Student Learning Support (SLS) Experience
Ryerson University has enabled students to better themselves further academically through this program which can provide assistance in a learning environment towards something like math, writing, studying skills, and other academic accommodations. This program is funded by students through our tuition and is essentially free of service to us with a limited appointed time slot, located on the 4th Floor of the SLC building.
I went sometime ago and experienced their Writing Support team and their staff, I spoke with someone who had an academic background in Journalism and she was fairly experienced with writing techniques, transitions, and even any syntax/grammatical errors in my own writing. She furthermore provided me with a couple of extra ideas and citation sheets to further clarify my issue with writing an essay.
My experience with SLS has been okay so far, even better recently as of this semester because there was a seminar for writing techniques and how we academically should evolve from old methods instead of throwing them all out the window, which in fact, did compliment with most student’s perspectives on writing that day. The writing consultant was Emma Dunn, she used Powerpoint to help facilitate the learning process although, it may have been a bit bland in the sense that students were not able to interact directly with the material but instead, bank the information and regurgitate it later when they are attempting to write an academic essay.
I would’ve suggested that students should’ve been challenged through a collaborative classroom website like Top Hat or even KaHoot to reinforce the ideas right away, rather than let the knowledge itself just slip and be forgotten. Another suggestion could be that, the writing consultant could’ve used like a SmartBoard or something to draw or highlight important points because realistically, our attention spans have shortened significantly since our reliance on technology is profound, it is prevalent that it is difficult to focus sometimes, and with that thought in mind, it is imperative that students be able to process the information they are given and actually understand it instead of purely just memorization.
It was very helpful to most 1st year students that were unfamiliar with an academic style based writing that is required in post secondary institutions or that were strictly used to the “hamburger model” from which they have been adapted from since high school.
My experience with SLS concludes with me suggesting that to ANY 1st year students or anyone that is academically struggling or even out of curiosity, to take advantage of it because it is actually pretty helpful and it also allows you to collaborate with other students that may face the same issues as yourself in an academic setting and also, enables you to share and expand your own personal network and ideas with each other.
