What is Peer Tutoring?
At any stage of your academic career, you may come across a bump in the road. Our peer tutors are here to help you get over it!
We are dedicated to helping all students and staff of any level and any faculty develop strategies to become more confident, critical and autonomous writers.
Peer tutors are also students in UL! We have tutors from undergraduate, masters, and PhD programmes.
They will guide you by pointing out patterns in your writing, asking questions, and offering strategies so that you can make the changes yourself.Tutors may challenge your ideas or arguments and talk them through with you. This helps you to clarify your thinking, strengthen your arguments.
We offer one-to-one, online or in-person sessions for 30 minutes/1 hour.
We are open Monday - Friday, from 10am - 1pm and 2pm - 4pm. Our location.
Book a session
Meet the Team
Our Peer Tutors can Help With:
- Developing your thesis statement
- Structuring your argument
- Writing critically
- Understanding a given rubric/brief
- Planning assignments
- Understanding feedback you have received
- Researching
- Grammar and formatting styles
- Avoiding plagiarism
Our Peer tutors do not:
- Proofread
- Judge you or your work! We are an open and friendly place!
- Pre grade your work
- Do the work for you
My name is [student], and I recently got my results and was awarded a first-class honour for my postgraduate diploma. I'm still in disbelief.I've used your service many times over the last two years and just wanted to show my appreciation for all the assistance. Your help really makes a difference and I wanted to say thank you!
I had come to terms with the fact that I would never reach my academic writing goals and had given up even trying. Your help enabled me to build the courage to push myself in my thinking and behaviour by seeking help and being open to feedback. With that I gained confidence and improved.
FAQs
How to Register for an Account
- To book a session, you must first have an account on our scheduling program.
- To register for an account, go to our schedule homepage.
- Select 'register for an account', fill in the required fields and 'create account'.
Note: Be sure to fill in both tick boxes on the form, including those in drop-down menus.
How to Book a Session
- Once you have an account registered on our booking system, you will see our booking page. You will see tutors' names, disciplines, and languages they speak. White squares indicate free slots. Click on the appointment of your choice.
Each tutor has been trained to work with students from any faculty. - Once you have selected your appointment, a booking form will appear. Fill out the details requested. You may book a 30-minute or hour-long session. There is the option of attending online or in-person. You can also attach any necessary files such as the work you have completed so far or an assignment rubric. The tutors will not look at this until the session.
- Click Create Appointment, and your slot will turn yellow now that it has been successfully booked.
How to Join an Online Session
- We advise you to join at least 5 minutes before your session.
- Log in with your WCOnline account.
- Click on the correct slot in the calendar.
- Click 'Start or join online consultation'.
- If you're having any issues, contact us. writingcentre@ul.ie or +353 (0)61 202581
How to Join the Waiting List
If there is a session time that you want, but is already booked, you can join the waiting list.
Log into the schedule and click the white clock icon on the left side of the screen, next to the date. Make sure to choose a tutor who is tutoring that day, and a time they are tutoring.
Our tutors only come to the Writing Centre at the times that they are scheduled for, so referencing a tutor who isn't listed on the schedule will mean that you won't get an alert email if a slot frees up.
We put a 'Drop-In' sign on the Centre door when a student does not arrive for their session. A 'Drop-In' sign means that a tutor is in the Centre and is available to speak to a student.
Cancelling an Session
- Select your session on the schedule page.
- Scroll to the bottom of your session information and select 'cancel appointment'.
A minimum of two hours' notice is required when cancelling sessions. Without this notice, the account will be deactivated.
This means that their booking privileges are revoked for the remainder of the semester.
If a session is cancelled on the day of, please contact the Centre so the slot can be given to another student.
Sessions can also be modified before the time.
Failing to Attend a Session
If a student doesn't show up for their appointment after ten minutes, they are marked as a 'no show'.
This means that their booking privileges are revoked for the remainder of the semester.
Users will also be marked as a 'no show' and have booking privileges revoked for cancelling without at least two hours' notice.
Booking privileges can be reinstated with fair reason.
If a student's booking privileges have been removed, they can still pop into the Writing Centre and avail of any sessions that were either not booked, cancelled or to which another student didn't show up.
Damien, Thank you very much in providing valuable input into the assignment! Grade went from B3 to A2, and I’ll take that as an overall win in this tough, uphill battle. For a 3000-word essay, we’ve used 65 references, which is almost half of what I have used during my PhD!
Things to keep in mind
- You are allowed a maximum of one session per week (30 minutes or one hour).
- Anytime a student is found to have booked more than one appointment at a time, the later appointment will be cancelled and the tutee will be notified by email immediately.
- You may attend as a group, as long as all ID numbers of attendees are included on the booking request.
- It's advised that students reflect on the session and complete any necessary work before making another appointment.
- Documents uploaded to appointments are not read ahead of time by the tutor.
- Do not contact our tutors outside of the tutoring time.
- If you have any questions or concerns, email us writingcentre@ul.ie
Natasha helped me on how to structure a short report, advised me on how to write a bibliography and overall helped me gain confidence, so when I sat down to write I wasn’t lost and finished rather quickly.
