Centre for Academic Success - student support
Workshops and tutorials
Within the Centre, our tutors can run workshops and tutorials on a variety of topics, including:
- Academic essay and report writing
- English
- Referencing
- Dissertations
- Presentation skills
- Maths and statistics
- Computing and programming
- Project management
- Study skills
See everything our tutors support
Read more:
Tutorials need to be booked online.
Tutorials are held on most week days at the City Centre campus or online.
Tutorials can be booked up to two weeks in advance - don't wait until the last minute before trying to book a tutorial.
Don't forget: it is possible that the information you are seeking is already in one of our study guides and/or referencing guides; or it may be included in our workshops or general resources.
Tutorial guidelines
For each topic of tutorial, you can only book one appointment per week (pending availability).
Tutorials slots normally last for 30 minutes. For some technical subjects you may be allowed to book a 60 miute appointment.
If you cannot attend your tutorial: please log in again to the tutorial system, click on your booked tutorial and complete the cancellation form that will appear. Failing this, please email us at success@bcu.ac.uk.
If you do not let us know and miss an appointment, a record will be kept. Repeated failure to attend may affect your ability to book future appointments.
If you want to discuss a written assignment, please print out or send your tutor your work before you come for the tutorial. We recommend that you bring anything from your first draft/ideas to your final copy. Just remember - you need to know which parts of your work you want to focus on and ask questions about in the tutorial. For technical tutorials, please bring your question or data set.
If you book a technical tutorial, please also email details of what you need advice on to the tutor beforehand, if possible.
Bookings are normally one to one but you can bring a maximum of two friends (or classmates) with you to your tutorial.
What we can cover in the tutorials:
Look at part of your work and make suggestions on, for example, how to improve your academic writing style.
Advise you how to structure your work, use sources and reference correctly.
Give advice on reading techniques, research methods, critical analysis, statistical analysis, etc.
Look at your data and make suggestions about how you could analyse it, and show you a trial analysis so that you learn how to do it for yourself.
What we can't do with you in a tutorial:
Proof-read or edit your work for you.
Comment on the subject matter or explain your topic to you.
Make decisions for you about your data analysis or do your data analysis for you.
Using the online booking system
On the booking page, press Student sign in and then Sign in.
If this is your first time logging in, you may need to answer a few questions before you can access the system. These will mostly be about how often you would like the system to be able to contact you.
You should now be on the homepage. On the top banner menus, you will be able to press Book and then Appointment.
Next you should choose the subject you would like to make an appointment for. Select View appointments to see the availability for this subject.
You will see all available appointments, along with their date, time, the name of the tutor, the possible locations of the appointment (online only, or on-campus or online), and whether this appointment is available to be booked. If you only want to see appointments that haven't been booked, there is a toggle for Show only available appointments that you can select. Once you have chosen your slot, click Book.
Fill out the booking form that pops up, answering all the questions to the best of your availability. Pay close attention to the Appointment Method question. If the location of your tutorial is Online Only, an On-Campus Tutorial will not be possible, so don't select this! You will also be given the opportunity to add notes about what you want to discuss in the tutorial, and upload any relevant files or work. The more you add here, the better prepared our tutors will be to discuss this with you in your appointment, so make the most of this. Once you have finished, make sure you select Book Appointment at the bottom of the form.
Once you have done this, you should see a confirmation screen that this appointment has been booked. You should also receive an email confirming this. If you have booked an On-Campus Tutorial, all you need to do is come to the location listed at the time and date that you have booked. If you have booked an Email Tutorial, and haven't included all of your questions in the form, you should contact your tutor by email as soon as you can. If you have booked a Video Tutorial via MS Teams, your tutor will send out a meeting invitation for you before your appointment, so make sure to check your student email!
If you have any problems please contact us by email: success@bcu.ac.uk.