In carrying out your role as a tutor you will invariably need to communicate with students – tutors are expected to arrange meetings and proactively contact students. The way in which you communicate has a direct impact on how approachable your tutees consider you to be, how willing they are to engage with you as a tutor and, ultimately, on their student experience. It is essential that communications are clear, consistent, and relevant.
In your initial meetings with tutees you should inform them that you will be communicating with them throughout their course and indicate how those communications will happen. You should also inform students of the ways in which they can contact you. If you are going to be away from the University at any time, for example due to annual leave or ill-health, you should contact your tutees to provide them with alternative points of contact during your absence and make it clear how they can communicate with these individuals. When you are out of the office, you should make this clear by setting up an auto-reply to your email and appropriate voicemail messages which indicate when you will return and be able to deal with the query.
Wherever possible, you should personalise your communications and address the student directly. You should send out your communications, particularly those relating to the scheduling of meetings, in good time and you should responding to communications to students in a timely manner, ideally within three working days.
Tutors are required to monitor their tutees’ engagement with their courses. When a student shows signs of disengaging, tutors should proactively communicate with students to intervene and help with any problems that they may be experiencing. It is particularly important that you follow up on any student who does not respond to your communications relating to their lack of engagement. If the student still does not respond, then you should bring this student to the attention of your Lead Academic Tutor and/or raise a cause for concern with the Student Wellbeing team.