On Wednesday 30 March, students from 18 schools including SSPSSR involved in the Academic Peer Mentoring (APM) scheme attended an awards ceremony and lunch hosted by the Student Learning Advisory Service (SLAS).
The awards were presented to the mentors by Dr Louise Naylor, Director of UELT.
Mentors from the KBS, CEWL, Pol IR and SECL made presentations and showcased the impact this additional support has had on student achievement.
The event was recorded graphically by a small team of mentors who have received graphic recording training from Banter [42] – a Medway based graphic recording company.
‘Being a mentor has been fun and I have learnt skills which have helped me to prioritise my workload and communicate effectively with lots of different people’. (Fatin Binti-Azhar: KBS stage 2)
The APM scheme now has 350 mentors across the University and it has proved to be an excellent way of promoting student-centred learning. Within SSPSSR 22 mentors worked with 86 mentees across both campuses.
This initiative depends on student volunteers and is very much a student-led response – both undergraduates and postgraduates offer encouragement and academic advice to other students in the year below thus helping them to improve their performance. As such, it has become an important intervention in the University’s OFFA project.
Mentors benefit greatly from the scheme as they deepen their understanding of the course content as well as enhance their employability skills. Mentoring counts towards the KSCV and employability points scheme. This year it will also be a verifiable activity itemised on students’ HEAR (Higher Education Achievement Record) as SLAS has also delivered a new optional Kent Extra module for mentors.
‘The module made me a lot more confident about my own study skills which I have been able to pass on to my mentees’. (Charlotte Harding: MFA stage 3).
If you are a student who is interested in becoming a mentor for the 2016-17 academic year or you know a student who may be interested in mentoring for SSPSSR at Kent please email sspssremployability@kent.ac.uk.
If you would like to find out more about mentoring at Kent in general please email slasapm@kent.ac.uk [43].