Introduction

Welcome to GradesFirst, your home for staying connected with your advisors, tutors, and professors.  The various staffs at both UWF and GradesFirst hope you enjoy using this software and find it essential to helping you manage your daily student activities.  Within this application you will find a powerful combination of features that focus on helping UWF staff assist you so that you may achieve all of your collegiate goals.Among other things, GradesFirst allows students to

• Request and schedule appointments with advisors and tutors without having to contact or visit these offices
• Integrate Google Calendar with GradesFirst so that you can have all of your calendars in one place

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GradesFirst and Google Calendar

When you integrate your Google Calendar with GradesFirst, your tutors and advisors will be able to schedule appointments for you without your having to contact those offices.  Since some offices already require students to integrate their calendars and set their availability, you should save yourself some time and effort by reviewing both of the links below as soon as you can:

• Integrating GradesFirst with Google Calendar – Integrate the class schedule, tutoring appointments, and advising appointments that appear in GradesFirst with your Google Calendar.
• Integrating Google Calendar with GradesFirst – Integrate your personal Google Calendar with GradesFirst so that tutors, professors, and advisors can see when you're available and when you're busy.  They will not be able to see the details of the events that you created in Google Calendar.

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Advising Centers

One of the features of GradesFirst is to allow students to schedule and request appointments with their advisors, and to make sure that the process for scheduling and requesting appointments with one advisor or department is the same as the process for other advisors and departments.  As of August 2014, the following UWF advising centers and academic departments are the only ones using GradesFirst:

• First Year Advising Center (FYAC)
• Criminal Justice Advising Center

• • Scheduling an Advising Appointment with GradesFirst, for students

Please contact directly any advising centers not listed above.

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Tutoring Centers

Another feature of GradesFirst is to allow students to schedule and request appointments with their tutors, and to make sure that the process for scheduling and requesting appointments with a tutor from a particular UWF tutoring centers is the same as the process for tutors from other tutoring centers.  As of August 2014, the only UWF tutoring center that allows students to schedule and request appointments through GradesFirst is the Academic Center for Excellence, or the ACE Lab (formerly known as the UWF Learning Center).

• Scheduling a tutoring appointment using GradesFirst, for students
• Requesting a tutoring appointment using GradesFirst, for students
• Signing in and out of a kiosk, for students

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Changes to the ACE Lab

How the ACE Lab operated before the fall 2014 semester

Students wanting to receive help from the ACE Lab did not have to schedule appointments.  They could walk-in at any time to be served.  All the students had to do was read the tutoring schedule correctly and hope that they would be helped when they arrived.  

The tutors could work with more than one student at a time if the situation permits, and the students could work with a tutor for as long as that tutor was available.

How the ACE Lab will operate during the fall 2014 semester

Students wanting to receive help from the ACE Lab will have to make an appointment through GradesFirst.  Walk-ins may be accepted, but only if a tutor is available.

Unless otherwise noted, every appointment will be a one-on-one session with a tutor.

Unless otherwise noted, every appointment will last no longer than 45 minutes.

Rationale for the changes

1. Scheduling appointments will save you the frustration of being rejected at the door and will help the tutors better secure the resources you need, when you need them.
2. You would be less likely to misread the schedule posted on GradesFirst, than the one that was usually posted on the ACE Lab website.
3. Scheduling appointments will require you to schedule your time wisely and to come to the tutoring session prepared with specific questions and concerns.
4. Results from a number of studies suggest that students benefit more from individualized one-on-one tutoring sessions than from group sessions.

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Other UWF Tutoring Centers

There are two other UWF tutoring centers:  the Mathematics and Statistics Tutoring Lab and the Writing Lab.  Please contact these centers directly if you would like to receive help from them.

NOTE:  Some professors may require their students to visit specific UWF tutoring centers, so check with your professor to be sure you are visiting the correct tutoring service.

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Preparing for a Tutoring Session

1. Attend all class meetings.  Tutors are not responsible for teaching you concepts that your professors discuss in class; the tutors should only help you understand the materials.  So, the more you attend class, pay attention during class, and take sufficient notes, the more likely that the tutors will be able to help you.
2. Know your class assignments and your professor's instructions before attending your tutoring session.  Sometimes, not understanding the assignments and your professor's instructions can keep you from learning and from completing your work.  Discuss the assignments and the instructions with your professor to make sure you understand them.
3. Complete as much of the homework on your own as possible, and study as much of the material on your own as possible.  You will make the most of your time and the tutor's time if you read the text, review your class notes, and prepare your questions beforehand.
4. Bring the appropriate materials (textbooks, assignments, class notes, handouts, calculator, syllabus, etc.) to your tutoring session.
5. Have your questions already written down.  If you can, write down specifically what you are having issues with.  Writing these down will help you determine what you do and do not know, and will assist your tutor in helping you.
6. Do not wait until the last minute to realize that you need help.  Budget your time wisely.  Understand that having smaller study sessions over a longer period of time is much better than cramming for several hours before a test.
7. Be prepared to talk as much as, or even more than, your tutor!  The best way for you to learn the materials, and the best way for the tutors to make sure you are learning, is to have you use your words to explain the concepts being discussed.  Keep in mind that choosing words that accurately reflect what we're thinking is a difficult, but necessary process.
8. Understand that you are the one responsible for your grades, not the tutors, not the professors.  Professors instruct.  Tutors and other student support services assists.  But you are the one who is ultimately responsible for making sure you are prepared for your classes.  Do your best to make sure you are prepared.

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Preparing for a Paper Reading Appointment

1. Review the seven tips above.
2. Determine which tutoring center your professor prefers.  For class credit or extra credit, some professors require that their students visit the ACE Lab while other professors require the Writing Lab; and there are some who don't have a preference.  At any rate, the tutors at either tutoring center are just likely to be proficient in helping you with brainstorming and research techniques, thesis statements, paragraph development, logical progression, word choice, and formatting.
3. Consider scheduling a tutoring appointment with the ACE Lab if an ACE tutor specializes in the specific course that you need help in.  Writing a good paper includes having a strong understanding of the course materials.  Just as with any other communication medium, a good paper will communicate a clear, concise message to its audience (the professor) and will show that you (the author of the paper) know what you're talking about.  
4. Consider scheduling an appointment with the Writing Lab if you need help revising the grammar of your paper.  Yes, some people view grammar as a needless set of trivial rules that distract from the "real meaning" of a message.  And yes, some readers (including some professors and business managers) may forgive or overlook certain grammatical errors if the message and the logic that supports the message is otherwise on point.  But the fact remains–in a culturally diverse society like ours, a society that consists of many language dialects, learning and following the grammatical conventions of Standard American English is one of the best ways to communicate clearly and effectively with English speakers from different backgrounds.  To help you understand these conventions and create grammatically correct sentences, the Writing Lab tutors undergo continuous training throughout their employment.
5. Know that your tutor will give two basic types of suggestions:  one that aims to correct grammar and formatting mistakes, and one that aims to improve the paper's style.  Grammar and formatting are almost always consistent, but stylistic choices differ widely, depending on the tutor, the student, the professor, and the writing situation.
6. Regardless of the type of suggestion, understand that anything the tutor suggests regarding your paper is just that, a suggestion.  You have the right to accept or reject any and all suggestions that your tutor provides.

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