Hi Kirk
There have been some fairly dramatic developments on our side of the pond today. Stuart informed us of some of the assessment criteria for judging the eventual success of the scheme which changes things slightly from what we were initially talking about…it seems that the mentoring scheme will really be for courses that are really poor and failing to retain their students. There will be a heavy top down bias to get mentoring established within these departments as opposed to their being an open call for applications from all over the university which is likely to result in the best courses being awarded mentoring schemes as their applications will naturally be stronger. Whilst this doesn’t preclude applications from strong courses being accepted but it does force a key principle to become the favouring of failing modules or those with poor progression and retention rates.
Still no name, although your suggestion was greatly appreciated and caused much mirth in our meeting earlier.
We have two new authors on here to welcome, Jamie and Melissa are now fully on board.
Luke
Meeting on 6th January 2012 to discuss the actions needed to launch the mentoring scheme
Attending:
Stuart Brand
Luke Millard
Melissa Tisdale
Jamie Morris
Luke Nagle
Course of Discussion:
Stuart had meeting with Pro-Vice Chancellor on Thursday 5th January and received full support, but a requirement to deliver a significant impact.
> Stuart asks Melissa and Jamie how they came to be selected to be involved with the mentoring schemes they are on with Kerry Gough.
Melissa – was press ganged into following a pied piper-esque Kerry Gough to a mentor meeting
Jamie – was asked whether he would be interested in mentoring for a module in which he achieved 81%
> Stuart asks Melissa and Jamie what their current work load and week structure is like.
Both are currently organising work placements and are in 3/5 modules this semester. Both busy but both have time.
> Luke M explains what Change Academy is to Melissa and Jamie and the ambition to set up 1000 student jobs in all areas of the university to develop student facing frontages and student ownership, pride, community and work experience. One of the jobs being put forward is mentoring.
> Stuart offers chance for Melissa and Jamie to take on a position through Change Academy which means they can work more hours. Offered a day a week/8 hours.
> Questions raised for consideration later in the meeting:
Do we financially limit the projects, how many man hours can we allocate to a single project?
How do we access applications?
What do we call the scheme and how can we brand it/advertise it etc.?
> Detailed timeline of requirements established (see Visio document, watch this space)
> Development of Principles and Suggestions to judge applications by/include in the call for submissions: ( + Principles, * Suggestions )
+ Prior thought to timeline, benefits, outcomes etc.
+ Demonstration of how scheme will benefit progression, retention and achievement – the numbers of students it will impact upon.
+ Favouring failing modules, poor progression/retention rates etc.
+ Define what is meant by mentoring (what Kirk and Luke N started)
+ Demonstration of Partnership
* Genuinely Innovative Mentoring Ideas
* Examples of mentoring scheme that show the attributes defined above
* Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large projects all to be encouraged. A project which only needs 10hours can be as valid and useful as one which requires 500 hours.
> Stuart informs us of new directional/controls on what the ultimate aims of the mentoring scheme are from the funding point of view. Scheme is principally concerned with improving retention and achievement rates with undergraduate courses, not necessarily to do with satisfaction or brilliance of idea. ie. best/most applications that would come from an open call would be from courses that are already good and doing interesting things so whilst the projects would be good they would have less effect than if mentoring programs were in operation in the courses that are weak. However the weakest courses won’t submit applications in such numbers for the same reason as they are weak, they are dysfunctional. Unlike SAPs which is fundamentally BOTTOM UP this Mentoring project is going to have to be more TOP DOWN. Therefore Faculty Heads and Deans would have to play a role in awarding funding to mentoring projects to weak courses. The parable of the sower comes to mind, the man scatters seed all over the ground, some falls on stony ground, some lands on the road, and some lands in the thorn bushes none of which fully come to bear fruit. But some lands on fertile ground and comes to bear fruit one hundred fold. The thorns bushes and the stony ground represent the weak courses and the fertile land the good, proactive and engaged courses in this case. Whilst it has been fine for the SAP scheme to scatter seed all over in the hope of finding fertile ground the mentoring scheme needs to try and turn the infertile ground into fertile land, to clear away the thorns and stones and sow seed selectively.
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