ASC Tutoring Policies

ASC Tutoring is committed to assisting all Brockport students learn and achieve academic success.

In order for ASC Tutoring to provide optimal assistance, it is important for us to have a set of polices that students understand and follow. This page serves to make these policies explicit as well as explain the rationale behind them. If you have any questions about these policies, please do not hesitate to call us at (585) 395-2293. Thank you for your understanding.

How to Start a Remote Tutoring Appointment

Your tutor will reach out to you through Microsoft Teams at the time of your scheduled appointment. You must log into MS Teams using your Brockport ID shortly before the start of your appointment. Sign in to the Teams web app or download the desktop app. If using the web app, please make sure you are using Google Chrome as your browser.

Appointment Attendance Policy

When you make an appointment with a tutor, you have made a firm commitment to your academic development as well as to the tutor. The tutor schedules his/her day around the appointment and also makes the commitment to attend and to be punctual. Everyone’s time is valuable, so we expect that you will honor your appointments. Listed below are the attendance offenses and their penalties.

  • Skipped appointment - 2 strikes
  • More than 15 minutes late without notifying tutor or ASC staff. (Tutor is not required to wait beyond 15 minutes.) - 2 strikes
  • Cancelling appointment less than an hour before the appointment - 2 strikes
  • Cancelling less than 12 hours before the appointment - 1 strike
  • No Penalty for cancelling 12 or more hours prior to appointment - 0 strikes

If you accumulate 3 strikes or more in a given semester, then you will lose your privilege to receive tutoring by appointment for the remainder of the semester. If you made your appointment through EagleSUCCESS, you may cancel your appointment in EagleSUCCESS. If you need to cancel less than 24 hours before your scheduled appointment please email asctutoring@brockport.edu or call us at (585) 395-2293 (leave a message if no one answers).

We encourage you to plan your time carefully and respect other’s time as well. If you feel as though you need help with time management, then you may wish to attend one of our time management workshops or view our study skills DVD on time management.

Appointment Limit Policy

ASC Tutoring limits the amount of one-on-one time that a student can schedule with a tutor for a particular class to 3 hours/week. Also, we prohibit students from working with a tutor for more than 1 hour/day. The Center serves a vast number of students and we need to set these limits to help ensure that we meet this large demand. There is, however, no limit to the amount of time that students can spend with tutors for open/group tutoring.

Writing Lab Policy

All writing tutoring must take place in The Writing Lab (Room 181). The Writing Lab is the area within ASC Tutoring that is most conducive to writing tutoring.

Principles of Tutoring in Writing

  1. The writing assistance available for students is an educational process. Tutors use instruction on writing fundamentals oriented toward helping the student identify patterns of errors in his/her writing and learn how to correct them in the revision process.
  2. In a tutorial session, a tutor would typically assist the student with revising several pages of a paper or thesis with the student and then ask the student to revise the remaining pages independently, correcting the errors similar to those discussed in the tutorial session.
  3. The student is required to be actively engaged in improving his/her ability to recognize and correct errors in written work.
  4. The writing assistance available for graduate students working on theses or synthesis papers is the same as the assistance for undergraduate students working on any other writing assignment.
  5. It is important for students to understand that the tutorial work on their papers and theses is not the same as “editing” or “proofreading” to comprehensively identify and correct all the errors in a manuscript.

Tutorial Appointments

  1. Appointments should be made well in advance of due dates for submission of written work to the course instructor. The availability of tutorial appointments is on a first come/first served basis.
  2. Students receiving help with writing must be sensitive to the tutors’ need to work with many students and to follow the instructional pedagogy; therefore, number of sessions/day, number of sessions/week, and number of total sessions/assignment are limited.
  3. Students may make a maximum of one appointment per day, and may have a maximum of three appointments/week. The time limit for any one session is fifty-five minutes (the tutor needs 5 minutes to complete his/her notes).
  4. Tutoring for a single assignment, including a thesis (with multiple chapters) or a synthesis paper, will usually not exceed three appointments. In cases of extraordinary need, given that the student has demonstrated active engagement in the learning process, the Director can authorize additional sessions.

It is important to note that tutoring does not guarantee a high grade on a written assignment. Grading student work is the responsibility of course instructors and thesis advisors. The tutor’s responsibility is to identify patterns of errors in the written work and to suggest strategies for the student to use in identifying and correcting similar errors independently.