TMS Quick Start Guide for Tutors

Outlined below are a list of ‘How do I?’ activities that tutors might find useful for completing tasks in TMS.

Under each topic, there is a column for tasks previously completed in OxCORT, one for the replacement task in TMS, and one for the Self-Help guide on TMS to support the completion of that task. 

Shared Terminology

TMS is designed to handle increasingly diversified teaching (including various classes and practicals) and it is used by colleges and departments, so some of the shared terminology used in TMS may be different from what you are used to. There is a TMS glossary but key changes to be aware of are: 

  • A ‘Teaching Arrangement’ allows you to create and manage an instance of teaching (e.g. a tutorial, class, project supervision), and attach tutors and students to it 

  • Department teaching: you can enter a remark per student, per session, before submitting your overall academic report at the end of term – this is referred to as ‘session-based teaching'

Further Information

Further information can be found on the Teaching Management System page. 

Quick Reference Guide

Tutor Guide for Completing and Submitting Academic Reports in TMS (PDF)

How do I?

Outlined below are a list of ‘How do I?’ activities that tutors might find useful for completing tasks in TMS.

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OxCort Task TMS Task

Self-Help Guide/ Where to Find

Edit Profile View and edit my tutor profile/payment details 

Navigation path:

  • Click My Profile > Tutor Profile 

Self Help Guides:

  • View and edit your tutor profile.
  • View and edit tutor payment details.
OxCort Task TMS Task

Self-Help Guide/ Where to Find

View or Process Tutorial Reports 

View Tutorial Arrangements 

View teaching arrangements that I am assigned to  

Navigation path:

Click Teaching menu > My Teaching Arrangements 

OxCort Task TMS Task Self-Help Guide / Where to Find

Arrange Tutorials 

Arrange Revision Class 

Create a college teaching arrangement. 

(If you are an Organising Tutor as well as a Teaching Tutor you must use the Organising Tutor version of the Self-Help guide) 

Navigation path: 

  • Click Teaching menu > My Teaching Arrangements 

  • Click Teaching menuAll Teaching Units 

Self-Help Guides: 

  • Add a college teaching arrangement for a term via the teaching arrangement page  

  • Add a college teaching arrangement for a term via a Teaching Unit 

OxCort Task TMS Task Self-Help Guide / Where to Find
Not applicable - New in TMS  Use the new teaching arrangement template 

Navigation path: 

  • Click Teaching > My Templates 

 

Self-Help Guides: 

  • Create a teaching arrangement template 

OxCort Task TMS Task Self-Help Guide/ Where to Find
New in TMS for Tutors (previously done by Office role)  Use the bulk upload to upload teaching arrangements

Navigation path:  

  • Click Teaching > My Teaching Arrangement > Arrange Teaching > Arrange by Bulk Upload 

Self-Help Guides: 

  • Add a college teaching arrangement via bulk upload. 

OxCort Task TMS Task Self-Help Guide / Where to Find

Create New Tutorial Reports  

Edit or View Existing Tutorial Reports 

Create College Collection Teaching Arrangements 

Create Department Collection Teaching Arrangements 

Manage Collection Marking 

Complete College/Department Collection Reports 

The following Self-Help guides will assist you in setting up and completing your College or Department collections from creating the Teaching Arrangement to completing a collection report: 

  • Add a college teaching arrangement for a term via the teaching arrangement page

  • Add a college teaching arrangement for a term via the teaching unit page

  • Manage Collection Marking for Academic Reports (Tutor) 

  • Complete a College Collection report

  • Complete a Department Collection report

  • Batch edit a collection marking report 

OxCort Task TMS Task Self-Help Guide / Where to Find
New in TMS  Batch edit session reports 

If your teaching arrangement is session based, there is space to add a report, per session per student. In some instances, session reports must be completed before submitting the end of term report. 

The following Self-Help guides will help you with session-based reporting: 

  • Batch edit session reports 

OxCort Task TMS Task Self-Help Guide / Where to Find

Create New Tutorial Reports 

Create Revision Class Reports 

Edit or View Existing Tutorial Reports 

Create Teaching Arrangements 

Complete academic reports 

Specific Teaching Arrangements require that certain items need to be completed before completing the final Academic report, for example adding payment claims, managing Hours and group sizes prior to submitting an end of term report. 

The following Self-Help guides will help you to set up and complete other College teaching from setting up the Teaching Arrangement to completing a report: 

  • Add a college teaching arrangement for a term via the teaching arrangement page/ Add a college teaching arrangement for a term via the teaching unit page 

  • Manage Hours for a Not Edited Academic Report (Tutor) 

  • Complete a College Revision report/Complete a Project Supervision report

  • Complete a College Class/ tutorial report

  • Batch edit  

OxCort Task TMS Task Self-Help Guide / Where to Find
View or Process Tutorial Reports > Edit  Fill out an academic report for one student 

Navigation path: 

  • Click Teaching > My Academic Reports 

Self-Help Guides: 

  • Complete a College Collection report

  • Complete a College Revision report

  • Complete a Project Supervision report

  • Complete a College Tutorial/Class report 

OxCort Task TMS Task Self-Help Guide / Where to Find
View or process tutorial reports > Edit (select multiple then edit)  Fill out academic reports for all students in a teaching group (Manage Hours first) 

Navigation path: 

  • Teaching > Teaching Arrangements > Select Teaching Arrangement > Batch Edit 

Self-Help Guides: 

  • Manage Hours for a Teaching Group Report
  • Default Payment Claim
  • Batch Edit reports then if you haven’t already submitted 
  • Bulk Submit draft reports 
OxCort Task TMS Task Self-Help Guide / Where to Find
Mark report for attention of senior tutor  Flag a report for Senior Tutor’s attention 

This task is contained within: 

  • Complete a College Collection report
  • Complete a College Revision report
  • Complete a Project Supervision report
  • Complete a College Tutorial/Class report 
OxCort Task TMS Task Self-Help Guide / Where to Find
New in TMS for Tutors  Run my stint report 

Navigation: 

  • Click Payments > My Stint Report 

Self-Help Guide: 

  • Produce a stint report 

OxCort Task TMS Task Self-Help Guide / Where to Find
New in TMS for Tutors (previously done by Office role)  Run my payment statement 

Self-Help Guide:

  • Produce a My Payment statement 
Tutor Guides
TMS User Role Document Name  Version Date
Organising Tutors Information Guide (PDF) 2.0 17 Feb 2023
Tutors Information Guide (PDF) 2.0 17 Feb 2023
  Tutor Guide for Completing and Submitting Academic Reports in TMS (PDF)  1.0 14 Nov 2022
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Below are a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) asked by Tutors. 

Other TMS FAQs

General TMS questions for tutors

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If you think you haven't been given access to TMS, you should speak to your College Office in the first instance. If you think you're having problems with your SSO, please speak to your local IT support.

No, there isn't a spell checker in TMS. If you need to spell-check your content, you can copy and paste it into another word processing software such as Word, check the spelling there, and copy and paste it back. But be careful to ensure you put the correct piece of content back into TMS.

You might want to consider installing a browser extension such as “Microsoft Editor: Spelling & Grammar Checker” in Chrome.

Tutor profile

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It depends on who is paying for the teaching you are doing. If you are paid directly, then you don’t need an additional profile for that college. 

Setting up teaching in TMS using Teaching Arrangements

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This will be determined locally by your college. Office and Tutors and Organising Tutors all have permissions to create them, so it depends on your local process who actually creates them. If you haven’t heard from your Organising Tutor and/or College or Department, then you should liaise with them directly rather than assume it is your responsibility. 

It could be because your department/faculty or college has not authorised you in TMS to teach or perhaps that authorisation has expired. In either case, you could contact your college or department office.

 

It's a local thing to be agreed at college level. Tutors have the permissions but can only add themselves, Office and Organising Tutors can add any tutors to it. 

This is a matter for colleges to decide, but the default payment rate is usually different depending on how many students you're teaching and this takes into account time taken for grading essays. 

You are right. TMS doesn’t need to know which students were in each group, only what the group size was and how many hours you interacted with each group. So, just like your first example, if you’ve taught 8 students in 4 pairs for 1 hour over 5 weeks then you would reflect this with one column: 

Hours = 5, group size = 2, students = all  

There is no need to create a column for each student pairing and then add the hours in, but the functionality does exist for you to create additional columns should you teach one group extra hours or maybe even combine two pairs for a group size of 4 for one session, perhaps. 

In that situation you would create: 

  • Column 1 – hours = 4, group size = 2, students = all 

  • Column 2 – hours = 1, group size = 2, students = a, b, c, d 

  • Column 3 – hours = 1, group size = 4, students = e, f, g, h 

TMS knows that you’ve taught every student for 5 hours, you’ve just combined them in a different way. 

Further examples are listed in the TMS Information Guide for Tutors (available from the Quick Start Guide for Tutors web page). 

 

There is no difference for Visiting students. You can add them to teaching arrangements and templates by filtering on the relevant Programme of Study.

Using templates

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If you are setting up college teaching then using a template will help you easily re-create the Teaching Arrangement for the following term or year. This will save you time if you teach the same subjects each year, and it is possible to identify the students involved using the available criteria (e.g. College, Programme of Study, Year(s) of Study).

Teaching in multiple colleges and departments

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There is one single tutor role which authorises you to teach for any department or college. You have a Tutor profile, with a default tutor category and default payment method that you can set, but each Org Unit can create a teaching profile for the same tutor which may have different default settings. You will get all reports from all colleges in one view in TMS, it won’t distinguish between colleges, but if you go into the reports screen and filter by various methods you can see the different reports. 

Submitting Academic Reports in TMS

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It's up to College Offices when they need reports submitting, so they will let you know when that is.

Note:  If the submit button is grey and you cannot submit your report, check that you’ve written and saved an end of term report, and completed all mandatory fields. Then check that you have saved both parts of the payment claim (Payment Method and Payment Rates). For College teaching, also ensure Bulk Hours (Manage Hours) has been completed before attempting to add a payment claim.

Check that you have allocated students to the teaching arrangement. In addition, check there aren't any extra filters applied when looking at the teaching arrangement. If there are still issues, contact the Student Systems Support Centre.

Payment claims

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Payments are processed along with reports, by the college or department office. Some colleges pay monthly and some pay termly, so you would need to check with your college. 

For college managed teaching you complete a payment claim for each student and submit it with the end of term report. Both the end of term report and payment claim can be completed using the Batch Edit screen. 

Check the date you're submitting for: if you try and submit teaching for Trinity Term 2021 or earlier, then this will be rejected by TMS, since it's from before the system went live. If you still need to submit teaching for Trinity Term 2021 or earlier, then you will need to submit this directly to your College Office. If this isn't the reason you can't find the payment rate, then please contact Student Systems.

Department-organised session-based teaching

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The difference relates to who processes the reports and payment claims. For example, payment claims related to College teaching arrangements are reviewed and processed by the student’s college. Tutors, Organising Tutors and College Office staff can all create College teaching arrangements. Payment claims related to Department teaching arrangements are reviewed and processed by the department (Office staff) that created the teaching arrangement. 

This is down to what you agree with your faculty and what they expect from the tutor, so it would be worth checking with them. For the report, only ‘attendance’ is mandatory. 

Medical Sciences

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If tutorials haven't been booked by students they don't need to reported as a college's contribution to subject teaching. Offering the tutorials gives the students from that college credits in the booking system. Only tutorials that are booked and take place need to be reported/claimed for on TMS. 

The department office will upload the tutorials (Teaching Arrangements) on a weekly basis, so tutors just need to log on to TMS to complete the report and payment claim. 

Joint Schools

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TMS holds the specialism that the student is studying, so it is possible to select students by their subject-specific programme of study e.g. BA European and Middle Eastern Languages (FRE and ARA). 

Known Issues

The current and resolved known issues in the system, along with updates on these items, are listed on under TMS Known Issues

All student systems available

Please also see the Systems Availability page for details of the status of each system. For scheduled downtime please see the Notices page for more information.

**Please note that the Student Systems Support Centre (SSSC) will be closed over the Easter break from 3pm Wednesday 27th March to 8.30am on Tuesday 2nd April. We will also be operating with limited staff cover until Monday 15th April. If you are unable to contact us by phone over this period please send an email and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.**

 

Contact us


Student Systems

student.systems@admin.ox.ac.uk
01865 (2)84848

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