Using student and tutor perspectives in the development of open tutoring

How do open learning tutors know if they are meeting their students’ needs? How do they know how to improve their tutoring performances? In this article, Paul Naylor, Head of Humanities at a Nottinghamshire Comprehensive School, Helen Cowie of the Division of Education at the University of Sheffield, and Keith Stevenson of the Melton Mowbray College of Further Education, provide an account of the methods and outcomes of the schemes of evaluation they have used over the last three years in tutoring an Open University social science course.