Becoming a Peer Mentor: Student Perspectives

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Becoming a Peer Mentor Student Perspectives

• Kay Sambell and Peter Beven
• Northumbria Conference 2008

Centre for Excellence in Teaching
Learning Assessment for Learning
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The Context BA Joint Honours Framework at
Northumbria University

• Students choose two part- routes from a range
  of options Advice Guidance and Counselling
  (AGC), Childhood Studies, Care and Education of
  Young Children, Disability Studies, Health
  Studies, Professional Practice Studies
• Currently 150 in the first year of the Programme
  across all part routes.

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Advice Guidance and Counselling

• Interdisciplinary
• Models and modes of helping (mentoring one
  example)
• The social, cultural, legislative context

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Mentoring Benefits evidence from the literature

• Behavioural
• Attitudinal
• Health related
• Relational
• Motivational
• Career
• Larger effect sizes are detected for academic
  and workplace mentoring compared to youth
• Source Eby et al (2007)

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Mentoring Sharing and relating to experience of
learning

• Amongst others, Bauman (2000) points to how
  people increasingly favour experience over
  expertise. There is, he argues a tension between
  learning from experience and learning from
  expertise.
• Experience feels recognisable, accessible and
  verifiable expertise can seem contrived,
  complicated and remote (Law, 2006).
• Another finding consistent with this hypothesis
  comes from researcher Sara Bosley (2004). She
  finds that learners show a particular interest in
  the help they get from experienced learners and
  workers they actually meet. There are two valued
  aspects here-
• they accord credibility to the persons insider
  knowledge and
• they value the way the contact resonates with
  their own experience

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Benefits for Mentors

• Much of mentoring literature describes potential
  mentee benefits but clear that mentors gain from
  the experience too. (Allen Eby, 2003 Chandler
  Kram, 2005 Feldman, 1988 Kram, 1985)
• Our student peer mentoring project provides
  insights into the opportunity for self assessment
  afforded by the process

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Learning-oriented assessment (Carless, Joughin
Mok, 2006)

• HE currently looking for ways in which assessment
  can be constructed to maximise meaningful student
  learning
• Learning-oriented assessment implies assessment
  tasks that
• Promote learning needed for workplace
• Involve students in processes that promote skills
  and dispositions of lifelong learning (e.g. self
  and peer assessment to promote learning)
• See feedback as feed forward- impact on future
  tasks

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(Re)defining self assessment

• Growing body of research focusing on use of self,
  peer and co assessment as way of engaging
  students in learning-teaching-assessment dynamic
• Sambell McDowell,2006 Orsmond et al, 1996
  Boekaerts Minneart, 2003, Rust, ODonovan
  Price, 2005, Sambell Beven (2008).
• self-assessment by pupils, far from being a
  luxury, is in fact an essential component of
  formative assessment. When anyone is trying to
  learn, feedback about the effort has three
  elements redefinition of the desired goal,
  evidence about present position, and some
  understanding of a way to close the gap between
  the two. All three must be understood to some
  degree by anyone before he or she can take action
  to improve learning. (Emphasis in original.)
• (Black Wiliam, 1998, 143)

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Student Mentoring -What happened?

• Each year all 150 first year students given the
  opportunity of mentorship
• Mentors are 2nd and 3rd Year Advice Guidance and
  Counselling Students
• Preparation of 1st year students, 2nd and 3rd
  Year AGC Students
• Students organised the available space
• Two mentoring weeks arranged, one in November and
  a follow up week in March

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Student Voices..
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Developing evaluative expertise evidence about
present position

• What I found was I was quite surprised at the
  amount of experience I did have to pass on.
  Because obviously it's not so long ago that I was
  there where they were and you don't realise how
  much you have learned, you don't realise how far
  you have come, and how much you have achieved,
  because when you are living it you still think
  you're still the same person, but really you have
  grown and you don't realise how much, how you
  have changed in a positive way. Where at one
  time I would have said I could never help anyone,
  now I realise of course I can, I have this
  experience and I was able to pass that on.

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Developing evaluative expertise redefining
desired goal

• Acting as a Mentor helped me recap what we had
  done in the first week, as well. And it sort of
  jogged our memories, and it made us think about
  the things we might have to put in our
  assignments. You see, Im thinking about how it
  helped me- not them. Like a self-review. Im not
  thinking about the first years, Im thinking
  about the fact the posters help me to get clear
  in my mind the sort of things I might want to
  talk about in my own assignment, which is on
  being a learning mentor.

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Offering feedback different approaches to tasks

• We knew we had themes that needed to be in the
  poster, that we could relate to the mentoring, so
  that was good in that way wasnt it, so you know
  we had to have, what happened first, that we had
  the clouds of confusion and it was good that it
  was put into practical sense rather than just
  academic speak so I thought it was very useful.
• Each member of the group had an entirely
  different and very strong opinion on the
  mentoring role and how the candidates should be
  approached. And we spent an awful lot of time
  debating, a long, long time, prior to the actual
  day of the mentoring, debating how you should do
  it, what we should do. .

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Authentic assessment

• That word mentoring to me meant something
  different then to what it does now, having been
  involved with it.Mentoring, I thought it was
  something that an expert did, somebody who had
  loads and loads of experience, loads of
  knowledge, maybe at an academic level, for me it
  meant somebody who could really offer something
  and for me that was something that they would
  have had to have gone through to get that, do you
  know what I mean? And now having done it I
  realise that the little experiences that people
  go through in life, even as, not simple but
  straightforward as going to university, can offer
  a great deal of valuable information to somebody
  else, even on a small scale.

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Promoting learning

• I had to consider my pace of delivery, logical
  structure and the level of the content as well
  because I thought these people have already had
  overload, I dont want them coming to me to have
  that scenario again, so that was another
  concern. And I was very aware of the role of
  power in the mentoring relationship as well, I
  didn't want somebody to come thinking that I was
  going to dictate to them and tell them what they
  should be doing or whatever, generally I wouldn't
  do that anyway but I didn't want somebody coming
  to me thinking that's how it was going to be
  based. I didn't want to portray a hierarchical
  or directive relationship, I wanted to be on a
  level, on an even keel. So they were all of the
  concerns initially and then that takes me on to
  the benefits. Now the benefits were many, it
  turned out very, very well, I really enjoyed the
  mentoring and I believe it was successful with
  the two people that I mentored.

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Skills for lifelong learning and workplace

• I think I'm quite excited about doing my
  reflection because I'm quite interested in
  finding out more about it, and I think in the
  sort of jobs Im going to look for as well,
  especially with it being in my third year so I've
  got it fresh in my mind I can use that experience
  to say I've had experience in helping people in
  certain ways and giving information and offering
  advice, whilst letting them do their own thing at
  the same time.

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Impact on learningself assessment

• Being involved in this pilot Mentorship
  programme was definitely a learning experience
  for me. It was not until this point that I
  realised just how far I had grown, not just
  academically but personally. Prior to attending
  the first meeting I was nervous about not having
  any worthwhile experience to pass on taking part
  in this mentorship has really highlighted how
  experienced I am as a student and as a potential
  employee. Through passing on my experience to
  Year One students I really learned about myself.

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Assessing Distance Travelled

• It was also very beneficial for those involved
  from a mentoring perspective as many of us were
  unaware as to how much progress we had made on
  our own professional development while at
  university outside of our academic assessments