Tutorial design

A key principle of self-regulation is to increase student agency and ownership for learning.  This means that, as you design your tutorials, you should be thinking about how you can involve all of the students at each stage of the tutorial. 

First download a tutorial design template. This is a single sheet of A4 paper, divided vertically by a line down the middle, with the ‘tutor’ written on the top left hand side and ‘students’ written on the right. The first thing to do is to write down what you (the tutor) will do on the left and then write down what the students will do on the right (with this side showing when students are working individually, in pairs and in groups). Having done this, have a look at each entry on the left hand side and ask yourself: “can this be re-designated as a student or student group activity?”. If it can, move it over to the right hand side of the page. The key to this is to see how many of the entries on the left hand side you can move over to the right hand side. Now you have a tutorial plan.

Next think about timings for each entry on the plan. Be realistic about this, and remember to include time for students to move around if this is part of your tutorial plan. Also remember to leave sufficient time for a feedback activity at the end to wrap the lesson up and make it feel complete to the students. Write the timings for each stage of the tutorial onto the tutorial plan you have completed, and make sure they add up to the total amount of time allotted. 

Think about an icebreaker activity. You might not need this for each tutorial, but it can be a good idea for the first time of meeting. You could use one of the activities above, such as rounds or brainstorming as an icebreaker that gently starts students thinking about the tutorial topic.