Policies and Procedures

The Academic Success Center is designed to provide individual consultations to students at Alfaisal University who seek assistance with learning a concept, completing an assignment, or preparing for an assessment in a supported class. The Center’s role is to help students succeed as independent writers and learners.

In order to ensure that we are able to serve our whole community fairly, we adhere to the following policies:

Appointments must be booked online through the Academic Success Center’s website.
Appointments are for a maximum of 60 minutes, and they can be booked any time a student consultant is available between 10:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Time slots are available in 30-minute increments.
A student may book up to TWO appointments per day (one hour total max) and up to FOUR appointments per week, with a maximum of FIFTEEN appointments per semester.
Students who do not show up for appointments 2 times in a semester will have their accounts automatically deactivated.
Students who know that they will miss an appointment should cancel it in the scheduling system as early as possible. Please note that, starting from 2 hours prior to an appointment, students will not be able to cancel, and their appointments will be considered no-shows.
Students should make every effort to arrive on time for face-to-face meetings and log in a couple of minutes early for online sessions. If a student is more than 10 minutes late for a consultation, the consultant is not obligated to keep the appointment and may mark the student as a no-show.
Students may email the consultant in advance to request a group tutoring session if multiple students are struggling with the same assignment. It is important to include the email addresses of all students who wish to attend the session so that the consultant can email them Zoom links and other materials. The names of all students attending will be noted on the client report form that the consultant completes after the session.

Our consultants will:

Ask questions to assess students’ current level of understanding
Ask questions that help students problem-solve
Ask questions designed to help students figure out what they are trying to say
Suggest strategies for an approach
Model strategies or methods (including modeling editing, proofreading, etc.)
Briefly review key concepts necessary for success
Explain or reinforce difficult material by breaking down difficult concepts
Suggest resources for further study

Because our goal is to empower students to become independent learners, our consultants will not:

Do any work for the student. This includes writing, revising, or editing any portion of a student’s paper or completing any part of an assignment for the student. Such action would be counterproductive by making the student more dependent on the Center and potentially dishonest by attempting to pass off the consultant’s work as the student’s work.
Teach new course material. The Center’s work is designed to support, rather than replace, the teaching happening in classrooms.
Go through an entire paper in one sitting (usually). Instead, consultants go through key pieces of writing assignments and provide strategies that students can apply on their own.