At the Academic Resource Center you can meet one-on-one with one of our learning consultants at any point during your undergraduate career at Duke.
You might meet with a learning consultant to:
- learn ways to improve your time management
- find strategies to reduce stress, get unstuck, and address roadblocks
- identify your learning preferences and how they apply to your courses
- learn how to approach the content in your courses
- enhance your learning experience
- tackle motivation challenges
You don't need to have a specific question or problem to meet with a learning consultant — just an interest in understanding how you can learn better and think smarter!
What to Expect
A learning consultation is a one-on-one meeting with a professional ARC staff member. The default length of a learning consultation is 45 minutes. Need more or less time? No problem! Let us know and we will work with you so you get the amount of time you need. We start by asking a few questions to learn more about you. We’ll talk about why you’re meeting with us, and identify what you want and how we can work with you to achieve that. Even if you aren’t sure, we know how to ask the questions that will help us both better understand and navigate what’s going on.
Topics we might discuss include:
- what you’re doing in your courses
- what your time looks like
- motivations
- challenges
- goals
- strategies to try
- resources
- awareness of new areas of learning
- tools to try out
- new perspectives, goals, and action steps
Want to meet with a different learning consultant? No problem! While it can be helpful to follow-up with the same consultant, there are a number of reasons you might want to meet with someone else, so feel free to schedule with any one of us.
What do I need to do before my meeting?
The main thing you need to do for your meeting is be willing to engage. Working with the ARC is a partnership — we want to listen and hear who you are, and how we can best facilitate your academic experience.
To get the most out of your meeting, it's useful to:
- have your course syllabi available
- have any materials/readings that might be challenging you
- think about what is working for you and what might not be working for you
If you are meeting in-person, you will check in on the second floor of the Academic Resource Center Building, 4 E. Campus Drive, behind Marketplace, where you will meet your Learning Consultant.
If you are meeting virtually, you will need to connect to the meeting via the Zoom Link that you received in your confirmation and reminder emails.
Meetings generally last 45 minutes, unless you have agreed on a different length with your learning consultant.
Making an Appointment
Appointments are scheduled online via Penji. Full instructions can be found on our Make an Appointment page, which will also include any current scheduling information or updates.
When you make an appointment, you will have the option to choose any available learning consultant, or select a specific learning consultant. All ARC Learning Consultants work across disciplines on a range of academic skills and strategies and will be able to work with you regardless of the topic or course. Consultants do not tutor for specific courses. Occasionally, we will refer a student to meet with a consultant with a particular area of expertise in order to work with the student to identify.
Regardless of who you meet with initially, you are always welcome to change to a different consultant. We want you to get the most out of your experience at the ARC and work with whoever you feel is the best fit for you.
You can make an appointment for a learning consultation here, or give us a call at 919-684-5917 if you have any questions.
