2.2.3 Your personal tutor

Studying online does not mean studying alone.

In most online universities, you will have a tutor for each course you take. Other online courses outside of University provision may have a facilitator rather than a tutor. These roles are very different and you might want take the course ‘How to become on online facilitator’ to understand a bit more about this role. This course you are studying now does not have any direct support from either a facilitator or tutor and is designed to be studied independently.

If you do have a tutor then they will be an expert within the subject area and also experienced at supporting students in an online environment. Your tutor will be your first point of contact for help with any study issues, and will support you through email, by phone or by online computer conferencing services, like Skype. As well as individual support, tutors also provide tutorials, online or sometimes in person, for other students in your course. Your tutor will support you by:

• guiding you in your studies and helping you to understand the content of the course
• giving tutorial support
• giving you advice on setting up a study group with other students
• providing constructive feedback on your assignments
• monitoring your progress on the course
• helping you prepare for your exam or end-of-module assessment.

Perhaps the most important part of your relationship with your tutor is through the feedback they provide on your assignments as it is through your assignments that you can really see how well you are doing. The following video shows how some students have responded to feedback from their tutor.

Download this video clip.Video player: ou_futurelearn_cicp_vid_1006.mp4

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Transcript

Speaker 1

Obviously, when you start doing your assignments, you look at them as little exams. But they're not. And you send them off and you get feedback off your tutor, and if they're good remarks you feel great. If they're not so good remarks, well, you just pick yourself up and try and follow the examples they give you.

Speaker 2

He gave me better feedback than I thought I would get there, and that quite surprised me, really. And then, when he did give the negative part of it, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was constructive criticism. He didn't criticise, 'You did this wrong and therefore you're a rubbish student.' But he did it very constructively, said 'Perhaps you should focus more this way,' rather than saying, 'You didn't do it well.'

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You have already given some consideration to how you receive feedback. So think now about how you might develop your relationship with your tutor. Do you need someone who is always positive or can you take constructive criticism? Does it make a difference that you may not meet your tutor in person?