1. Introduction to using TutorGroups as a Teacher
2. Dedicated Email
3. Private Forums
4. Live Seminar Rooms
5. Online Testing, Handouts and Learning Resources
6. Using TutorGroups as a tutor
7. Frequently Asked Questions

This guide has been written to provide you with an introduction to using TutorGroups^TM as a teacher.

TutorGroups has been created for teachers working in schools / colleges that do not currently subscribe to ExamsTutor, either becasue the school can not afford to do so at this time, or because they are based outside the UK.

By subcribing to TutorGroups, teachers can use ExamsTutor with their students, allowing them personal access to virtual learning environment facilities normally only offered through ExamsTutors institute wide subscription package, alongside inidividual teacher access to a subject area of their choosing. Whilst also providing their students with facility to subscribe individually to ExamsTutor for a greatly discounted fee, with added facilities including persoanl email, and access to their teachers TutorGroup area on Examstutor.

Easy to use

Without any technical knowledge, tutors can easily create their own virtual learning environment, including

• dedicated email accounts
• private forums
• live seminar chatrooms
• interactive online tests
• downloadable handouts

with access to all these resources being restricted to the teacher and their students only.

you are in control

TutorGroups has been designed so it can be used to complement your face-to-face teaching in class. Enabling you to offer your students additional support outside of classes. Giving you complete control over the level of additional support you wish to offer.

Within TutorGroups each teacher has their own private @examstutor.co.uk email account, and email management system. When students join your TutorGroup they are also provided with their own private @examstutor.co.uk email account.

This helps TutorGroups ensure all email communication between teacher and student is secure. All email accounts reside on the TutorGroups dedicated Sever. When you email a student, using your @examstutor.co.uk email account the email remains within the TutorGroups Server, and does not travel round the web in the same way as a personal email account. This prevents anyone intercepting your emails online. In addition the TutorGroups Server is SSL encrypted, the same technology used to protect online credit card transactions. So when you open or send an email for any PC, your email message is encrypted, helping ensure that no one can intercept and read emails sent between teacher and student.

SSL encryption technology is applied to all areas of the TutorGroups environment.

ALL email communication between teacher and student, must only take place through your secure @examstutor.co.uk email account, use of personal email accounts by either the teacher or student is prohibited.

As well as helping to ensure online safety, use of this dedicated email account also eliminates the need for the teacher or student to provide each other with their personal email address. Keeping tuition communication, separate from personal communication with friends and family.

Using your @examstutor.co.uk email account you can

• send/receive/reply/forward and store emails
• create folders for email storage, ideal for storing communication with each student separately, or communication on specific topics, which can then be reused with other students.
• send and receive attachments, including word processed documents, powerpoint presentations and spreadsheet files.

Because your email account is permanently accessible through examstutor, you can check and respond to messages from anywhere with internet access, be it at home or school / college, by logging into your TutorGroups area on examstutor.com, using the unique username and password you will be provided with by TutorGroups, once you have subscribed to the service.

Whenever possible your email account will be in your name, in the form

yourname@examstutor.co.uk

Practical Guide to Using Email for teaching and tuition

Email is an example of Asynchronous communication, i.e. time-delayed communication. Use of email is suitable when time is required to consider your response to a communication, it also does not require the teacher / tutor to be online at the same time as the student / tutee. It is therefore extremely suitable for tutoring purposes, and is often used as the primary method of communication by tutors online. The following advice is based on actual tutor experience of working online, and will help you manage email tuition.

• Many tutors develop pro-forma / templates for their email text, which can be reused to set tasks, provide feedback, welcome tutees, or close a tuition course. Using standardised emails will also help your tutees become familiar with your style of tuition.
• When you type any tuition email, think whether you should save a copy of the email for future use with other students. Your email account provides you with the facility to save copies of all sent emails.
• Manage tutee expectations of response times to emails, by agreeing from the start of a tuition course, the time you will need to respond to emails - perhaps 36 or 48 hours.
• Get into the habit of checking your email everyday, to provide you with the maximum time to respond to tutee email.
• DO NOT respond to every email in detail, often a response you have previously given in your private tuition Forum, or information contained in one of your downloadable handouts, will be appropriate. If so, direct tutees to these resources in a brief email response, perhaps providing a link to the appropriate resource within the email.
• If you author a detailed email on a particular topic, consider posting an edited copy of the text of the email in your tuition Forum, so future tutees can refer to this material.

Help is always at hand

TutorGroups provides online support to all subscribers, an online helpdesk is manned 7 days a week, with an email response time commitment of 24 hours maximum. If you ever need help using any element of the TutorGroups environment simply email our support team at

helpdesk@examstutor.com

     my TutorGroup forum

As a teacher using TutorGroups you will be provided with your own private discussion forum, access to which is only provided to you and your students*.

A forum is an online notice board, onto which you and your students can 'post' comments, which can be 'replied' to by subsequent 'postings' made by you, and your students. The initial posting and subsequent reply postings are referred to collectively as a 'thread'.

In your TutorGroup forum you can

• engage all your students, in discussion of selected topics, creating forum seminars
• build a record of responses to frequently asked questions, to which all your students can refer
• allow your students to share their understanding of the subject with each other.

This state of the art forum includes easy to use features for those new to forums, and more sophisticated elements that will interest those teachers and students familiar with the use of forums. Features include

• post and reply to topics
• emoticons
• interactive voting polls
• topic ordering option ....

* your students are automatically assigned access to your TutorGroup Forum when they sign up, using the unique TutorGroups Reference Code we supply you.

Plus, you will also be given access to our Tutor Forum, a private meeting place for all teachers / tutors using TutorGroups, enabling you to share experience, knowledge and resources with fellow teachers / tutors.

Practical Guide to Using Your Private Forum

Your private forum will reduce the time taken to respond to students individually on similar topics, it will help you encourage a collaborative approach to learning amongst your students, in which your role is seen more as a facilitator of learning. There is significant evidence that students can gain a lot from sharing their thoughts with fellow learners and often make significant advances in their own thinking through trying to communicate their ideas online.

• Your private forum is the only means by which your studnets can communicate with each other online through TutorGroups. Tutees are encouraged not to give each other any contact details, including their @examstutor.co.uk email account details, to help ensure their online safety. Your forum is therefore your most powerful tool in developing collaborative learning amongst your students.
• Build up Frequently Asked Question threads on specific topics, that can be referred to by your students.
• Use ice breaking tasks to introduce new students to the online group. A commonly used online device is to ask a new student to post a brief profile and 3 interesting facts about themselves, one of which is untrue, and to ask fellow students to guess / vote which fact is untrue, having asked the student questions about the statement in the forum. Your TutorGroups forum has a polling facility, ideally suited this type of activity.
• Check postings in your forum regularly, and respond to new student postings promptly, to encourage student confidence in the forum as a means of communicating with you.
• Encourage all your students to participate in forum discussions, by setting tuition tasks which involve group discussion in the forum. If you set marked tasks, consider allocating marks for participation in forum discussions, prior to the submission of an individual student response to the task.
• Email students about existing or previous discussions in your forum which may be of interest to their current studies, inviting them to contribute.
• Know that the most active discussions will occur when the students themselves identify an issue they wish to discuss.
• Set standards of behaviour within your forum by example, keep postings in a thread focused on the original topic of the posting. Create new threads for new topics. Moderate discussions in your forum, to ensure that they are not dominated by just one or two students.
• Understand that students will interact in online discussions differently, sometimes a single posting from a student, having considered all prior postings in a thread, is more valuable than several immediate postings by a student.
• Use your forum for Synchronous - real-time, as well as Asynchronous - time delayed, Group Seminars. Real-time or time delayed, question and answer seminars about a specific topic can be held with groups of students in your forum. With the entire thread of a seminar being recorded in your forum, for future reference.
• Use your forum to refer students to other resources - announcing for example the addition of new online tests, downloadable handouts / files or external links.
• Allowing your students to use the forum for general discussion, not specific to your subject area, will encourage use of the forum, and a sense of community amongst your students. Care however should be taken to moderate such discussions to ensure the safety of your students online.

     no chat - just tuition

The SeminarRoom is TutorGroups own real time private chat room facility, but without the chat. Only the teacher / tutor and their individual studentd can enter the seminar room, and communicate in real time through this TutorGroups service.

Host live online seminar sessions with students, regardless of their location, and back up your sessions with online tests, email, and downloadable teaching resources, all through your TutorGroups area.

In addition, all communication within the SeminarRoom is recorded on the examstutor database, so that both teacher and student can revisit the content of the seminar at a latter date.

A guide to using and working in the SeminarRoom is provided to all new students.

Practical Guide to Using Your SeminarRoom

You may have envisaged prior to reading this guide that online tuition would primarily involve you providing regular one hour live chat / conferencing sessions with the tutee. This is a common misconception, in reality an effective and more manageable online tuition course does not rely solely on bursts of Synchronous - real-time communication between tutor and tutee. Instead, support is provided on an ongoing predominantly Asynchronous - time-delayed format, with live chats being used only when appropriate and for possibly shorter periods such as 20 to 30 minutes on a specific topic.

• Synchronous communication can be used to mark key events in the course such as the start and end of activities.
• Brief the tutee about the aims and objectives of the real-time session via email, prior to the session itself. It is common for people to meet in real time spaces and see what happens and, although this can work, it is better to brief everyone beforehand, this helps overcome some of that initial anxiety.
• Link to other resources, for example instruct the tutee to download a PowerPoint presentation, or spreadsheet model that can be referred to during the live seminar.

• Pre-prepare your script, for those new to live chat, there is a tendency for them to type frantically often without fully registering what is happening on the screen …to control that tendency you need to avoid typing in a similar fashion. The aim is to try and get participants to slow down and 'listen' to each other. By having your script prepared, you can copy and paste responses and any directions very quickly. This in turn helps you to cope more easily with that initial frenzy. Although you may need to depart from your script it often helps you across most situations early in a course or session. It also buys you reading and thinking time.
• Build up a portfolio of saved scripts, that can be called upon when appropriate in a live seminar session.
• Consider adopting some conventions for working together online. For example agree that the tutee type a single question mark when they wish to speak, and to wait until this is acknowledged by you the tutor, before speaking/typing. Additionally, agree to end a line with a series of dots or full stops like this…
  to indicate that you have not finished speaking. This avoids any concern that can arise in the minds of participants if no messages are coming up on the screen. Too much delay can result in participants typing at the same time as a response to that uncertainty. This strategy also allows you as a tutor to say a little more and offer it in more digestible chunks (it offers the same opportunities for the students as well).
• Another technique used is to...
  break lines of typing up…
  into bits…
  like this…
  just to help the text scan more easily and appear like speech rather than cold text.

You can create your own online multiple choice tests in your TutorGroup on examstutor.

Only your students will be able to access the tests you create, copyright of which will be retained by you as the author. All student attempts will be automatically marked by examstutor, and these marks are then permanently recorded on the examstutor database.

Once created you can use these tests as part of your teaching, and set completion of a test as home-work. In the lead up to exams, students can use these tests to check their understanding of a topic you have taught.

Teachers can review each of their students performance in any online tests they take, by viewing a students 'Report Card' from within the TutorGroups area.

TutorGroups provides each teacher with 10 Megabytes of online file storage space, on a dedicated server. Allowing you to upload / publish your own teaching resources, be they word documents, presentations, spreadsheets, pdf files..

Making them available for your students, and only your students, to download as part of your teaching. Copyright of any uploaded material will remain with the original author of the material, in this case you the teacher.

publish spreadsheet models
or, upload presentations..

• create and publish handouts on topics to be read by students, after or prior to, class sessions
• upload homework / exercises for students to complete
• create and publish PowerPoint presentations on specific topics for students to click through during class.

Examstutor is an approved content provider for Curriculum Online, and can provide you and your studnets with instant access to online learning resources, used by schools and college across the UK and overseas.

All content is written by senior examiners, experienced teachers and tutors, and is designed to support students studying for A Level and GCSE qualifications. Examstutor content can also be printed out and used in class.

Resources include

• StudyRoom an online reference resource, more concise than a text book, more comprehensive than a paperback revision guide.
• ExamHall an online database of past exam questions, mark-schemes and examiners reports
• PodTutor a unique audio mp3 revision resources that provides tutees with audio revision notes, that can be listened to online or downloaded onto a personal mp3 player.

Access to these resources in one of our main subjects is automatically provided, and a significant discount on examstutor individual subscription fees is offered, reducing the cost to as little as £10 in a subject for the entire year, if you wish to add access to further subjects. Your students can also subscribe at this discounted rate, by using your unique TutorGroups Reference, which will be issued to you.

Putting Student Safety First

TutorGroups primary function is to help teachers create their own private online learning environment for the students they work with at their school or college. In addition, we are aware that some subscribers may wish to use their TutorGroup to provide private online tuition support to students they currently work with face-to-face, however permission is not given for tutors to use Examstutor to offer pure online tuition to students they do not already work with face-to-face.

For reasons which we are confident you will appreciate, Examstutor wishes to ensure that if private tuition is provided through TutorGroups by subscribers, it is provided by individuals who have been adequately screened to ensure their suitablity to work with children and young adults either online or face-to-face.

Whilst we understand that some tutors may prefer to work independently, we hope you will appreciate the responsible position we have taken regarding student safety, and that you will also accept that there are clear benifits to tutors in operating in this way.

As well as your Username and Password, you will be provided with a unique TutorGroups Reference. Your existing students can sign-up to your TutorGroup by completing an online individual subscription on www.examstutor.com. By providing your TutorGroups Reference when they complete the subscription, they will get 12 months access to your TutorGroup, including their own secure @examstutor.co.uk email account, and 12 months individual student access to a subject area of their choosing, all for a discounted subscription fee of just £9.99 for the year, compared to our standard £19.99 individual student subscription fee.

If online tuition is completely new to you, but you'd like to explore the possibilities of working with TutorGroups, we recommend that you begin by using TutorGroups with your existing face-to-face tutees. By offering your existing tutees a supplementary level of online support outside of regular tuition sessions, you will not only differentiate your tuition service from other local tutors, you will also be able to offer your individual tutees a group / seminar element to tuition - as they will be able to communicate safely online with each other, and you in your TutorGroup forum. The level of online support you offer, could be limited to giving them access to a small number of online tests that you create, and making your handouts available to download.

Working with existing tutees provides you with the advantages of knowing the tutees prior to any online communication, and allowing you to get direct feedback from them in person, on the success of the online support you have provided. This approach will enable you to develop an online tuition style, which suits you, your tutees and the subjects you tutor in.