1. Introduction
2. Dedicated Email
3. Private Tuition Forums
4. Live Seminar Rooms
5. Online Testing, Handouts and Learning Resources

This guide has been written to provide you with an introduction to using TutorGroups^TM as a student or tutee, to support your studies.

a complete solution

TutorGroups delivers a single solution for students wishing to receive online or face-to-face tuition support. Without any technical knowledge, tutees can easily create their own private online tuition environment, including

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

access to all these resources is restricted to the tutee and their tutor only.

the possibility of 24/7 support

Joining TutorGroups also provides you with ability to access Examstutor online study resources, as used by schools and colleges across the UK and overseas. Access to Examstutor online study resources is via subscription, however as a TutorGroup member your yearly subscription to Examstutor is greatly reduced, costing just £10 per subject required.

Within TutorGroups each tutee has their own private @examstutor.co.uk email account, and email management system. Your TutorGroup tutor will be provided with their own private @examstutor.co.uk email account.

This helps TutorGroups ensure all email communication between tutee and tutor is secure. All email accounts reside on the TutorGroups dedicated Sever. When you email your tutor, 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 tutee and tutor.

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

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

As well as helping to ensure online safety, use of this dedicated email account also eliminates the need for the tutee or tutor to provide each other with their personal email address. Keeping tuition communication, separate from your 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 on specific topics separately, which can then refer back to when required.
• 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, by logging into your TutorGroups area on examstutor.com, using the unique username and password you will be provided with by TutorGroups on joining.

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

yourname@examstutor.co.uk

Practical Guide to Using Email

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 tutee to be online at the same time as the tutor. It is therefore extremely suitable for tuition purposes, and is often used as the primary method of communication by students and tutors online. The following advice is based on actual tutee experience of working online, and will help you manage email tuition.

• When you type any email to your tutor, think whether you should save a copy of the email for future reference. Your email account provides you with the facility to save copies of all sent emails.
• Don't expect your tutor to be able to respond to your emails within minutes tutors are not tied to their computer, and will require time to consider their response to your questions. Establish from the start of a tuition course, the time your tutor will need to respond to emails - perhaps 48 hours.
• Get into the habit of checking your email everyday, to provide you with the maximum time to respond to any eamils you receive from your tutor.
• DO NOT email the tutor every time you have a question, sometimes a response to a similar question can be found in your tutors TutorGroup Forum, or the answer may be found in information contained in one of your tutors downloadable handouts. Check these immediately available resources first before emailing your tutor.

Help is always at hand

TutorGroups provides online support to all tutors and tutees, 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 student / tutee using TutorGroups you will be provided with access to your tutors private discussion forum*, access to which is only provided to you, your tutor and the tutors other tutees.

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

In your TutorGroup forum you can

• engage your tutor and fellow tutees, in discussion of selected topics, creating forum seminars
• build a record of responses to frequently asked questions, to which all your tutees can refer
• share your understanding of a subject with each other, adding a group element to your tuition.

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

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

* you are automatically assigned access to your TutorGroup Forum when you sign up to TutorGroups.

Practical Guide to Using Your Private Forum

Your private tuition forum will enable you to communicate with not only your tutor, but also other tutees that work with your tutor. There is significant evidence that you can gain a lot from sharing your thoughts with fellow learners, and often make significant advances in your own thinking through trying to communicate your ideas online.

• Your private tuition forum is the only means by which tutees can communicate with each other. Tutees are prohibited from giving each other any contact details, including their @examstutor.co.uk email account details, to help ensure your online safety.
• Many forums will include Frequently Asked Question threads on specific topics, that can be referred to by you.
• Check postings in your forum regularly, and respond to new postings promptly, you will be amazed how your participation in forum discussions will benefit you in your own studies.
• The most active discussions will occur when the tutees themselves identify an issue they wish to discuss. So don't be afraid to raise a new topic for discussion in your forum.
• Keep postings in a thread focused on the original topic of the posting. Create new threads for new topics.
• Your tutor will understand that tutees will interact in online discussions differently, sometimes a single posting from a tutee, having considered all prior postings in a thread, is more valuable than several immediate postings made by a tutee.
• 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 tutees in your forum. With the entire thread of a seminar being recorded in your forum, for future reference.
• You can use your forum for general discussion, not specific to your subject area. However take care not to reveal any personal contact details to your tutor or other tutees in your forum, to help ensure your safety online.

     no chat - just tuition

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

The Seminar Room can host live online tuition sessions between tutor and tutee, regardless of their location, and can be backed up by online tests, email, and downloadable tuition resources, all through your TutorGroups area.

In addition, all communication within the Seminar Room is recorded on the examstutor database, so that both tutor and tutee can revisit the content of the seminar at a latter date, and in the case of children and young adults the parent / guardian has the ability to check communication between tutor and tutee.

A guide to using and working in the Seminar Room is provided to all new tutees. Induction sessions for people to experiment before any formal tuition sessions in the Seminar Room, are also provided.

Practical Guide to Using Your Seminar Room

You may have envisaged prior to reading this guide that online tuition would primarily involve regular one hour live chat / conferencing sessions with your tutor. 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.

• Seminar Room communication is often used to mark key events in the course such as the start and end of activities.
• Your tutor will normally brief you about the aims and objectives of the real-time session via email, prior to the session itself
• Within a Seminar Room session you may be asked to link to other resources, for example the tutor may ask you to download a PowerPoint presentation, or spreadsheet model that can be referred to during the live seminar.

(By recording all communication TutorGroups seeks to reassure parents and protect both tutee and tutor. Copyright of any seminar discussion content is retained by the participants of the seminar.)

• Pre-prepare your script of question you wish to ask or topics you intend to raise. 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 to slow down and 'listen' to each other. By having your script prepared, you can copy and paste responses and questions very quickly. This in turn helps you to cope more easily with that initial frenzy. Although you may need to depart from your script this trick also buys you reading and thinking time.
• Consider adopting some conventions for working with your tutor online. For example agree that the you type a single question mark when you wish to speak, and to wait until this is acknowledged by your 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 to say a little more and offer it in more digestible chunks.
• 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 attempt online multiple choice tests, created by your Tutor, in your TutorGroup on examstutor.

All tutee attempts will be automatically marked by examstutor, and these marks are then permanently recorded on the examstutor database.

Tutors may use these tests as part of your online tuition, and set completion of a test as home-work. In the lead up to exams, you can use these tests to check your understanding of a topic you have been provided tuition in.

Both you and your tutor can review your performance in any online tests you have taken, and compare this the performance of other tutees in your Tutorgroup.

    download your tutors handouts

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

Making them available for their tutees, and only their tutees, to download as part of their tuition service. Copyright of any uploaded material will remain with the original author of the material, in this case the tutor.

publish spreadsheet models
or, upload presentations..

• create and publish handouts on topics to be read by tutees prior to tuition sessions
• upload homework / exercises for tutees to complete
• create and publish PowerPoint presentations on specific topics for students to click through during a tuition session.

Examstutor is an approved content provider for Curriculum Online, and can provide you and your tutees 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 face-to-face tuition sessions.

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 is optional, and a nominal 12 month subscription fee is required. However, you will be entitled to a significant discount on examstutor individual subscription fees by joining a tutors TutorGroup, reducing the cost to as little as £10 in a subject for the entire year.