A presentation from the STEM Annual Conference 2014.
Clark and Andrews (2011) found that 86% of UK universities have some form of peer mentoring with 340 peer mentoring programmes across 159 universities. A wide range of terminologies are in use to describe the process including peer tutoring peer assisted learning supplemental instruction peer guiding budding study buddy peer coaching peer mentoring proctoring peers support global chums and e- mentoring. These semantics may in part reflect the different activities that are employed to address transition and academic achievement that may be pertinent at different points in student’s life cycle/journey. A variety of mentoring schemes operate in different UK HE institutions and indeed within our own University however there is limited information with regards the reach and organisation of mentoring schemes at Reading. Therefore we have established a project to collate information on different mentoring schemes being used at the University of Reading. We will use the typology of Andrews and Clark (2011) to classify the various mentoring schemes currently in operation alongside those which are in train. Using the typology we will select a number of schools/areas mentoring schemes and using Andrews and Clark’s evaluation tool investigate how different mentoring schemes can actively engage our student’s development. In this presentation we will present the results from our staff survey on schemes across the Sciences at Reading and give a flavour of the value that our students have gained. The overall aim of this project is to develop a best practice framework which can be used widely across our institution in order to support our students development.
