August OLT tutor support bulletin
Date 5th Aug 2020
Hello and welcome to the first bi-monthly tutor support bulletin from OLT
Designed specifically to improve the way we support and communicate with our tutors, this bulletin has been created to bring you targeted tutor news and announcements, as well as tips for getting the most out of OLT’s learning platform!
From the 14 September, you will notice a number of changes on OLT’s learning platform. These service enhancements include a new registration process, a teacher’s toolkit of resources including: a video library; a compendium of specialist teachers’ posts and a calendar of upcoming events, such as webinars and facilitated discussions.
So, once again, welcome to our first bi-monthly tutor support email and thank you for being with us!
The OLT team
Improving our support to tutor trainers
From the 14 September, you will notice a number of changes on OLT’s learning platform. These service enhancements include a new registration process, a teacher’s toolkit of resources including: a video library; a compendium of specialist teachers’ posts and a calendar of upcoming events, such as webinars and facilitated discussions. We listened to your feedback so these changes (including the webinars) have been introduced as a direct response to your suggestions for improvements (from our Customer Satisfaction Survey 2019).
This Tutor Trainer email is one of the changes we are also introducing as we seek to improve the way we support and communicate with our tutors. But, be assured, we will not inundate you with emails! We plan to communicate bi-monthly with useful and targeted news as well as tips for getting the most out of OLT’s learning platform!
If you have any suggestions on what you would like to see in this bulletin please let us know by emailing Sandra with your comments.
Announcement: The Specialist Tutors’ Compendium
Learning vicariously through the practice of others is one of the key benefits of belonging to a thriving community of practice (Wenger). Here at OLT, we recognise that discovering (and learning from) our tutors’ comments could be improved and many of these posts are already ‘openly’ available in the National Forums but are often buried or unrecognisable as a specialist tutor’s comments.
We are excited to announce that we are now repackaging this content and creating a resource, entitled the Specialist Tutors’ Compendium (STC). A resource like this has several advantages for you and your participants. It will provide you with an excellent resource to share best practice with course participants and other tutors. It also provides a useful model for making contributions to the forums.
We are currently in the process of building a draft version of the compendium, which will be completed by mid-August. Once this is complete, we will contact you again to share the beta version for your feedback and comments. The STC will only be available to paid/traded members of our community and will eventually become part of the process of building contacts and applying badges (i.e. awards) to those individuals who have made the Most Liked and Top Contributions (Editor’s Pick) in the forums. We anticipate each Tutor will have 3-5 comments per course when we launch on 14 September 2020.
Further information
Please contact Sandra by 15 August, 2020 if you would like to find out more or, have any questions.
Invitation: Join our online community as an Associate Tutor
Do you know someone who would like to inspire others, share SEND best practice and champion inclusive and adaptive teaching across the UK?
We are looking to expand our in-house cohort of Associate Tutors. Do you know of any retired specialist teachers, SENCOs or SEND experts who might be interested in joining us on an ad hoc basis to contribute to the following:
- tutoring OLT courses,
- contributing to SEND blogs,
- facilitating our successful webinars and lead focused discussions.
In return for the above, they will benefit professionally and personally from sharing their expertise and showcasing their skills to our audience of teaching professionals.
Further information
If you feel you or someone you know has the capacity to work with OLT and would like to find out more please contact Siobhan. We look forward to hearing from you.
Call for beta testing teams
New Goal Setting tool©
Many of you will know the challenges associated with creating SMART goals! OLT has developed a dynamic SMART Goal Setting Tool© to help your participants meet the course requirements. This dynamic tool is based on assessment checklists, good practice, and research. We are currently in the testing phase of development checking the tool is fit for purpose.
Changes to the website
Finally, we would like to invite you to test our new registration process, which will come into effect from 14 September 2020. Its designed to streamline the process of registration and overcome the challenge of emails going to the Junk/Spam folder during registration. We are looking for a small group of individuals to give us feedback on the design.
Further information
If you would like to volunteer in testing our new goal setting tool, please contact Sandra to register your interest.
Also, if you are interested in getting involved with helping us test the website registration process, please contact Siobhan by 15 August.