In this extra post, Dr W. Victoria Lee showcases a live, course-specific ‘Tutor Handbook’, created on Microsoft OneNote. The handbook helps course organisers provide tutorial teams with current operational information, as well as bite-size training on teaching and assessment technologies, while at the same time, documenting institutional memory. Victoria is a Lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art.
The role of a course organiser, as the name suggests, concerns various pedagogical and administrative management of the course. For courses with large number of students and/or several tutors, keeping all staff on the same page often meant emails – which can remain unread for several days when many tutors work part-time; or meetings â which can be time-consuming and not terribly efficient in getting things done.
Creating a Tutor Handbook
For my second year compulsory course on Environmental Design in the undergraduate Architecture degree programme, I frequently have over a hundred students and five to six tutorial sessions. To communicate and manage the tutorial team during the semester, I created a live âTutor Handbookâ that not only documents all the operational details of running the course, but also offers bite-size trainings (complete with annotated diagrams) on using the various technologies for teaching and assessment. The live document uses the Microsoft OneNote platform, which is conveniently embedded in Microsoft Teams, where the tutors can quickly ask me and one another questions. In this way, the tutors have a one-stop-shop resource which cuts down the amount of time hunting for emails, SharePoint links, and documents dispersed across University, College, School, and departmental web portals; or figuring out how to perform certain tasks with specific software.
Documenting institutional memory
A major benefit of documenting (and continuously updating) how to perform these seemingly mundane tasks is the creation of institutional memory. Whilst each course in the University is required to have a course descriptor and a student-facing course handbook spelling out the assessment criteria and structures, there is no requirement for a staff-facing counterpart. This means that when the course changes leadership, much learned experience would have been lost. This was the exact problem I ran into when I took over a master-level course. Even after reading all of the student-facing documents, speaking with the previous course organiser and even other tutors working on the course, I still had so many questions and was left to reinvent the wheel in many administrative tasks simply because there is no road-map. Had there been a teaching staff or tutor handbook, the handover would have been much smoother and time would have been saved on both my and my colleaguesâ parts.
Bite-size training for tutors
But perhaps the greatest benefit of my Tutor Handbook is the bite-size training it afforded the tutors working on my course. Even though nowadays everyoneâs working hours (include that of Guaranteed Hours) account for CPD (continuing professional development), in reality very few part-time colleagues have spare time for hour-long (or even half-hour long) training sessions such as those on offer from the University on LEARN or Turnitin. Often colleagues only need to use a limited set of functionality from the digital tools that the structured training sessions provide. This is where the bite-size training comes in: they focus on the specific tasks required for the course. Some bite-size step-by-step training I embedded in the Tutor Handbook include:
- marking and similarity checking using the TurnitinÂź interface;
- managing group and boards in Miro;
- time-saving tips in LEARN (and now LEARN Ultra), such as filtering;
- using EUCLID for attendance recording and checking learning adjustments.
Because of these mini-CPDs, my course runs smoothly despite having a large number of students and various types of assessments using several different learning technologies.
Promoting good practice of Universal Design and CPD opportunities to tutors
I also use the Tutor Handbook to spread good practice of universal design (such as left-justified text), and to signpost relevant CPD opportunities provided by the Universityâs Institute for Academic Development (IAD) for the tutors on my course, and reminding them that their contracted hours include CPD. Compared to the University- or School-wide announcement of CPD opportunities, the tutors responded to my curated list of training much better because I only post relevant courses and highlighted the specific benefits to them. As a result of my ânudging,â some tutors have attended these CPD courses and found them useful.
Not reinventing the wheel
Finally, the Tutor Handbook is also a useful place for sharing templates so that no wheels need to be reinvented. An example is the Academic Misconduct Reporting Form, required when submitting a suspected case to the School Academic Misconduct Officer (SAMO). When a tutor working on my course became a course organiser herself, she adopted many of the practices I put in place for my course. I shared with her many aspects of running a course, including course change applications as well as advising her on the handling of academic misconduct, where an example of my completed form was particularly helpful to her in carrying out this unpleasant yet necessary task.
Course-specific tutor handbooks can be a powerful tool in preserving institutional memory and improving teaching and administrative efficiency, especially in this uncertain time. By documenting the operational details of running the course and offering precision bite-sized training materials, I have confidence that when it comes the time for me to hand the baton of my course to another colleague, this handbook will ensure a smooth transition between course leaderships and enhance the overall effectiveness of course delivery. As educators, developing resources like the Tutor Handbook not only supports our colleagues in practical ways but also ensures that invaluable teaching knowledge is retained and shared, fostering an empowered teaching community.
View a Xerte Learning Object that shows example pages of a Course-Specific Tutor Handbook: https://xerte.cahss.ed.ac.uk/play.php?template_id=5607.
W. Victoria Lee
Victoria is the Lecturer in Architecture and Environment at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA) in Edinburgh College of Art (ECA).
