Working with Students as Partners: Developing Peer Mentoring to Enhance the Undergraduate Student Experience

Abstract

The scheme, though initiated by staff and institutional-wide strategy, was developed in collaboration with the students who volunteered to take part and who took on the role of "student expert". This collaborative development was intended to ensure that the scheme would achieve the aims of enhancing the student learning experience, support an inclusive and collaborative learning culture, provide empowerment opportunities, support gaining employability skills and develop a sustainable peer mentoring culture. The first year of the initiative was also qualitatively evaluated by the mentors and mentees, with this research project being codesigned and researched with the peer mentors. Through this process peer mentors developed tools to aid the establishment, implementation and maintenance of collaborative peer mentoring schemes which can be incorporated into a model to support the development of such future schemes.