Successful study means taking advantage of all opportunities and using all available resources in the toolbox.
A key support tool offered to students of eCampus NZ, to further assist with achieving goals and success in learning, is access to Smarthinking. This online tutoring system is available 24 -7, enabling an eCampus NZ student to get the academic help they need, when they need it. But that’s not the only benefit of Smarthinking. One study of the impacts of Smarthinking has shown that access to this system increases a student’s chances of success by 18% and helps students achieve higher assessment grades.
So what exactly is on offer through this programme?
Smarthinking provides students with some key benefits including the ability to:
- Immediately connect and interact with a live tutor
- Schedule a personal session with a tutor of choice
- Submit a question and receive a reply from a tutor and
- Submit a paper for a tutor to review.
Smarthinking is an important additional resource which complements the support available from the eCampus NZ facilitator and learning adviser assigned to students in each eCampus course.
Smarthinking tutors are experienced educators who provide valuable independent guidance to students and can assist them to achieve their goal of successful course completion. In one eCampus NZ course, the facilitator included exercises for students where they were required to seek feedback directly from Smarthinking tutor experts. This interaction and alternative assistance option encouraged the students to take responsibility for their own learning and to explore other avenues of support. The experience that these students had was so positive that other students were encouraged to take advantage of the service offered.
There are also examples of students using Smarthinking to provide additional feedback on draft papers that have a high course weighting. In these situations students want to ensure that the final work submitted is as good as it can be. Smarthinking tutors can provide a second pair of eyes and an alternative perspective on final report submissions.
Let’s face it any tools that can help with better grades have to be embraced.