Tutors@ANU

Questions to ask yourself and others

Louise Maurer, Blandine Guillot (ANU) 

• What outcomes do I want from the experience of tutoring?
• How explicit should I be about expectations?
• Am I more than a spell checker?
• What are the limits to pastoral/academic care and referring on?

Generic issues

• What is 'core business' and what are other possible dimensions in tutoring?
• Is there a tutors' model duty statement? 

Discipline-specific issues

First-year students need to be made aware that each discipline has its culture, language, conventions, practices and expectations.

• Is it the role of the lecturer-in-charge, or is it part of your role to make explicit to students the embedded values, assumptions, methodologies etc of the particular discipline?

  If so how, and when?

• Are there discipline-specific issues that you need to bring to the attention of students? Are these issues
  

  content-based: language, nature and use of primary vs secondary sources
  skills-based: argumentation, nature of critical inquiry

• Is it part of a your role to make explicit the course guide's purpose and content? (Re for example assessment criteria and practices, discipline-specific conventions in referencing, campus-wide policy on plagiarism.)

  If the answer is yes, when and how might I do this?

• Course guides may also be used as a tool for explaining to students the design of the curriculum, that is, making explicit the logic behind the design: in terms of where it begins, where it ends, its organising principles such as chronology, theme etc.

  Again, is this the role of the lecturer-in-charge, you as tutor, or a shared concern?

Partnerships

• What are the limits to your role as tutor, and when should you refer on?
• Lines of demarcation: where does your role end and the lecturer-in-charge's role begin?
• How best should you work with student services — academic skills, counselling, disability services, international education?