1.2 Your tutor

Hi. I'm Rob Moore. I'm an associate lecturer with the Open University. Associate lecturer is the name that is given to your tutor. Your tutor is your first port of call when it comes to anything related to your module. So if you have any questions about the content or about the assessments, your tutor is the person that's going to answer them. Quite early on in your course, your tutor's going to get in touch with you. Probably about a week before the course starts. That's when we get allocated our students. So when we get in touch, we give you some information on how to get in touch with us. We all have different work/life balances. We've got different jobs that we do, but we'll tell you the best times and the best ways to get in touch with us. Your tutor also looks after the tutor group forum. This is an area where you'll get to meet with other students online, and you'll get to share ideas and ask questions. Most of the modules you'll study will have tutors, and you're likely to get a different tutor for each module. But not all modules do have tutors. Some have moderators. So these are effectively tutors that look after the forum rather than directly monitoring to give you feedback on your work. As you go through your course, one of the things we've found is that students achieve the best are those that ask the most questions and keep coming back to us as tutors. So big piece of advice here, make sure you talk to your tutor regularly. The worst thing you can do is sit there wondering, should I get in touch or not? The answer is always, yes, get in touch. There are very few problems we haven't already seen, and we know how to help you. We really look forward to working with you on your module. So enjoy yourself, and keep in touch with your tutor.