supervisor, and they will be reminded that this is their first point of contact for queries.
2. During the autumn term there will be a minimum of two contacts between personal tutors and their tutees, recognising that academic units may choose to offer more than this.
a. Information about each student’s personal tutor, including their email address for contact, will be included prominently in the Student App.
b. The Student App will also include information on each student’s Peer Mentor and School Office, as well as information and guidance on others in their academic unit who may be able to help with enquiries e.g. Module Leaders.
c. The Student App will set out for students the purpose and boundaries of personal tutoring, as well as links to wellbeing support and University guidance on Covid-19.
d. To support students who contact their personal tutor by email, it is important that automatic email replies from tutors give information for students on response times.
For Stage One students and PGTs:
a. It is recommended that the first ‘induction’ meeting is in tutorial groups, in order to introduce students to others on their course. This should be carried out at an appropriate time in the induction period.
b. To reinforce that the primary focus of personal tutoring is on academic issues, in your initial contact with students we ask that personal tutors make your students aware of other support available to them, i.e. that provided by the Student Health and Wellbeing Service (SHWS) and other support services on campus. This will be reinforced by information provided on the Student App.
c. The second contact should be made in or around November, to check that students have ‘settled in’ and to discuss early academic progress. In the context of flexible learning we recommend this is also in a group format, but tutors may decide to arrange individual tutorials.
For continuing students:
a. The first contact should be during the induction period, to reinforce delivery plans presented by the School for the academic year, as well as respond to student queries.
b. The second contact will be as above, in or around November, to check student progress.
3. During the spring term, personal tutors should reach out to their students through a minimum of two contacts. Again, some Schools may choose to offer more. These could be to set up group or individual tutorials.
4. Alongside formal contacts between personal tutors and your students, and throughout the year, tutors will offer short bookable appointments, in person or online, of between 10-30 minutes, for students to access individual support.
a. We recommend that the first of these contacts is made at the start of the spring term.
b. The second contact will be made prior to the Easter Vacation.
5. Where personal tutoring is already known to be working effectively and is meeting current policy requirements with regard to student contact, these approaches should continue, with minimal or no change.
Personal tutoring is a vital element of the educational experience for our students. As a key element of our Education Strategy and Access and Participation Plan, the following responsibilities have been approved by University Education Committee for Senior Tutors.
- Senior Tutors are essential in ensuring that personal tutoring is working effectively in your academic unit, and in providing support to staff.
- This means you will help ensure that baseline expectations – a minimum of four contacts between tutors and tutees each year – are achieved for all students. These are set out in the approved approach to Personal Tutoring.
- Senior Tutors can expect to receive support from senior colleagues in their academic unit, including your Head of Unit, who is ultimately responsible for ensuring that all Personal Tutors are engaging effectively and that the updated commitments are achieved.
- This includes ensuring that baseline expectations for personal tutoring are achieved for all students and that relevant NSS and PTES scores are reviewed within the School.
- While there is currently no formal workload allocation for this aspect of their work, Senior Tutors should be allocated sufficient time to oversee personal tutoring arrangements, alongside your other commitments.
- As a part of this, although Senior Tutors will be allocated tutees, the numbers allocated should be manageable, as for any other Personal Tutor.
- Unless there are local arrangements in place, students with significant wellbeing needs should be referred to Student Health and Wellbeing Service (SHWS) or to Wellbeing Advisers in your School, where these exist, rather than to Senior Tutors.
- Senior Tutors will be responsible for ensuring that key messages for students are cascaded effectively in your academic unit. This includes arranging for regular updates from the Academic Registrar to be cascaded to Personal Tutors and students by whatever means works best in your own context.
- Senior Tutors will also be responsible for ensuring that Personal Tutors provide contact information for your tutees if absent for a period of time, and that tutees are reassigned to a new Personal Tutor should a member of academic staff leave.