Academic Tutor Job Description, Key Duties, and Responsibilities

Academic Tutor Job Description, Key Duties, and Responsibilities

This post provides exhaustive information on the job description of an academic tutor to help you learn what they do.

It presents the key duties, tasks, and responsibilities that commonly make up the academic tutor work description.

It also provides the major requirements you will be expected to meet if you are seeking the academic tutor position by recruiters/employers.

Please, continue reading to improve your knowledge of the academic tutor career:

What Does an Academic Tutor Do?

Every undergraduate and postgraduate student is assigned an Academic Tutor.

This is a member of academic staff in the same department or a related one who acts as an important point of contact all through a student’s time in school.

This contact aims to establish a hands-on, effective, and long-term relationship that encourages a progressive engagement within the academic community.

Academic tutors work alongside their tutees to assist their academic, personal, and professional development via an active relationships and organised academic conversations based on the student’s data.

They also help signpost students to appropriate specialist central services for ongoing support.

This method lets academic tutors concentrate on their area of expertise, assisting students to attain academic success and develop the indispensable graduate qualities necessary for employment/further study.

The duties of academic tutors usually cover six areas where they provide assistance:

Academic support and study skills

Your role involves:

Assist students to think seriously about their academic progress and to make decisions that will help them succeed in school.

Work alongside students to recognise their strengths and weaknesses as regards to their academic study skills.

Persuade students to cultivate working study skills with the help of Academic Support Services.

Help connect students with other academics in their course of study.

Assessment and feedback

As an academic tutor, you should:

Assist students to appraise and reflect extensively on feedback received on evaluated work, so they grow their ability to convert feedback to knowledge and progress effectively.

Careers and employability

As an academic tutor, you want to:

Talk over career desires and employability goals with students and embolden them to work towards reaching those goals while studying.

Suggest important opportunities that will benefit students (e.g. volunteering, careers training participation, study abroad, gaining work experience, student societies, etc.).

Assist students to recognize and surmount obstacles through tutor referral to specialist careers support.

Evaluate progress made by student so as to maintain enthusiasm and develop resilience.

Write references for students, when requested.

Engaging beyond the program

You want to help students learn how helpful extra-curricular opportunities will impart their skillset and career prospects; they stand to gain the following:

Pick up transferable skills
Build useful social networks
Add value to the advancement of the academic community.

Referring to specialist support services

A key part of the job of an academic tutor is to help students find support needs by encouraging an active and robust relationship with their tutees.

Depending on the difficulties students may encounter, academic tutors should refer them to the right specialist support services that cater to their needs.

Writing references

As an academic tutor, it is expected that you provide references for students.

There is no legal obligation behind this except that it is a time-honoured practice; that part of the function of an academic tutor to write academic references for tutees.

Should you refuse any student, then it must be based on some fair reason, you don’t want to discriminate against any tutee due to prejudice.

What you are not responsible for as an Academic Tutor

You are not in charge of resolving administrative problems as regards students’ studies; rather you want to direct students to the relevant office for further assistance (e.g. student support coordinator)

You are not to offer specialist advice or counselling, the right thing to do is point student to specialist central services on campus (Counselling, financial, VISA)

You don’t want to overstep your role in providing specialist academic or practice guidance that only a module-specific academic staff member has the expertise and authority to do.

Your job is to advise students on how to get help, which entails connecting students to other academics in applicable field of study.

Academic Tutor Job Description Example/Sample/Template

Here is a sample academic tutor job description consisting of the major duties, tasks, and responsibilities that they carry out:

Arrange a meeting with assigned students, this meeting can be done once or twice a term
Aid students in thinking productively about their academic journey, as well as personal and professional development. Attendance, grades, work and careers, are some of the themes discussed
Enthusiastically nurture engagement with tutees
Get to individually know your tutees so you can write references
Encourage tutees to Work hard at their studies and take a proactive position in determining their experience of Higher Education
Help them take advantage of opportunities that will help them develop practical and scholarly skill.

Academic Tutor Job Description for Resume

If you are writing a new resume or CV as someone who has got some experience working as an academic tutor, you should have a section in your resume to emphasize your knowledge of the role.

This section is the professional or work experience where you highlight the duties and responsibilities that you have performed or are currently performing as an academic tutor.

You can apply the academic tutor duties and responsibilities shown in the above job description example in making an effective professional experience part of your resume.

Academic Tutor Requirements – Skills, Knowledge, and Abilities for Career Success

If you are seeking to work as an academic tutor, the following are major requirements most recruiters/employers may want you to fulfil to be hired:

Education: Academic tutors are expected to have academic qualifications that make them relevant to the role.

Since all students, whether undergraduate or postgraduate are assigned to an academic tutor, they must at least have a Bachelor’s degree.

Experience: Experience can be useful in securing a job in this position. A minimum of 3 years of experience, but again it depends on what the employer seeks.

The following are major skills a academic tutor should have:

Ability to inspire and engage young and sometimes detached people
Constantly reviewing learning strategies and teaching methods to ensure they are the best for students
Have outstanding motivational and organizational skills
Have a remarkable ability to build exceptional relatable connections with young people
Assist students to surmount barriers to academic success
Have a good grasp of learning and teaching delivery methods
Competent in leading groups
Good listening skills
Can hold a lively conversation and able to inspire debate.

Conclusion

This post is helpful to individuals interested in becoming an academic tutor; they will be able to learn all they need to know about what academic tutors do and then be able to make an informed decision about getting into the career or not.

It is also useful to recruiters or employers who are looking to find competent academic tutors to hire.

They can apply the sample academic tutor job description provided above in making one for their organizations.