TMS Quick Start Guide for Tutors
The TMS guidance below is aimed at 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:
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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
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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)
Outlined below are a list of ‘How do I?’ activities that tutors might find useful for completing tasks in TMS.
OxCort Task | TMS Task |
Self-Help Guide/ Where to Find |
---|---|---|
Edit Profile | View and edit my tutor profile/payment details |
Navigation path:
Self Help Guides:
|
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:
Self-Help Guides:
|
OxCort Task | TMS Task | Self-Help Guide / Where to Find |
---|---|---|
Not applicable - New in TMS | Use the new teaching arrangement template |
Navigation path:
Self-Help Guides:
|
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:
Self-Help Guides:
|
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:
|
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:
|
OxCort Task | TMS Task | Self-Help Guide / Where to Find |
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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:
|
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:
Self-Help Guides:
|
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:
Self-Help Guides:
|
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:
|
OxCort Task | TMS Task | Self-Help Guide / Where to Find |
---|---|---|
New in TMS for Tutors | Run my stint report |
Navigation:
Self-Help Guide:
|
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:
|
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 |
Below are a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) asked by Tutors.
General TMS questions for tutors
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
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
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:
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Column 1 – hours = 4, group size = 2, students = all
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Column 2 – hours = 1, group size = 2, students = a, b, c, d
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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).
The current and resolved known issues in the system, along with updates on these items, are listed on under TMS Known Issues.
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Contact us
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student.systems@admin.ox.ac.uk
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