Student community: communication and support guidelines

It is important to us that you enjoy your learning journey with the School of Natural Skincare and that you feel supported during your studies. These guidelines have been created for you, the student, so you know what support you can expect from the School and how to get in touch with us, as well as how to connect with and seek or offer support amongst your fellow students.

The three channels of support we offer are:

Technical, administrative and pastoral assistance provided by our customer service and student experience teams.
Peer support provided in our student and graduate community Facebook groups.
Tutor support from qualified, professional cosmetic scientists in our Tutor Q&A forums (hosted within our online classroom) for the duration of your course enrollment.

By enrolling on a course or joining a Facebook group, you are agreeing to abide by these guidelines.

1. Technical, administrative and pastoral assistance

Please contact us by email at hello@schoolofnaturalskincare.com about any of the issues listed below. This is the fastest way to get these issues resolved. A member of our team checks emails each business day (Monday to Friday, excluding UK public holidays).

Technical issues with accessing the course materials or with logging into the online classroom.
Your assignments.
Renewing your course access.
Issues that are affecting your experience of studying with us.
Sharing any suggestions or praise for the courses.
Sharing any concerns, complaints or dissatisfaction. We will work with you to resolve any issues as quickly as we can.
Asking for advice about the best course of study for you or asking questions related to taking an additional course.
We also love to hear about your successes! If you launch a website or have products stocked by a store, etc, we’d love to hear about it.

Please note that tutor support by email is not included in your enrollment fee. Tutor support is provided within our online classroom and you can find further details of this below.

2. Our student and graduate community Facebook groups

When you enroll on a course with us we will invite you to join the private student and graduate community Facebook group for the course you are taking. We really hope that you will love being a part of our student community on Facebook and that you find the contributions there valuable. These guidelines will help to make this community a great environment for all of us.

To keep the groups safe, enjoyable and useful spaces that support you during your studies, an admin from the School approves/disapproves all posts from members. We will only approve posts that fall within the criteria provided below. We may delete comments that we deem break these guidelines and we reserve the right to remove people from the group who repeatedly fail to follow the guidelines.

When joining our Facebook group, you will be asked to agree to our Facebook membership rules. If you ever need to revisit the rules, you will find them in the ‘About’ section of our Facebook group. Please note that you will need to agree to the rules to be admitted to the group.

The purpose of the community:

A place for peer-to-peer support; to ask questions of the whole group, related to the course materials.
To get to know other students.
To provide a source of inspiration and encouragement.
To share any formulation experiments you have conducted, if you wish.
To share achievements and wins.

Peer-to-peer support:

For peer-to-peer support you can post a question in the group and ask your fellow students for help. Please do not tag School of Natural Skincare team members in these posts. The purpose of the Facebook group is to reach out and discuss topics with other students and graduates, rather than communicating with the School.
We encourage students to help each other – there is a wealth of knowledge in the group! If you have experience or knowledge to contribute and can help another student, please do so. Please note: Opinions shared are that of the individual and not the School.

The community is not for:

Tutor support. This is provided within our online classroom (more details about how to access this are below).
Requesting help/information about your assignments from the School.
Excessive promotion of your products or brand.
One-to-one support from the School.
Voicing any complaints or dissatisfaction. If you need to share something of this nature with us you must do this by email so that we can resolve it in the most efficient manner. This also helps to keep the community a positive place.
Technical support. If you require technical support with accessing the course materials, please email us at hello@schoolofnaturalskincare.com

3. Tutor Support

Our courses are designed as independent self-study courses, which will take you through the process of gaining knowledge and practical skills in a step-by-step manner. However, we know how important it is to have support when you are learning, especially on a self-study course and we really want you to have somewhere where you can get reliable responses to your questions, as efficiently as possible.

Within the online classroom for each course you study with us, you will find a Tutor Q&A forum. This is where you can go to ask specific questions relating to your studies. We are very proud to have a team of qualified, experienced, professional cosmetic scientists supporting our students. They are here to help you with questions or doubts about ingredients, formulas, methods and guidelines pertaining to your specific course.

Your questions will either be answered by a tutor or by one of the School’s support staff, usually within two business days. Occasionally there may be a delay in the answering of questions.

Tutor Q&A schedule

We invite questions from students on the following days. You can find the specific timings within the Tutor Q&A forum. You may ask up to two questions in each Q&A.

Certificate in Making Natural Skincare Products: Monday

Diploma in Natural Skincare Formulation: Sunday and Wednesday

Diploma in Natural Haircare Formulation: Monday

Advanced Certificate in High-Performance Serum Formulation: Sunday

Scope of support

Our tutors are professional cosmetic scientists who will answer questions that fall within the scope of the course you are taking. They will answer questions related to ingredients, formulas, product types, guidelines and methods covered within the curriculum of the course you are enrolled in. This means they will not provide support for questions that are beyond the scope of the course you are enrolled in, for example questions about a more advanced product or ingredient, or a topic that is not covered in the course materials.

Tutors will provide troubleshooting advice if you are experiencing difficulty with a formula you are working on.

Topics that are outside the scope of the Tutor Q&A forum (and will therefore not be answered):

Creating or rewriting formulations on your behalf.
Advice on legal matters such as regulations and legislation.
Detailed feedback on, or an assessment of, your formulations. At the end of our Diploma and Advanced Certificate courses you have the opportunity to submit three formulations to us as part of your assignments. These are assessed by our cosmetic scientists who will provide you with feedback on them.

There will be times when you will need to find an answer yourself, for example by contacting a supplier, a safety assessor or conducting some experiments. If your question can be answered by reading the course materials, the tutors will signpost you to the relevant module or lesson within your course. If you are still struggling with a particular ingredient, concept, etc. and have done your best to research this yourself, do come back to us and of course we will do our best to help.

Extent of support

We strive to give all of our students fair access to support and typically we can answer up to two questions from each student on each Q&A post. If we deem that you have exceeded the amount of support you are entitled to we will contact you to discuss this.

Extensive, personalized or one-to-one tutor support is not included with your enrollment and should not be expected. The amount of support we offer is entirely at our discretion. We may limit the number of questions we answer each week or change the frequency of support. Tutors may select which questions to answer at their discretion.

Resources available to you

The majority of questions can be answered using these resources:

The course materials. The content is extensive and you will be able to find the answers to many questions within the course. You can always ask your fellow students in the Facebook group if you are not sure where to look.
Your suppliers. Specific questions about ingredients or equipment are often most appropriate to direct towards the suppliers themselves.
Course FAQ files located in the Tutor Q&A forum. Please visit the FAQ section in the Q&A forum, where we have compiled the most frequently asked questions and answers for you.
The search function and tags function within Facebook. You can search in the Facebook group for key words to bring up previous discussions. The tags function allows you to bring up all posts on a particular topic.
Yourself! There will be many times that you will need to do your own research or experimentation. In order to become a confident and knowledgeable skincare formulator you’ll need to try formulations out for yourself. We know it can feel daunting sometimes, but in formulating it really is often a case of ‘practice makes perfect’.

It is so important to us that you enjoy your learning journey with the School of Natural Skincare and that you feel supported during your studies. It is true that in order to provide our students with a fair service, we are required to set boundaries and guidelines around support. However, if you are really struggling or need to clarify something to do with your studies, we would always much rather you got in touch. Our customer service team and student experience team can be reached at hello@schoolofnaturalskincare.com and they are always happy to help.