Make an appointment online using our online scheduler, then come to Mary Graydon, 3rd Floor, Suite 320 to meet with one of our peer tutors. Bring your assignment instructions and any work you have so far - we'll talk through what's working, what you can improve, and answer any specific questions you might have. Appointments are 30 minutes long. If you have a longer paper of five or more pages, or have a number of questions about it, we encourage you to book two 30-minute slots with the same tutor for an hour-long appointment.

Make an hour-long appointment through our online scheduler by booking two consecutive 30-minute slots. Bring any PowerPoint slide and content that you have completed. Our peer tutors will offer you great feedback and speaking tips to help you bring your team together to deliver a polished, professional presentation.

For those who can't make it to campus during tutoring hours, we also offer electronic commenting. Select "e-tutoring" on our online scheduling system, and attach your assignment. A peer tutor will comment on your work and return your paper to you within (time frame). But remember that to get maximum impact, we always encourage you to make an in-person appointment for the most productive session possible.

Does speaking in front of people make you nervous? You're not the only one! Our Audience Dog Program was developed to offer a relaxing, judgment-free environment where students can gain quality speaking practice. Email us at cbc@american.edu to make an appointment, then come to Mary Graydon, Suite 320 to practice with one of our amazing audience dogs!

• Communications skills are among the top skills annually that employers say they want in new hires. Content knowledge and a diploma are not enough. By embedding strong communications skills into your courses, students can't create a false divide between knowing their accounting principles and conveying those principles effectively on the job.
• Here are two of many testimonials from faculty that prove our value: International Business professor Bob Sicina, following an e-commenting project we did for his IBUS 300 class wrote: "The quality of the writing was substantially improved. I didn't have to sort my way through a raft of punctuation, grammar, and structure issues." Or this, from Marketing professor Cristel Russell, "My students in the semester-long, client-based project in MKTG 412 greatly benefited from the feedback you gave them on their final IMC presentations. The clients were hugely impressed by the professionalism of their presentations and final reports."

Please reach out to us for a personalized consultation! We’re teachers too, and know that time is at a premium when it comes to delivering and evaluating all of your course content. We’ll work with assignments you already have, suggesting added steps we can support such as peer review, non-graded KCBC feedback on drafts, and using rubrics to set clear writing expectations.

On the speaking side, we’ll come to your class with our peer tutors to coach your students in teams, making rehearsing both dynamic and generative. We can also work with you to require that your students make appointments outside of class for both speaking and writing.

Absolutely. It's so important to understand that simply assigning extra writing or speaking in a "W" (writing-focused) or "O" (oral presentations) class is not enough to truly build student skills in these areas. We can work with you to instruct, coach, and improve vital communications skills by embedding and practicing them in your course. Some examples might include adding short, low-stakes "news talks" or "one-minute briefs," asking that work take different forms for different audiences such as an internal memo or external client proposal rather than just "a paper," and asking student for an annotated bibliography so you can ensure the sources they're using to ground their recommendations are credible and sound.

We piloted our electronic-commenting approach with faculty last year, and the responses from faculty and students alike were overwhelmingly positive. In short, you’ll arrange for your students to submit their first drafts of an assignment electronically through Blackboard so that our peer tutors can comment with an eye to improving the final draft. We walk both you and your students through this very straightforward process on Blackboard, and establish your priorities for the assignment as our road map for helpful comments. Faculty time is freed up from first draft commenting, and the papers faculty receive in the end are better in every way, making grading easier. Students benefit from getting one-on-one attention on their writing that is completely aligned with their professor’s priorities.

We can, and we do. We'll meet with you ahead of time to understand what assignment you'd like us to support, or what context you'd like us to use. Maybe you assign short memos throughout the semester - how can we teach your students to prioritize, cite, and persuade in the memo format? Perhaps you require a team presentation and a team paper - we'll have tips on teamwork and accountability as well as ways to rehearse with visual data slides. Faculty invite us to speak more generally at the start of a semester about what business audiences expect: concise, clear, correct, and creative ideas. They'll have us discuss ways to more effectively present data with up-to-date data visualization concepts and tools. Importantly, we free up faculty time away from teaching writing to focus on underscoring its importance for their students to build a successful business career.