Resources for Personal Tutors

Information and advice for Personal Tutors and their tutees: counselling, careers, Euclid, and more.

An excellent place to start for finding further information on particular topics is the

• Informatics Personal Tutor Guide

put together by the Student Support Team.  It provides summaries of the topics as well as links to relevant pages within this set of Personal Tutor information pages, elsewhere within the School's intranet, and outside the School.

Iain Murray has for several years maintained for his own use of list of resources useful for him as a PT.   Much of this should now have been incorporated into the above-mentioned Personal Tutor Guide, but some PTs might still find this list of helpful.

• Iain Murray's Personal Tutor notes page

Below are a links to or copies of documents mostly provided from outside the School pages, perhaps from other parts of the University, external services, or colleagues'  personal pages. 

Navigating tutee EUCLID records

The resources in this section may assist Personal Tutors in navigating the administration of their tutees' records. 

• User Guide for notes/meetings PT software (EUCLID) - staff - Student Systems' documentation for using Euclid as a Personal Tutor
• Informatics EUCLID information - additional documentation from Informatics
• Accessing a schedule of adjustments explains how to read "scheduled adjustments" for your tutees, as provided by the Disability Service.
• Advice on writing online and confidentiality (91.69 KB PDF) - (somewhat old) University advice on how much to record on Euclid
• User Guide for notes/meetings PT software (EUCLID) - students Student Systems' documentation for students using MyEdStudent Support

Academic Advice

This section contains resources to help PTs and students with academic and curricular matters.

• Common outside courses for non-honours students - a page unofficially maintained by Iain Murray

• Institute of Academic Development (IAD) - academic and pastoral support

• Study skills support for students from the IAD

• Progression Guidance from Informatics for students who fail courses or don't meet an elevated progression hurdle

• College Academic Affairs site - mostly useful for Senior Tutors and Support Officers, but some PTs may want to consult it too

Careers Advice

• Careers Service support for Personal Tutors (general web pages)
• one-page guide for PTs:
  Careers Guide for PTs (Informatics) (100.09 KB PDF)
• Careers consultant for Informatics is Steve Norman, Steve.Norman@ed.ac.uk (51 1475)
• Note: contact details in the following are out of date - see above
  PT briefing - slides from Careers Service (726.02 KB PDF)

Pastoral Support

While providing pastoral support is a key element of the Personal Tutor role, PTs are not expected to go beyond their own competence, or to play the part of professional counselling or health services. This section provides guidance and information for those times when a friendly chat is not enough.

• The Informatics Student Support Team are a good first port of call for any student with a problem you can't deal with.  If they cannot sort out the problem directly, they will know where else to direct the student.
• The Advice Place run by the Student Association advise on health, finance, accommodation, and many other topics.
• Here to help - pdf (5MB) of a booklet distributed to students, listing (with gratuitous photos) many sources of advice
• Helping distressed students - the University's central guidance for staff dealing with students in distress
• Students with mental health issues - a collection of pages from the University with advice on recognizing mental health problems, and how to help. Includes:
• Supporting students with mental health issues once a diagnosis and adjustments are in place