Associate Professor Amanda Millmore, School of Law, a.millmore@reading.ac.uk

Update June 2024

This submission is now a published journal article co-authored with student partners. The link is here and the complete reference can be found below: ‘Reframing Success in A Pivoting Partnership – Student Mentors Trying to Engage: A Tale of Trial and Error’.

Objectives

Curriculum development – reviewing & designing materials and the Blackboard framework for a new elective first year module.
Peer mentoring – student partners in Part 2 offering support to students on the module, embedded within the module by linking student partners directly with each seminar group and including them in online drop-ins and in-person teaching.

Context

During the Covid-19 pandemic, our students had struggled with their sense of belonging, not feeling part of the School of Law community due to lockdowns, online teaching and restrictions on gathering socially. We were creating a new elective, Part 1 law module called “Law and Society”, and we wanted to work with students to develop the module. We were also conscious that we needed to improve support for our new first-year students to ease their transition into university and their studies by enhancing their sense of belonging. We came up with the idea of supporting the new students by building bridges with the cohort in the year above.

Implementation

Curriculum Design – the student partners worked together with staff to review the materials we had prepared and giving their thoughts on what would be helpful and work for the new Part 1 students.

Peer Mentoring – we embedded student partners as mentors with individual seminar groups. We introduced them online with a dedicated “Mentor” section on Blackboard, hosted a “Q&A” Padlet board for students to interact anonymously if they wished. The module was designed with the mentors embedded into it. Student partners were each paired with one of the teaching academics on the module to provide support. Mentors were timetabled to join online optional drop-in sessions (and the session was headed “Meet the Mentors”) and compulsory seminars to offer support with groupwork and formative activities. Academic staff highlighted the benefits of peer support and promoted the mentors and how they could help, while mentors encouraged formal and informal contact with the students in their designated classes.

When student mentees did not attend the optional drop-in (we had more student partners attending than we did students enrolled on the module) we pivoted to the student partners sharing their advice for new students, which we recorded in a document that we shared on Blackboard.

Impact

Curriculum Design – this aspect of the project was very successful, with student partners feeding into the design of the Blackboard module, reviewing the module materials to ensure that they were engaging and pitched at the appropriate level and on student recommendation we ensured the provision of clickable Talis reading lists.

Peer Mentoring – this aspect fell flat, as the Part 1 students did not want to be mentored. They did not attend sessions where the mentors were offering support, declined offers of help (even when they volunteered to join a WhatsApp group) and the student partners felt that we were flogging a dead horse trying to mentor first-year students who did not want to be mentored. Student partners then pivoted to carry out some research to find out what the barriers to engagement with the project were; beset with difficulties in seeking feedback from the Part 1 students who did not respond to questionnaires, offers of coffee and cake or focus groups, the few who did participate explained that they just did not feel the need for that kind of peer support.

Reflection

Whilst the mentoring aspect of the project did not land successfully with the Part 1 students, it was not due to problems with the partnership or even the design of the project, it was just that the Part 1 cohort did not want the support that we were offering. This may be peculiar to this particular cohort, who had been significantly affected by Covid at school, but it was not for want of trying.

Whilst not one of our explicit aims, the notable success of our partnership is the value to the student partners who worked as module designers, mentors and researchers, these students have had the opportunity to disseminate their experiences at conferences and in writing and can see real benefits to their partnership experiences, and they have developed tangible employability attributes, not least a high degree of resilience.

Amanda Millmore and student partners before presenting at the Change Agents’ Network conference 2022

Follow-up

Student partners co-presented this project at the CAN (Change Agents’ Network) conference at UCL in summer 2022 and we have now co-authored a journal article sharing our experiences.

We have continued with the good curriculum developments in the module, which continues to grow from strength to strength. The mentoring aspect of the project has not continued, but instead we ensure to signpost our students to their STaR mentors and PAL leaders for peer support.

Partnership working in the School of Law continues to be business as usual, and the hiccups on this project have not deterred us from trying new things with our student partners, ensuring that we see the benefits of partnership as part of the process and the positives for the partners.

References and links

We contributed to a blog after the CAN conference: CAN Case Study: A Pivoting Partnership – Student Mentors Trying to Engage: a Tale of Trial & Error | CAN 2022 (ucl.ac.uk)

Millmore, A., Collyer, B., Delbridge, E., Khan, A., Patil, I. and Williams, M. (2024) Reframing success in a pivoting partnership – student mentors trying to engage: a tale of trial and error. The Journal of Educational Innovation, Partnership and Change, 9(1). https://journals.studentengagement.org.uk/index.php/studentchangeagents/article/view/1208

If you’d like to know more about staff-student partnership in the School of Law, you can reach me at a.millmore@reading.ac.uk

I started university this year, or at least it feels like I have upon starting my new job as a Lecturer in the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences (PCLS). Every face around me is unfamiliar, the campus seems an unnerving maze, and simple processes have become logic puzzles. Oh the joy I felt at using a printer successfully (let’s not mention the attempts at scanning a document). There are many enjoyable aspects – meeting lovely new colleagues and joining in the School’s coffee mornings for example – but the transition is more disorientating than I expected. At the end of my first week I was grateful for some downtime at home, and found myself reflecting upon how my experience compares with the transition to university for new students.

New students face the same challenges I am but may also be living independently, away from their support network, for the first time. Many go home each day to a new place and have to figure out new washing machines and cookers never mind printers, as well as try to get along with housemates. For those commuting there are other challenges, including being at the mercy of traffic or public transport, and trying to forge friendships between classes. I have worked in universities before, and am able to draw upon previous experience; many new students arrive without having spent much, if any, time in a higher education environment. We know that factors such as being the first in your family to go to university or having a disability can make the transition even harder.

My own disorientation in these first days at the University of Reading has reminded me how all-encompassing the transition to university can be. As an academic my focus is often upon ensuring my new students have the academic skills needed to be an independent learner, but it’s important to be mindful that this is just one aspect of the overall transition experience. It’s easy to forget that the initial onset of new faces, places, and challenges can be mentally and physically wearing as well as exciting. When I meet my new students at the start of the next academic year I will try to recall how I felt when I joined the UoR.

One of the influencing factors in my decision to join the UoR was its commitment to student support, particularly mentoring. Harnessing our students’ potential to support each other through mentoring can ease mentees’ transition into university, whilst developing the mentors’ own skills and experience. I have previously run a scheme where psychology students mentored A-level pupils, giving them an insight into what university life is really like, and found that the mentors also benefited in terms of developing transferable skills and ideas about careers. Some recent research with my collaborator found that specialist mentoring, between qualified staff and mentees, is an effective form of support for students with mental health conditions and autism. I will certainly be encouraging my future students at the UoR to make the most of the STaR mentoring scheme and the mentoring connected to the Study Smart online course, first as mentees and later as mentors.

As for me, I am very much looking forward to the meetings with my staff mentor.

Tag: Mentoring

Reframing success in a partnership project