Allocation of work
Allocation of Tutoring work
Tutoring duties are allocated Mathematics Teaching Organisation (MTO). The greatest demand for tutoring lies with our first year courses and our core second year courses and many tutors will be involved in one or more of these courses.
Every summer tutors will be asked to complete an online questionnaire giving course preferences for tutoring. Although we cannot guarantee to meet preferences we will try to do so. This provides an opportunity for tutors (should they wish) to expand their tutoring experiences across different courses. Following this exercise MTO will issue a draft schedule of allocations, refining as comments or issues are raised, then finalising around the start of the semester. These allocations will be in the form of a list of tutors and the hours which they have been assigned to a course or courses. In general terms the hours allocated should be read as the actual tutorial hours plus time allocated for tutorial preparation and/or associated marking. Tutoring allocations will be made available here.
This can be a complex exercise, linked as it is, to the allocation of tutoring duties to academic staff. Variations between the duration and nature of tutorial groups between courses adds to the complexity.
The majority of tutors will have tutoring in the range 80 to 120 hours per semester.
As well as being paid for the actual tutoring time (also referred to as direct contact time) tutors should automatically claim for marking and preparation time. Each hour of tutoring will normally have an allowance of an hour for marking and any other administrative work. This is generally standard across the University. We also give an allocation of 30 minutes for preparation time, this is per course per week (ie tutors taking multiple workshops for a single course in the same week may claim this allowance only once). The allowance is the same irrespective of tutorial length.
For some courses the marking allowance will be different. For example - Skills workshops on the Honours Courses. The Tutoring Allocations system will give the hours per course and you will be able to see any variations between courses.
For the majority of courses there are eleven tutorials. For courses which have tutorials every two weeks there will be either five or six tutorials depending on when the tutorials started.
To give an example, if you have a single tutorial for a course each week and this runs for 11 weeks your total tutoring claim for the course would be 27.5 hours. This is comprised of 11 hours for actual tutoring, 11 hours for marking, and 5.5 hours for preparation. In practice marking may have peaks and troughs (for example if assessments only take place every few weeks) but you claim the normal marking allowance throughout – over the semester this should balance.
Once tutor allocations have been confirmed the Course Administrator will be available to provide further information regarding the tutorials for that course. Tutors should direct any initial enquiries to the relevant Course Administrator.
The majority of tutor hours will fall under this rubric although there will be other roles (eg Mathsbase, ad hoc marking) where tutors will be paid for the actual time taken/allocation.
As part of the support that we provide to tutors there are also number of mandatory training (and related) activities which are not included in the tutor allocations. These should be included in your tutor timesheets so that they can be paid for. These activities include:
· For new tutors
- Tutor induction Preperation (for new tutors only) - 1 hr
- Tutor induction (for new tutors only) - 5.5 hrs
- Computer workshop (All tutors welcome) - 1 hr
- Data Protection (for new tutors only) – 1 hr
- Information Security (for new tutors only) – 1 hr
· For all tutors
o For Year 1 courses, and some Year 2 courses, there may be start of semester course meetings. These are not mandatory but we strongly encourage
attendance at these. These meetings, if attended, should be included in timesheets.
Please see the Sections Mandatory training for all new staff and Training and development for further information.
It is University policy to limit to the amount of paid employment that PhD students should undertake. This limit is currently an average of 9 hours per week across a 46 week period. The limit applies to all paid employment within the University, for example tutoring and demonstrating, internships, research projects, and acting as warden or Residence Life Assistant for Accommodation Services.
From time to time you may be asked to take on private tutoring for a student taking a course or courses within the School. The School strongly discourages this. From the School’s perspective the main issue is that of possible conflicts of interest (for example private tutoring a student whose work you are subsequently involved in marking). From the perspective of the Private Tutor there are also potential issues relating to liability (ie if things go wrong) and also tax and National Insurance. If you do take on private tutoring you must notify Director of Teaching who will identify any conflict of interest issues and advise as to the steps needed to mitigate these conflicts (which may include removing a tutor from a course or courses).