Student Learning Commons: Information for instructors

We welcome your questions and comments as well as opportunities to collaborate with you in supporting student learning both within and beyond the classroom.

Bring the SLC into your classes 

The Student Learning Commons offers many resources that you can use in your classes and/or tutorials. Read on to learn more!

Download an infographic of the information on this webpage.

The infographic is printer-friendly and hyperlinked to useful SLC webpages for ease of reference. It emphasizes ways to make use of the Student Learning Commons beyond our ever popular one-to-one, peer-led consultations

In-class & open enrollment workshops

SLC staff frequently develop and present workshops in lectures and tutorials. We focus on aspects of writing, academic skills, and language learning and work closely with the library instructional team, which provides library-research workshops. 

Would you like to request a workshop? Please complete this short request form.

We also appreciate instructor referrals to our "open enrollment workshops," which focus on many facets of writing, learning/studying, and English language learning. A full list of each semester's workshops is available here

Students can confirm participation in an SLC workshop by completing this record of participation form.

If you have questions about SLC workshops (in class or open enrollment), please contact Writing Services Coordinator Julia Lane at jhlane@sfu.ca

Referring students to the SLC

To inform your students about SLC services, please download and display this SLC slide for in-class promotion (you can also include it in your Canvas course). 

Offer bonus marks for students who attend SLC workshops and/or consultations or who submit papers to writeaway.ca. To learn more about the Write Away consortium and its approach to online, asynchronous writing tutor, read their Information for Instructors handout. 

Record of participation form

Download our Record of participation form so students can document their SLC workshop attendance.

Students are responsible to fill in the participation form and return it to their instructors.

Referral stickers

The SLC provides referral stickers to attach to students' work. For a supply of stickers in print, please email learning-commons@sfu.ca. If you'd like an electronic version, right-click to copy or save this image:

I encourage you to contact the Student Learning Commons  for: writing help; study/exam help

SLC Peer recruitment and stickers

SLC Peers are student volunteers who provide one-to-one learning, writing, and English conversation consultations.

If you know students who would make great SLC Peers, please encourage them to apply. You can use recruitment stickers for this purpose.

For a supply of stickers, please email learning-commons@sfu.ca. If you'd like an electronic version, right-click to copy or save this image:

Great work! I encourage you to volunteer as a Learning and Writing Peer Educator at the Student Learning Commons.

Write Away 

Refer your students to Write Away (writeaway.ca) to get feedback from expert writing tutors. Students can submit up to three drafts of the same paper for feedback. 

You can promote the Write Away service in your class using these Powerpoint slides

Media and handouts

The SLC has developed handouts about many aspects of academic writing, learning strategies, and English language learning. Please share these resources with your students, especially when they will support students to succeed in their assignments. You are also welcome to integrate resources and tools such as the Assignment Calculator and the Plagiarism Tutorial into your classes/assignments. 

Many instructors and TAs find it useful to share a “resource of the week” with their students.

Recorded webinars on a variety of writing and learning topics are also available to support your students and your teaching. Students who watch recorded webinars can submit a reflection form to the SLC to get Co-Curricular recognition.

Note: Students cannot receive Co-Curricular (CCR) credits for a workshop if the workshop is already being used to receive academic credit in a course.

Canvas modules & Academic Success Kits (A.S.K.)

Research Essay Essentials: Learning Modules 

Developed collaboratively by the SFU Library and Student Learning Commons (SLC), these research and writing support modules cover essential skills and strategies for writing and researching your academic essay including:

  • finding and evaluating sources,
  • summary writing and paraphrasing,
  • thesis and outline building,
  • and more! 

Each module takes about 5-10 minutes to complete, and includes quizzes to check your understanding along the way.

Academic Success Kits (A.S.K.’s) are our most popular  study and writing strategies and resources, essentialized down to bite-sized portions undergraduate students can easily access, combining text, video, and audio in a Canvas environment. Students can self-enroll at this link: https://canvas.sfu.ca/enroll/L6RGEC

To request these modules for your class, please contact us at learning-commons@sfu.ca

Supporting EAL students with the SLC 

The SLC offers a suite of English as an Additional Language (EAL) supports, including both individual and group learning opportunities. These include Neurolanguage Coaching, the Conversation Partners program, and English conversation workshops

If you have questions about EAL supports available through the SLC, please contact EAL Services Coordinator Dr. Timothy Mossman at tmossman@sfu.ca.

The SLC Blog

The Student Learning Commons publishes a blog to provide conversational, accessible, and timely information and resources.

The blog sometimes even features interactive content like quizzes that you can use to support students’ self-testing.

You can assign these blog posts as readings and even encourage students to write their own posts to be published on our blog.

Writing Contest

The Student Learning Commons would love to celebrate and showcase your students’ writing through our annual Writing Contest.

Please encourage students to submit their papers in the Fall semester (papers written in any semester in an academic year are eligible for submission).

Our Writing Contest Journal also serves as a database of strong undergraduate writing from recent SFU students.
Please feel free to use these papers as a teaching tool in your classes. 

Information for instructors of graduate courses & graduate supervisors 

Support for graduate students and graduate courses is offered through the Research Commons. Instructors for graduate courses can request course integrated workshops by contacting Writing Services Coordinator Robyn Long at robyn_long@sfu.ca 

For more information about the supports available for graduate students and graduate instructors, visit the Research Commons Writing Services page. 

Information for Fraser International College instructors

The SLC is pleased to offer writing and learning support to FIC students in the form of customized workshops, general writing and learning workshops, and self-directed online resources. For more details about these services, see Student Learning Commons support for Fraser International College (FIC) instructors and students.