Hi Nigel (and other participants),
I'm here to find out a little more about how tutoring works from the tutor side, having been an OU student at various times.
My background is as a Software Engineer, which I've been involved in since the early 1980s. In my day you could get in with some O levels and a part-time HND and I was lucky to be picked up as an apprentice by an electronics company building controllers for industrial processes. After some years microprogramming all sorts of home-spun motherboards, I graduated to working in UNIX kernel and device drivers, mainly in C and thence to C++. In the early 90s I went freelance, falling into roles in the investment banking industry, adding loads of SQL database work to my C++. At this point I felt the lack of a professional qualification and started my relationship with the OU. With my HND and experience I was lucky to be accepted on the postgrad programme and graduated with the MSc 'Computing for Commerce and Industry' in 1999. Nowadays I work largely on cloud based platforms, using Java, Javascript, Python, C++, as fits clients' needs. I'm an Oracle certified Java 11 dev as well as accredited with Amazon as a cloud architect.
A couple of years ago I finally decided to look at filling the hole left by my 'missing' BSc and came back to the OU to embark, very slowly, on a Maths degree. I'm just knocking on the door of level 2 in that particular journey. Loving it!
Covid 19 has left my client order book empty and I've been re-evaluating where to take my career next. I've spent a lot of time over the years helping and mentoring more junior staff on client sites and found this rewarding, so thought it would be interesting to investigate making tutoring a bigger part of my life. I suppose I would aspire to tutor on some of the computing courses, where I have most experience, although I also hanker to tutor maths courses - when I eventually graduate.
So: looking forward to finding out how it all works!