If you’ve just scheduled your first tutoring appointment with the Academic Success Center or Writing Center, you might be wondering what you need to bring or how you can prepare for it. Depending on the type of session you scheduled — math, writing, science, business, or computers — you will want to bring certain items along. Below is a list of items, physical or digital, that you can prepare in advance. Enjoy these helpful tutoring session preparation tips!
1. Draft
For writing tutoring, you’ll want to bring a copy of your draft to the tutoring session, even if you’ve only completed a portion of the assignment. If you need some help getting started, you can still prepare a blank Word document so that you and your tutor can brainstorm or set up formatting. During the session, the tutor may guide you to make changes to the draft, or you and the tutor may leave comments on the draft to help you make changes later.
2. Attempted Work
In your math, science, business, and computer courses, it’s beneficial to attempt your assignments ahead of time. This way, you can use your tutoring session to focus on the problems you couldn’t solve; after all, our 45-minute sessions can go by quickly! Identifying the problem areas that you faced also helps tutors to guide the sessions, allowing them to develop sample problems that you can then apply to answer your homework questions, which gives you double the practice.
3. Assignment Instructions
Regardless of the type of course you’re in, it’s crucial to bring your instructions along so that the tutor knows how to best help you meet the assignment expectations. These instructions can be used like checklists during the session to see what requirements have or have not been fulfilled. It also gives you the opportunity to discuss certain requirements that you had questions about.
4. Textbook
You can bring your textbook to your tutoring session to have access to reading material or homework problems you weren’t sure about. To access your online book or Canvas during the session, you’ll need your Titan single sign-on username and password. If you’re in a writing class, you might want to bring your textbook along so that you and the tutor can cite it as one of your sources. We have plenty of YouTube videos and LibGuides to help you with that — and our tutors can also help with reading comprehension.
5. Professor Feedback
If you’ve received any professor feedback on past assignments that you feel will help the tutor to better understand the assignment requirements, feel free to bring it to the session. This feedback could be on your homework, test corrections, or papers in Canvas. Bringing this feedback will enable the tutor to focus the session around your areas of concern, helping you to prepare for your resubmission or any future assignments.
6. Specific Questions
Most likely, after exchanging greetings, the tutor will ask you what questions you have about your assignment or what they can help you with. It’s helpful to have a list of questions or problem areas prepared so that the tutor can guide the session around those areas and ensure you get the help you need. You can circle problems in your textbook, make a list on paper or on your phone, or even leave comments on your draft.
With these preparation tips, do you feel better prepared for your tutoring session? You’re welcome to bring items in addition to the ones listed here if you feel they’ll be beneficial. Know also that each Academic Success Center contains an abundance of resources beyond tutoring. Regardless of what course you’re enrolled in, those of us in the Academic Success Centers and Writing Centers are here to help you succeed, because “Success is our middle name!”
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