Tutor Training
Though there is specific tutor training resources based on your college, LTLT also offers a wide range of resources for new tutors to utilize
Tutoring Bible
Taking your first tutorial can be daunting. Whether you have studied at La Trobe or not, there are certain aspects of learning and teaching at this university that you need to become familiar with.
You need to know the housekeeping - dates, times, forms, deadlines etc. But you also need to develop a sense of the kind of tutor you want to become - how can you make your classes fun and engaging? How can you get to know your students? What style of learning suits your discipline, your students and yourself?
These are all questions you need to consider to guarantee your success and that of your students...
Think of this guide as a tutor's FAQ - What do you need to teach effectively? Where can you find help? and where can you point your students for help if they're struggling?
Effective Tutoring at La Trobe University: A resource for Tutors, Demonstrators and Facilitators
The overall purpose of this guide is to provide all tutors at La Trobe University with strategies and information that will equip you to more effectively, efficiently and confidently help your students learn.
Running and improving your tutorials
Technology support and training
Taxonomies
- Bloom's taxonomy
- SOLO taxonomy, TEDI, Teaching and Educational Development Institute (TEDI), University of Queensland
- Gathering Feedback from your Colleagues, Institute for Teaching and Learning, University of Sydney
- Generating engagement and Participation, Tutor Training: Professional Development Online. The University of Melbourne and The University of Sydney, 2007
- Groupwork, Bioassess, The University of Melbourne
Supporting your students
Academic support
Student Learning and Engagement and the La Trobe Library are a student's first sources of academic support.
Personal support
If your students are struggling with their studies or their personal life is having a negative impact, you could suggest one of the following support channels:
Effective Tutoring 1
What is a tutorial? Tutoring normally involves working with small groups of students, and involves discussion, facilitation and interaction on a first name basis. Since lectures generally involve large class settings, tutorials are the primary personal, face-to-face contact for students in their subject, and in their university life. While demonstrators and facilitators differ from tutoring in some ways, all these still involve teaching small groups.
The tutorial may fulfil particular learning needs according to the subject and program goals, and this can be discussed with the subject coordinator. The assessment needs of the subject are likely to be a central concern of tutorials. To get the best out of working with groups in tutorials, the tutor should focus on learning activity; that is, engaging students in active learning rather than imparting or transmitting knowledge.
- Active learning engagement can involve three dimensions:
- Learner to content: engagement of students with subject content, subject goals and assessment
- Learner to tutor: engagement based on shared expectations between students and tutors
- Learner to learner: as peer to peer relationships between students (Anderson, 2003)
Active learning is most effective when the third of these dimensions: peer to peer relationships between students is well developed. Then the tutor has applied Pelz's (2004) principle of pedagogy: "Get the students to do (most) of the work."
Working with coordinators
Before entering the classroom with students, you need to be ready to answer the following questions:
- Why am i here?
- Who am i tutoring?
- What precisely am i expected to do
- What resources do i have?
- What students need?
Planning how best to promote and support student learning in your tutorials starts with a conversation with your subject coordinator.
| Questions for your subject coordinator |
|---|
| Who are my students? What mis of cultures, genders and age comprises this class? What language backgrounds do they have? Do they have life or work experience that may be drawn on as a resource? |
| The subject guide Make sure you have a semester plan/schedule and the assessment requirements. What assessment tasks are relevant to my tutorials? What tutorial activities do I have, or am I expected to develop my own tutorials and materials? If so, are there past examples of activities? Are teaching materials available, such as textbooks, student learning guide, lecture notes, references/readings, laboratory manuals etc? |
| What knowledge, skills and technologies will I need for this subject? Is training available? For example, if I am using Moodle (LMS) or Turnitin; is there any university or School-based training? |
| Assessment Is marking students' work required? What are the marking criteria for each assessment task? What is the expected turn-around time for marking? How are plagiarism cases handled? Is there moderation of marking meetings that I should attend? |
| Am I expected to attend lectures? Is this part of my paid work or expected as part of my own preparation? |
| What University resources a I allocated as a staff member - email account. network access, office, phone, photocopying/printing allocations, stationary, library card, parking permit, etc? |
| Will I need to undertake evaluation of my tutoring? If so, in what form, when and how? |
| Meeting and communication How will we keep in touch during semester so I can inform you on how students are going in my class, how I am going, and clarify matters? Will there be meetings with you or with other tutors? If meetings are not feasible, will email communication be sufficient? |
Effective Tutoring 2
Communicating what is expected and what will be assessed in a subject takes place, in part, through the intended learning outcomes (ILOs). These are defined by Biggs and Tang (2007) as "statements, written from the students' perspective, indicating the level of understanding and performance they are expected to achieve as a result of engaging in the teaching and learning experience." (p. 55). In other words, the subject ILOs tell students what they will be expected to KNOW and what they will be expected to be able to DO by the end of the term.
By designing your tutorial to align its learning activities with the subject's intended learning outcomes, you will be able to more clearly communicate and share expectations of the subject with the group. Undergraduate subjects at La Trobe typically have 4-8 intended learning outcomes. Below are some examples from subjects in various disciplines.
Sample learning outcomes
- BUSINESS: International Business Environment
Describe the effects of globalisation on markets and production.
Explain why managers today need a global presence. - HEALTH: Interdisciplinary Professional Practice
Describe the impact of current Australian health and human service systems on service provision.
Evaluate the contribution of various disciplines to interdisciplinary practice in relation to individual and community needs. - HUMANITIES: Environmental History
Identify changing understandings of humans and cultural landscapes.
Analyse representations of the environments over time.
Critically reflect on how humans have been shaped by natural environments. - ENGINEERING: Mechanical Systems
Outline the fundamental theory of friction and wear and its application in engineering.
Apply the principles of mechanical kinetics to single degree of freedom vibration systems.
Work effectively as a team member in a small-scale engineering project.
The process of aligning learning activities to ILOs, which in turn are aligned to assessment tasks, is called constructive alignment (Biggs and Tang, 2007, p. 54). Constructive alignment is a key curriculum design and teaching method in higher education and a core element in La Trobe's Design for Learning approach.
Note that some intended learning outcomes require a higher level of learning than others. To determine the level of learning required, examine the verb used to express the ILO. Describe requires recognition and memorisation, a relatively lower level of learning, whereas explain, reflect, apply, create or analyse require more "relational" or abstract levels of understanding.
For more on levels of understanding, see Bloom's Taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001)
and Bigg's SOLO taxonomy (Biggs and Tang, 2007, pp. 76-83).
Designing a session
What should you be concerned about achieving at the end of your session? Should you make sure you "cover" a large amount of curriculum content? Or should you ensure your students grasp key concepts, or apply knowledge and skills? These are very important questions to discuss with your subject coordinator.
Your tutorial session is one component in the subject and course in which students are enrolled. You may find that content is "covered" in lectures, and that your tutorial is intended to help students gain deeper understanding of concepts "covered" in those lectures.
Once you and your subject coordinator have discussed the overall purpose(s) of the tutorial, you can use the ILOs and subject information to design your sessions to best contribute to learning in the subject.
Below is a planning checklist to consider before you design a tutorial session.
Planning checklist
- What are your intended learning outcomes?
- How are tutorials linked to assessment?
- Is any assessment carried out in the tutorials?
- What are the assessment criteria for these?
- How are the tutorials linked with lectures?
- Who are your students?
- Where do they come from?
- What challenges might they have?
- Structure the learning
- How much of your session will be focussed on content, and how much on process?*
- Where will you begin?
- What happens in the middle?
- How will you close the lesson?
*Process includes discussion, reflection, group work, presentation.
Content includes disciplinary activities, problem-solving, analysis, evaluating evidence, theorising, clarifying and understanding (Exley and Dennick, 2004).
Your subject coordinator may already have planned the tutorials in advance. If not, you may need to plan your tutorial sessions. The following tutorial planner can help you make your tutorials active and useful learning experiences.
(Adapted from Planning for Success, 2006, University of South Australia, pp. 17-18)
Effective Tutoring 3
La Trobe's policy on assessment sets out the purpose, principles and approaches to assessing student learning, and where responsibility lies for maintaining standards and the integrity of processes. Some brief extracts from the policy document are reproduced below.
Assessment Policy
Policy Statement
'The University is responsible for defining the criteria for success at particular award levels. Assessment of student work must be criterion-referenced and aligned to specified learning outcomes, including graduate capabilities and the generic skills they encompass.
Within a subject, there should be both formative and summative assessment.
Assessment should be moderated using appropriate methods.Assessment should be equitable, objective and auditable and meet the needs of a diverse student population.
All examinations should be marked anonymously and staff should avoid situations requiring them to assess a student with whom they have, or have had, a significant personal relationship.'
Definitions
- Formative assessment: monitoring student progress against standards and providing them with feedback comparing their progress to the standards with a view to helping them to achieve the standards.
- Summative assessment: making judgement about student achievements against explicit standards and translating that judgement into a grade; used at the end of a subject.
- Criterion-referenced assessment: students work is assessed with reference to written criteria derived from explicit learning outcomes.
- Normative assessment: grades are awarded based on a predetermined distribution. The most common form of normative assessment assumes grades/marks are distributed according to a standard normal distribution curve. Each student's grade in the subject is determined in part by how well other students in the subject do.
Source: La Trobe academic policies on assessment
Assessment Procedure
Approaches to assessment and feedback
Various types of formative assessment can be used, including:
- Self-assessment
- Peer assessment
- Teacher individual feedback
- Teacher group feedback
Feedback should promote learning, be informative and constructive. It should address expected learning outcomes, identify strengths and weaknesses, give guidance on how to perform better and encourage students to develop strategies to prepare for future tasks.
Various forms of feedback may be given, including:
- On line discussion
- Tutorials
- Written individual explanations
- Lists of assessment criteria provided to students.
How students learn: Surface and deep learning approaches
Good teaching is getting most students to do higher level or deep learning (Biggs & Tang, 2007).
Models of student approaches to learning mainly reflect a distinction between two orientations to learning (Ramsden, 2003; Biggs and Tang, 2007). These can be described in various binaries: meaning orientation or reproducing orientation, deep or surface learning, higher order learning or lower order learning, active learning or passive learning.
Active learning approaches in tutorials help create an environment in which students are more likely to engage in deep learning. Approaches to deep learning can be described as promoting intimate, critical, applicable, embodied understanding, which develop students' ability to adapt complex and critical understanding to real-life professional situations. Approaches to surface learning are useful for memorisation, recall, rote learning. While rote learning has its place, it is of limited value in solving problems in complex and ever-changing contexts.
Approaches to learning: Feedback and formative assessment
Feedback is any information or activity which "affords or accelerates learning …" (Hounsell, 2005). Its key function is to evaluate progress and achievement, and provide support and encouragement. It is important that students, tutors and teaching staff have a clear understanding of what feedback is particularly as it is included in the evaluation items for the Student Feedback on Teaching (See 5. Evaluation and Improvement)
Hounsell (2004), in his paper, Reinventing Feedback in the Contemporary University, makes the following points:
- Feedback can be extrinsic (assessment focussed) or intrinsic (activity and practice based).
- Feedback can be immediate and verbal – there is lack of engagement when it arrives after an assessment.
- Feedback can be to a whole class e.g. the minute paper.
- Feedback can be many to many - peer feedback. Student involvement in identifying strengths and weaknesses in their own and others' work.
- Feedback can be a loop – it can be given on unfinished work.
- Feed-forward – enables students to engage constructively with tutors' comments and to gain practice in revising.
McGowan (2008) suggests the use of marking rubrics (a set of printed instructions for marking and grading) as formative assessment. Formative assessment is typically aimed at providing early feedback to help students improve their learning, and is often ungraded. Summative feedback, on the other hand, such as examinations, tests and essays, is evaluative feedback usually summed up in a mark or grade.
- Feedback: Use rubric as cover sheet, with ticked boxes for overview of strengths and weaknesses.
- Feed-forward: Provide rubric as guideline before assignments, to set out criteria and levels of achievement).
A range of feedback techniques for use in classrooms are described by Angelo and Cross (1993) as Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATS). Some CATs that you might want to consider include:
- Minute paper: Is a reflective exercise where students are asked to take a minute and write down their thoughts. This is often used as an evaluation strategy; the key in making best use of the minute paper is not the questions you ask but how you make use of the feedback from students to guide their future learning (See 5. Evaluation and Improvement p37).
- Misconception/Preconception check: ask students before you start a topic what their ideas are about it. Then use this as the starting point for talking about how the area is understood within your discipline.
- Categorising grid: when approaching problems, students often need to understand which category of problem they are dealing with. By providing them with a grid that lays out the problem solution space and then getting them to suggest where the problem sits you can get an idea about how they are approaching problems.
- Concept Maps: Students draw a diagram or maps between major concepts showing mental connections.
- Group Instructional Feedback Technique: Students are asked three questions about the class: What works? What doesn't? What can be done to improve it?
Transition, development, and achievement
Assessment is most effective if students receive formative feedback before the final, summative assessment. Taylor (2008), set out a model of assessment in which low risk, early assessment is integrated into the semester, and formative and summative assessment is organised as assessment for transition, for development, and for achievement.
Marking and consistency
Assessment at La Trobe is criterion-referenced, as described in the policy statement:
- Assessment of student work must be criterion-referenced and aligned to specified learning outcomes, including graduate capabilities and the generic skills they encompass.
The distinction is made between criterion and normative assessment:
- Criterion-referenced assessment: students' work is assessed with reference to written criteria derived from explicit learning outcomes. That is, each student's work is compared against a set standard of quality or performance and no student's grade is influenced by any other student's performance.
- Norm-referenced assessment: grades are awarded based on a predetermined distribution. The most common form of normative assessment assumes grades/marks are distributed according to a standard normal distribution curve. Each student's grade in the subject is determined, at least in part, by how well other students in the subject do.
Source: Assessment Policy, La Trobe University
The Assessment Policy further describes conditions for assessment:
- Within a subject, there should be both formative and summative assessment. Assessment should be moderated using appropriate methods. Assessment should be equitable, objective and auditable and meet the needs of a diverse student population. Assessment Policy, La Trobe University
La Trobe University Grading Schema
80 - 100%: pass A
70 - 79%: pass B
60 - 69%: pass C
50 - 59%: pass D
Ungraded pass P (May also denote satisfactory completion of a Masters Prelim course or postgraduate thesis)
Consistency in marking
Consistency in marking, or moderation, is aimed at ensuring fairness in marking, and requires finding or establishing agreement between markers.
Procedures for marking are set out in La Trobe University's assessment policies (Assessment Procedures):
- Where there is more than one marker, selected pieces of work from each assessment task should be reviewed by the subject co-ordinator to verify the level and consistency of the marks allocated by the markers. This process, called moderation, increases the reliability of the assessment process and application of standards, promotes consistency, supports objectivity and establishes a shared understanding of standards and fairness in assessment.
(Assessment Procedures, La Trobe University)
Each faculty has its own interpretation of the assessment policies, along with slightly different implementation practices. You will, therefore, need to ask your subject coordinator about local practices concerning issues such as submission of work, applications and penalties for extensions, assessment criteria, moderation, collation of grades, double marking requirements, academic misconduct and plagiarism.
Where large cohorts of students are involved, moderation can be approached at the subject coordination level, as a team process, involving meeting at:
- The assessment design stage – to review marking criteria.
- The marking stage, before processing of marks. Where there is more than one marker, selected pieces of work from each assessment task should be reviewed by the subject coordinator to verify the level and consistency of the marks allocated by the markers.
- The end of semester, to review the subject assessment procedure.
Orrell (2006), describes some strategies to achieve reliability:
- Multiple marking of the same paper by either the same assessor or by two different assessors.
- Blind marking.
- Marking all responses to the same question in the case of tests that contain several short answer questions.
- Establishing standards using model assignments.
- Neutral external examiners.
Example of Marking Procedures
From the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences academic policies:
Marking procedures
In subjects from first to third year level the all individual written work worth 25% or more of the available marks must be marked in the following manner. It is the responsibility of Schools to ensure that where non-written work, such as a performance, is assessable, comparable procedures are adopted to ensure reliable assessment.
- Double-marking of all As and Ns; this need not be "blind", but may simply be a check on the appropriateness of the mark.
- In the event of disagreement:
- the markers are to discuss the work and attempt to arrive at an agreed mark which will then stand;
- where agreement cannot be reached on the mark, the result will be the average of the two marks provided the markers agree on the grade
- where agreement on the grade cannot be reached the Program Coordinator (or Head of School if the Program Coordinator is one of the markers) will appoint a third marker who will, after considering the opinions of the two previous markers and the work in question, act as an adjudicator and determine the final mark.
- Assessment meeting: subject co-ordinators must arrange a meeting of all staff involved in assessment in the subject to discuss criteria and to expose new markers to the expectations of the subject.
- New markers will be involved in cross-marking with an experienced marker either at the assessment meeting or by submitting a sample of their marked work to an experienced examiner before returning it to students.
Assessment criteria examples
The selected examples below are not meant to be illustrative of the huge variety of assessment situations within all of the faculties.
Examples of Assessment Criteria
The following two examples are from the University of Sydney's Economics Unit of study outline guidelines,
Example 1: Assessment criteria for discussion board |
|---|
Criteria 1: Active participation throughout the semester (number and continuity of contributions). Criteria 2: Use of appropriate computer mediated communication protocols.
Criteria 3: Collaborative learning
Criteria 4: Application of theory Criteria 5: Appropriate analytical annotations |
| Example 2: Assessment criteria for class presentation (marking guide for major essay) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marking criteria | Very poor | Poor | Satisfactory | Good | Very good | MARK |
CONTENT (? Marks) The student has:
| ||||||
STRUCTURE/ORGANISATION (? Marks)
| ||||||
WRITTEN EXPRESSION (? Marks)
| ||||||
PRESENTATION (? Marks)
| ||||||
REFERENCING (? Marks)
| ||||||
| Top available marks - ? Total mark obtained | /? | |||||
| Example 3: Group peer assessment | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Please assess your group members individually by ticking the appropriate box in each of the following ten categories. | ||||
| Name (of colleague being assessed): | ||||
| Criteria not met | Meets criteria | Exceeds criteria | ||
| Regularly makes a useful contribution in group discussion | e.g. (X) | Finds it difficult to be a contributing group member | ||
| Can be relied upon to carry out allocated duties accurately and without supervision | Needs more supervision than most in carrying out instructions assigned to him/her | |||
| Works amicably with others as a member of a team | Has difficulty in working with colleagues and is sometimes not accepted as a member of the team | |||
| Responds well to instructions / advice / criticism | Resents criticism and is reluctant to accept advice | |||
| Is consistently courteous and helpful to colleagues | Appears off-hand and casual in dealing with colleagues | |||
| Shows excellent ability to plan and complete own work | Has not yet learned to organise own work effectively | |||
| Is outstanding in ability to organise and supervise work of others | Is not able to organise and supervise work of others | |||
| Grasps essentials very quickly | Has difficulty in recognising essentials | |||
| Successfully anticipates the requirements of new situations and takes appropriate action | Has difficulty in recognising implications of new situations | |||
| Is good at solving problems | Has difficulty in suggesting solutions to problems | |||
| Comments: | ||||
| Your name: Date: | ||||
| Example 4: Rubric for evaluating online discussions | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly online discussions rubric | ||||
| Criteria | Excellent | Good | Average | Poor |
| Timely discussion contributions | 5-6 postings well distributed throughout the week | 4-6 postings distributed throughout the week | 3-6 posting somewhat distributed | 2-6 postings not distributed throughout the week |
| Responsiveness to discussion and demonstration of knowledge and understanding gained from assigned reading | Very clear that readings were understood and incorporated well into responses | Readings were understood and incorporated into responses | Postings have questionable relationship to reading material | Not evident that readings were understood and/or not incorporated into discussion |
| Adherence to online protocols | all online protocols followed | 1 online protocol not adhered to | 2-3 online protocols not adhered to | 4 or more online protocols not adhered to |
| Points | 9-10 | 8 | 6-7 | 5 or less |
Source: Dabbagh, 2000
Academic Integrity and plagiarism
Academic integrity means being honest in academic work. University work needs to meet the highest standards of integrity because university research has impact on many communities. La Trobe University is committed to academic integrity, so it promotes academic honesty and teaches the conventions of academic acknowledgment.
Academic Integrity at La Trobe
Student Learning and Engagement
An approach to academic integrity that brings both an ethical and formative assessment
approach to teaching and learning.
Referencing to promote academic integrity and avoid plagiarism
Subject resources and referencing guides
The text matching software Turnitin, which can be used to identify coincidences between a
student's paper, published materials, and other works submitted to Turnitin.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism occurs when you use another person's words, ideas or other work but do not clearly indicate that you have borrowed or used these. For example, you might copy or reproduce words, sentences or whole sections from a book, journal, website or even another student's essay without acknowledging that you have used this work. It is also considered to be plagiarism if you copy or reproduce pictures, diagrams and other non-text materials without acknowledgement.
According to section 1 of The Academic Integrity Policy: Guidelines for Identifying and Avoiding Plagiarism (2010, p. 1) there are many forms of plagiarism.
These include:
- Direct copying of sentences, paragraphs or other extracts from someone else's published work (including on the Internet and in software) without acknowledging the source;
- Paraphrasing someone else's words without acknowledging the source;
- Using facts and information derived from a source without acknowledging it;
- Using ideas directly derived from an identifiable author without acknowledging the source;
- Producing assignments which should be the student's own independent work in collaboration with and/or using the work of other people (e.g. A student or tutor).
Further Reading
- What is plagiarism?
- Academic Integrity and Avoiding Plagiarism
- Turnitin
- James, McInnis, and Devlin, (2002) Assessing Learning in Australian Universities. Excerpt prepared by Marcia Devlin.