By Cassidey Kavathas, Contributing Writer
Tutoring, like many other St. Bonaventure University functions, has been forced online due to the COVID-19 crisis. However, the Student Success Center is up to the challenge of helping students remotely this semester.
All tutoring for the fall semester will be done online or through Zoom.
“We do have some tutoring guidelines in place and zoom tips and tricks for the tutors,” said Kathy Wysocki, the tutoring coordinator at the university.
With the experience of tutoring last year through Zoom when campus was forced to close, the Student Success Center, located on the first floor of Plassmann Hall, is now more prepared to help students throughout the fall semester.
“We have invited back tutors from last semester,” said Wysocki. “They tutored through Zoom after COVID-19 hit us.”
With tutoring online, there are more unique opportunities such as tutors can now tutor outside of the normal Learning Center hours. This is a distinct opportunity for tutors and tutees alike as it allows for more flexibility in scheduling.
“Now [tutors] can have their availability anytime they would like, they can tutor on weekends if they so desire or later in the evening,” said Wysocki.
This new availability could help students balancing academics, sports and extracurriculars during this semester.
“I can get a paper sent to me asynchronously and it’s 8 o’clock, I just finished dinner,” senior English and professional & creative writing double major and writing lab tutor Victoria Wangler said. “I open their paper and take half an hour to go through the whole thing and then email it back to them.”
The Writing Lab is offering students the ability to work either asynchronous or synchronous. Students can email their paper to their tutor and receive feedback as edits on the paper, or can set up a Zoom meeting with their tutor to go over the material in more depth.
“I prefer asynchronous because it’s more flexible for me and for them,” Wangler said.
The Writing Lab is also more prepared for online tutoring this year compared to when tutoring was forced online last year.
“When we had to go online in March, Dr. Colton would send out papers to tutors and we would look at them on our own time and send them back,” Wangler said.
The Student Success Center is also using the program Retain for requesting a tutor. Retain is an online scheduling software. This program should make it easier for students to find available tutors or Supplemental Instructional sessions.
“They definitely worked out the bugs with Retain this year, I honestly think it’s a much cleaner process,” Wangler said.
The Student Success Center has also been working with Accessibility Services and Accommodations to accommodate students who have a hard time learning online.
“If a student had any request like they thought of something that would be helpful, we would do everything to try and help them,” said Sarah Barnard, the assistant director of the Student Success Center.
Other services offered by the Student Success Center will also be moved online as well.
“Some meetings like academic counselling or Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program one-on-one meetings will be moved online… Typically for freshmen, we will do a GPA 911 or a workshop for registering for classes – those will be done virtually,” said Barnard.
Overall, the Student Success Center is hopeful for in-person tutoring in the spring semester if safe to do so.
“If there is a change where we could go to in-person tutoring, we would love to have in-person tutoring back here,” said Wysocki.
The staff here are committed to providing students with the best possible resources. The Student Success Center has adapted to combat the COVID-19 crisis.
“Even though things are virtual, I hope that does not deter students from getting a tutor, and I would love every single student on campus to use the Student Success Center,” said Barnard.
