At Oral Roberts University, both the Math Learning Center and Academic Tutoring Center utilize Accudemia for scheduling in-person and virtual tutoring sessions.
Before using Accudemia, it wasn’t easy to communicate to students an exception to a tutor’s availability schedule. Now, it’s straightforward to make a change to a tutor’s schedule, either for a one-time exception or for the whole term. Students needing help always have access to the most up-to-date schedule so they can make appointments or come in for services at appropriate times without frustration.
And with recent changes, Accudemia has been very helpful as they’ve begun offering virtual tutoring appointments this year. Students can click a “Join Now” link and be automatically connected to their tutor without the need to share the Zoom ID information directly with students.
“Accudemia has helped us keep records of students’ attendance and duration at tutoring sessions,” says JayneAnn Harder. “This tracking data is helpful for classes that require students to attend tutoring for x-number of minutes a week.”
One way that they know of the center’s success is when it is well-utilized by students. Accudemia makes it possible for staff to track how many cumulative hours of support has been offered.
“The fact that it’s a web-based, centralized system for our tutoring schedule is beneficial,” says Harder. “Accudemia provides a platform that allows us to maintain dynamic tutoring schedules and to collect attendance and usage data of our tutoring schedules. The reporting features allow for continuous monitoring of usage, and provide data for strategic planning.”
With COVID-19 lockdowns, all of ORU’s tutoring was made virtual. Accudemia made it possible for ORU to keep the same scheduling platform while adding virtual services, such as “Virtual Tutoring by Zoom.” The Accudemia and Zoom integration makes it easy for students and tutors to connect without having to post Zoom meeting IDs publicly.
“Accudemia is a highly versatile product that our university uses in many different contexts. I recommend it to other Learning Center Directors for use in their tutoring centers,” says Harder.