By Malika Kaloo
UNIVERSITY CITY, SHARJAH – The American University of Sharjah’s Business Learning Center offers crucial help to first- and second-year School of Business Administration students, BLC tutor Asma Dildar said in a March 17 interview.
The center is especially important for students struggling in introductory courses, she added.
“BLC plays a vital role in helping students transition from high school to university as they have this external help which they can go to in case they face difficulty in understanding core concepts in class,” Dildar said during a podcast done for the Department of Mass Communication’s MCM Media Hub.
She said that the number of tutoring sessions increases during midterm seasons, which indicates that students find BLC helpful.
“BLC provides supplementary one-on-one tutoring sessions for students. The way it works is that a student who needs tutoring has to book a session in time slots given and then the tutor teaches them via Zoom or Google link,” she said.
Dildar added that junior and senior year students with high grades are chosen as tutors and they teach courses relevant to their major.
“I struggled with some of the courses like Finance 201, Accounting 201, Economics 201 but fortunately I had good professors. But if I could go back in time, I would definitely go to BLC because at that time I didn’t know about it,” said Abdolrahman Zaminpaima, a senior year finance student, in a separate interview.
He added that all introductory courses in finance and economics need BLC because students often struggle with these.
“I feel major courses should also be taught at BLC,” said Zaminpaima. “This semester I am taking Finance 440 which is the most intense course of my major and tutoring would have made it easier.”
Abdul Hadi Han, a senior year management student, said that students in the first two years at the university should consider BLC in order to develop a better understanding of their courses and get good grades. “Sophomores and freshmen must take advantage of this resource, especially for difficult courses,” he said.
“Courses like enterprise resource planning and project management should also be taught at BLC as they utilize software that takes a long time to grasp,” he added.
Sana Shtaiwi, a first-year student who frequently books tutoring sessions, said that she learned about BLC through emails sent by SBA. “I have taken tutoring sessions for ECO (Economics) 202,” she said. “It was very helpful. I would definitely recommend all freshmen to avail this opportunity.”
Students interested in taking tutoring sessions at BLC can book an appointment using the link https://acg-webhost-05.aus.edu/booked
